What is a heat pump water heater and is it really worth it?

As a Home Inspector we get asked all the time what we think of point of use and heat pump water heaters. Well today I'm here to tell you what I think about my brand new heat pump water heater
and how it works. So how a heat pump water heater works is actually pretty simple. On the bottom is just an electric water heater like you might have right now with heating elements that makes the water hot. Pretty simple. On the top is a heat pump, a real heat pump just like what might be heating and cooling your home right now. It goes through the same exact refrigeration process.
Being here in my garage, warm air and there is no shortage of warm air in my Florida garage
is brought across to evaporator coil inside. The refrigerant removes the heat out of that warm air and the byproduct when we remove the heat we have cold air that comes out the outlet here.
Cooling might always warm Florida garage. In the refrigeration process that refrigerant removes the heat. There's a compressor, tiny compressor inside there too, compresses the refrigerant.
It comes out hot and goes through a piped coil inside the tank which heats the water up. So I'm basically getting free hot water. It goes back through the refrigeration process where the refrigerant changes state back into liquid as it goes back into the evaporator coil and goes through that whole process again. Not to confuse you, bottom line is hot air goes in, cold air comes out. One of the benefits is obviously the energy savings. Going from electric heat to a heat pump is a fraction of the energy pool which is really, really cool. If we look on here, we've got 240 volts is what this is as opposed to 208. 240 volts in the upper elements, 4500 watt, the lower elements 4500 watt. So if you take 4500 watts divided by 240 volts that leaves you just less than 19 amps. So depending on what's happening with the electrical company it can vary between 18
and 20 amps is what each element is going to draw. Some other factors in there as well.
Now with the heat pump you can see here the compressors should be running somewhere around
1.6 amps. A fan on here is going to be 0.15. So that's 1.75 amps. Give or take, that is just a fraction of what an electric water heater is going to pull. Another benefit is some of the safety features.
This one has a couple detectors that if there is a leak it will shut the system down which is really, really cool. It won't allow a water heater like this to bleed all over the house.
Now in a garage it's not that big a deal because it would just go out the overhead door but
yours could be located within an interior laundry room or something like that where it's a real
plus. So I hope that explains it and you get any questions feel free to drop me a line down
below and hey listen while you're at it check out another video!
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