We have 2 enourmous hot water tanks at home. We have a long house with 2 bathrooms so there’s a separate hot water service for each bathroom. Both hot water tanks are 305L and they are both electric, set to heat up during off-peak hours (overnight) every night.
Solar
I looked into replacing them with solar hot water services. We have more than ample roof space that is perfectly positioned to capture the maximum amount of sun. Unfortunately, the cost was prohibitive. On top of everything else needing our cash, we just couldn’t afford the investment into solar right now.
Gas
We only really use the second bathroom on weekends (when we have 2 to 4 extra kids) so our next option was an instant hot water service. This only heats the hot water as you are using it, rather than every night regardless of consumption. By all accounts, not really any cheaper if you are using the hot water all the time, but if it’s occasional use, it can make a big difference.
The only other appliance in this house on gas is the heating. It turns out that the gas is only plumbed from the street to one side of the house. To run the gas line around, over or through the house so that it could supply gas to the instant hot water unit was going to cost an additional $5k. This ruled out option 2.
Turn it off
For the last few years, we have gone with option 3, which was to turn off the hot water service to the second bathroom. This has meant no hot water in the laundry either but that’s not really a deal breaker. The washing machine heats its own water and if I needed any for soaking, I ran up the hallway to the other bathroom with a bucket. Annoying but a first world problem.
This saved us between $200 and $300 PER QUARTER on our electricity bill! I was gobsmacked.
Heat Pump
One night Mark heard an ad on TV for a business called Chromagen and told me about it. I looked into it and they supply a hot water service called a heat pump. This unit takes the air from around it and somehow uses it to reduce the amount of electricity it needs to heat the water inside it by up to 75%. On top of that, the government was offering a rebate for switching, so the switch would cost nothing.
Naturally I was skeptical. However, having the second service meant we had the luxury of being able to experiment. I had concerns that the heat pump tank wouldn’t be big enough to cope with the demand but it heats up several times during the day so the smaller tank can still cope with the higher demand.
In the end, we just decided to give it a go. We had the second service replaced just before winter. I have been waiting and waiting to get my first electricity bill that covered a full quarter with the heat pump installed as I was still highly skeptical about the advertised savings.
Last week we got the bill. It was roughly $50 more than usual. So I had hot water in my laundry and the second bathroom for an additional $50 per quarter, instead of the usual $200 to $300! This was through a cold winter quarter, when you would expect it to be at its most expensive.
Needless to say that I have now arranged for the main hot water service to also be replaced. The government rebate has reduced, so this time there’s a $100 charge, but that’s all.
Google tells me that a common issue with the heat pump services (and this is not specific to the brand that Chromagen supplied but it seems to be general feedback across a range of brands) is that the heat pump needs replacing after roughly 8 years. In that time, with 2 services switched over, I will have saved, conservatively, just shy of $10k on electricity, plus interest.
Happy dance!!
I can’t see the replacement pumps costing $10k. Hopefully by then, I will be in a position to install solar hot water anyway!
The heat pump is great to replace external electric hot water services and is suitable for domestic or small business use. I highly recommend giving it a look if you are looking to improve your eco footprint and reduce your energy bill.