Hi I'm about to have my home gas hot water system replaced with a heat pump. uh system. I've done several videos on this. The whole idea is that we can use excess, uh, solar power and uh, but basically this is the only gas thing that we've got.

Well, this is the only non-electric thing that we've got uh left. Of course we've got the eight kilowatt nominal, eight kilowatt system spread over two different solar panel systems on the roof, one end phase micro inverter system, one uh, sunny Boy system and yeah, like everything is electric. We've got the electric car which we charge using the Zappy controller so it's a practically a hundred percent uh powered from our Xsr solar energy. So I effectively got a solar powered car and everything else in the house is solar power.

The only thing that we've got left that's gas is the hot water. We do have an outdoor barbecue, but we're going to change that over to bottle because we rarely, uh, use that so our bottle will be fine. But yeah. so instead of going with like solar hot water system which will just take up roof space and that'll only be used for the hot water anyway, Um, yeah, we'll go for a heat pump, a hot water system and we'll see what the energy requirements are.

anyway. it's been installed tomorrow. So what I've got here is a Rheem high efficiency 170 liter outdoor jobby. It's the 88 series.

Not sure if you can see that. it's really old. It's the original one um that came with the house. The house is uh, mid 80s something like that.

So yeah, um, it's it's still going. It still actually works. Uh, we've had no issues with it whatsoever. so obviously we've got.

uh, gas. Inlet down here. this is the cold water. uh.

in and then up here we've got the hot water out and over here. we have a relief uh valve. So I want to check the temperatures and then down here. I've taken the panel off.

Uh, you can see that there's the gas valve and then the pilot flame is under there and we'll have a look at that. It's never gone off like I Well, no, maybe once. I think maybe once it went off. Um, in the 18 years that we've been here.

So anyway, I don't know. It's got no temperature. um on here. so it's hot.

I did actually measure the temperature with the thermocouple the other day and I was getting 53 degrees out of the uh pilot Outlet temperature here. my thermocouple saying 51. right? I'm in the furthest most, uh, point in the house where we can get hot water and ouchy, that is hot. This is in the laundry and no.

I don't think we have uh, insulation on the pipes either in the roof. it's uh, it doesn't seem to be a big deal here. I measured it's the other day inside, yeah, 51. it's on par or only a degree lower than what we've got.

um, than what we're getting coming out of the relief valve. Of course there could be a tempering valve in there I don't actually know what the temperature is inside the uh tank, but there you go. The thermal is showing 52.5 so that's yeah. I'm going to put that within the margin of error there, but if you leave it on for a while, then the uh gas uh igniter should uh kick in and it should start heating up the tank again, right? So I've still got that running in there and I can hear it.

uh, flame in a way that Inlet gas valve there is like 38 degrees and the cold water. yeah, the coldest is uh, 20 degrees. So we've got 20 degrees coming in and we can actually measure that uh here on the tap as well. I did measure that the other day and I'm not sure if you can see that.

probably not, but it's 247 degree is because that's obviously the flame lighting this thing. So yeah, what? the actual internal temperature is in here? I I Don't know. so all we can get is the outlet. um, you know the the relief valve here, but that could be coming through a uh tempering valve to prevent it getting too hot.

I'm probably you know. I'm sure that's uh, sure, that's the case actually. And there's no direct temperature reading on the dial. So yeah, this is the outlet and uh yeah, that's A at 51.

you're hardly dropping anything if you can see because the water's flowing now. the uh, the pipes are hot. Yeah, there's no loss in those pipes. of course.

it's a nice warm sunny day here, so the roof is, uh, probably pretty hot. So yeah, we're still in a spring here. I've got 20 degree water going in because the pipe comes in from underground. um so that's you know that's not surprising and then we've got um, 50 152 degrees going out and we to get all of that at the tap.

so that's not too shabby. So yeah, we'll find out what the new heat pump systems like. but uh, obviously like it's got to run hotter than 50 degrees internally to prevent uh, you know, bacteria and uh, Legionella and all that uh, sort of stuff. Well I guess you set the outlet temperature I Don't know.

Maybe I can ask the guy tomorrow is installing you might know, but actually ask reclaim? uh what's the actual uh deal? Um, you know, is it actually hotter internally? but does it have some sort of like tempering valve in it? Anyway, that is the before and we'll now cut to the after and here it is a magically installed by the Oompa Loompas The heat pump is actually much bigger than I thought it would uh be I Thought it'd be a reasonable size, but uh, you can see it compared to our aircon. Well I don't know if I can get a decent measure on that, but if you can see it compared to our aircon. oh yeah yeah. okay, it's a similar size to our, um, a smaller aircon unit.

Uh, this is a Mitsubishi jobby as is this unit Here this is actually Mitsubishi It's uh, of course got a reclaim Energy's badge but I've been told it's been manufactured by Mitsubishi and here we go. It's the model uh that that could be a reclaimed model number made in Japan all the best stuffs made in Japan and uh, it does say through 2.3 kilowatts but I was measuring the consumption remotely today or trying to I think it's around about that one kilowatt Mark but I won't know until I actually get the power meter on now. they actually are installed a um extra uh, a double PowerPoint here for the control, one for the controller and one for the uh heat pump. Now you can see the scanning I can actually see the flicker on this lead display.

You're seeing it worse on the camera because of the shutter anyway. So after Rtfm on that, but they have set it to come on like from uh, 10 a.m to 4 P.M or whatever so that we use the excess solar I might tweak that time somewhat. But anyway, uh yeah, it's got a thermocouple thermocouple input which goes down to the well, what they call a sensor well down here basically and that, uh, that's got the thermocouple and this is the 415 liter tank. As I said, it's the biggest one they make.

It's absolutely massive. They're mounted it on like a polycarb uh base. and yeah, it does obscure. It's so big, it obscures a little bit of the pathway through the side gate here, but we rarely use it so that's not a big deal.

It's the stainless steel. uh Joby and it did come. did come pre-bend up. look at this.

They did actually show me that, uh, when they got it off the uh truck, they didn't do it on the getting it off the truck I Believe that was like it just came out of the box. They unwrapped it and there it was. So yeah, it's good enough for Australia Um yeah, this is not the actual Uh tank. The tank is actually inside this tank surrounded by insulation of course.

So because this, like I can't feel anything on this, this just feels ambient temperature to be. but it's actually filled already with uh, 63 degree water. I think it's uh, set at internally. You can't actually, uh, change that.

but manufactured here in Australia by metal Dynamics Proprietary limited see it says 400 liters but I believe it's actually 415. Anyway, um, we've got the standard relief valve here, so yeah, I can feel that's that's pretty warm. We'll get some water coming out and I'll measure that. Ah, that should be like 63.

let's follow the pipe work here. So we've got our cold water coming in here that comes from up the top here. that just goes to a tap here and then the cold water goes around here through. We can actually switch it off and then it goes well now.

I'll follow I'll tell you about this in a minute but uh yeah, then it goes down into the bottom of the tank here and then so the bottom water in the bottom of the tank goes up two into the heat pump. which is this bad boy here and uh, due to a heat pump action? um yeah, just uh. look at any uh how a uh aircon uh works and it's the same way or a reverse cycle aircon. it's exactly the same thing.

and you get your nice hot 60 degree water coming out of here and that just goes um into the top of the tank there and then this one on the other side is the outlet. Uh so this is just a storage tank. There's nothing else inside it so it comes down here. So this is our hot water output and this goes into what's called a temper valve and these are required under Australian law and for just um, common sense because you don't want 63 degrees C water coming out of your TAP because that will ruin your day and uh yeah, you can you know give yourself serious burns with 63 degree water very quickly.

So temper valve what that does is mixes the cold water coming in here with the hot water down to a preset temperature. You can actually it's got a little plug on the end there. you can flip that over and we can actually adjust the temperature I Don't know what it's set to. Usually they're set to like 50 to 55 degrees something like that because uh the you know you don't want it.

uh too low because then you're using too much hot water and to get the temperature that you want but you don't want it too hot to burn you. So the old gas one, we're getting 50 degree water out anyway. um that's a very cool device. It's it's completely mechanical.

Um so yeah, it uses some sort of like uh, you know, diaphragm that changes with uh, temperature? Not exactly sure how, but yeah, very cool. Um and then that just goes into the house. So that is it. that is a heat pump, hot water system and uh, as I said, the old tank was 173 liters.

This is 415 in a normal day. We won't use like much of this capacity at all. We'll probably use like 150 liters. So good thing about this is that I can whack the power our meters on here easily and we can find out the uh, well this uh, the controller's on all the time so we'll have standby consumption of the controller and we'll have a standby consumption of the heat clamp as well.

So I can measure both of those. They did install an extra fuse. There it is. It's the one on top there hot water.

It's a 20 amp jobby just for that outlet there and they decided to mount it up on the bracket just because it was. You know too much, has to remove the tap and everything else. and uh also you know if you get flood in here, uh you don't want it like actually sitting directly on the ground, you'd have it. uh, offset? uh of course.

but uh yeah. now we can like put some stuff under there as well so we can use that space if we need to. But there you go. that is very cool and uh yes lots of people have asked.

yes they take outside is very common here in Australia For a house, it's probably the most common thing. Um, it's so yeah, no worries. Like the house that I grew up in which is probably in the late 60s house. um they've actually had the tank in the roof.

but I don't think anyone does that anymore. So we'll use it tonight as a normal night and I'll measure the consumption tomorrow to see how much energy in kilowatt hours it takes to reheat the water. that we actually used temperature of the water coming out here. and yep, it is 61 And my first test out in the laundry again.

Yeah, it's hot. Oh yeah, that's Ernie Bernie They set it to 55 by the looks of it, which I think is what they said they would set it to. but yeah, that is uh, five degrees Yeah over four degrees hotter than what we had it before. You'll use less, uh, hot water Of course, because you physically mix in more cold water, uh, with it to get your desired temperature for your shower or your sink or your whatnot.

So yeah, it's probably good to have it a bit higher, but geez, I wouldn't want it any higher than that. that is that really is Ernie Bernie and standby consumption of the controller here about 0.9 Watts That's all right, no workers. Uh, that's 1.8 VA and we'll see what the pump takes I'll switch it on not didn't do anything. No Fan's not going.

Nope, nothing. so it's drawn a couple of watts in standby VA on that. Oh yeah, pretty terrible. Uh 40 VA But as I said yeah, power factor of 0.07 Yeah, um, that's what happens when these sorts of things.

Uh yeah, that's what you'd expect. It's terrible Muriel But uh, but yeah. I I only pay for um, the Watts So 2.7 uh, three? Watts Yeah so let's run through the numbers of what I actually measured and compare it with what I thought I would get before I actually installed this thing because this whiteboard might be familiar to many people or at least the people who are subscribed to my second Channel Eev blog too I did this quite some time ago. this is, uh, the original, uh whiteboard for it.

where I actually went through my old uh, gas hot water and how much our energy it actually used in megajoules and converted that to kilowatt hours and what it was costing me and all that sort of stuff. and I was able to get a kilowatt hour figure per day and cost per day and you know all that sort of stuff. and I was able to then speculate what I would actually get when I installed this reclaim uh, 400 liter uh heat pump system. So did it work out well, not really.

The claim I was a little bit off and we're going to find out why. anyway. I've got tons of videos on my EV blog 2 channel, so if you want to see this video as a dedicated one, I'll link it in down below and up here and all that sort of jazz. Go watch it! Oh, but a quick uh recap is basically my existing gas hot water system here: I got uh, five different uh bills here and I was able to extract the megajoules, convert them to kilowatt hours over how many days that was actually uh done here and I was able to convert that to a figure in kilowatt hours per day.

We can directly compare to an electric hot water system or a Heat pump hot water system which is just an electric hot water system, but it's more efficient. So the reason that we can do this is because on your gas bill, typically I Don't know it might be different in different countries, but here it tells us the figure in Megajoules and that's Just Energy you can convert energy from one unit to another. So the equivalent megajoules here you can actually convert to kilowatt hours. There are a couple of little factors in here, which they'll have on the bill, which is like uh, the pressure and the environmental factors and uh, stuff like that.

but those figures are fairly stable. so we can actually convert that to kilowatt hours and that's what I've gone. It turns out that if I averaged it over an entire year, my gas system, uh, every day was taking the equivalent of 12.8 kilowatt hours per day in energy. Now of course, we're not going to go into the differences between the embodied energy in a gas you know, to actually mine and produce the gas and transport and all that versus what is required to manufacture the solar panels and all that embodied energy stuff, right? It's a really complicated equation.

we're just simply comparing how much energy a gas system uses versus how much energy a heat pump system uses. And based on Reclaims figures, they've got a figure of three kilowatt hours energy consumption for 315 liters delivered per day. And that's you know, for a typical usage for like a family of four. Now, we actually use less water than that.

315 is a lot because our old tank was only 175 liters and we kind of did run out of that occasionally. But like on a normal day, we'd get nowhere near to running out. So you know I don't know we might use 120 liters I'd be guessing. and if you're playing along at home, that actually works out to the cost of almost two dollars a day to supply and deliver the Gas Energy So that's 722 bucks a year and that goes into the payback period and stuff like that.

But not really worried about that in this video. We just want to have a look at how much energy is being consumed by our heat pump system and how it actually works. And they also claimed that the power draw is around one kilowatt. Remember the difference between power and energy I've done a video on that.

kilowatt hours is energy. Kilowatt is the like instantaneous uh Power that it's actually using and it's around about one kilowatt. Mine varied from about 950 Watts up to about 1.15 something like that depending on the the day where it was in the cycle and all that uh, sort of jazz. But yeah, they're one kilowatt figure.

Yeah, it's pretty much spot on. Now, the good thing about it only Drew one kilowatt is because the entire purpose we installed this heat pump hot water system is so that we could use our excess solar energy during the day, where instead of just exporting it to the grid and getting paid an absolute pittance for it, so we're effectively using this new 400 liter, uh, hot water tank as a thermal energy battery. That's essentially what it is we're putting in that three kilowatt hours per day, for example, and we'll go into the figures on the next whiteboard, but we're basically storing that energy so we're pretty much got like a three kilowatt hour battery there, but it's being used as thermal storage, which we use the in energy mostly at night when we shower and then it reheats during the day. and the reclaimed system comes with a timer on it that only works between 10 AM and 4 Pm when the Sun's shining, and pretty much even on a really bad day.

In the middle of winter, we're easily going to have one kilowatt of Excess power available for our nominal eight kilowatt insta solar installation. So pretty much after we've installed it here, and remember, this is a real pricey system, this is probably one of the, if not the most expensive heat pump system you could get, so you can get ones like half this price or even less than that, but we went with the best quality made in Australia one. So what did I calculate well based on their nominal three kilowatt hour claim for 315 liters I Knew we weren't using anywhere near 100 315 liters. uh, per day even though we do have a family of four.

So I actually took the existing tank as a measure 175 liters per day and then you just work out the ratio there. and I calculated roughly, we should only take 1 point seven kilowatt hours per day. Well, one one, as we'll see on the next whiteboard. No.

I got a fair bit more. We used a fair bit more energy than that. but I think it does actually make sense that I really wasn't going to achieve that. Um, if you're wondering, and you should be, what is the efficiency of a gas hot water tank system? not instantaneous? And we're always talking about tank Hot Water Systems here.

I've also done a second Channel video on instantaneous electric hot water systems as well and why I didn't choose that option. So I'll link that one in as well. Well, it turns out that a tank based gas hot water system is around about 60 to 70 percent efficient. Now my one is really old, many decades old.

It's got high efficiency written on it. Okay, so I took that as the upper end Now in my state of New South Wales Here in 2015, they're building new regulations that said that all gas tank Hot Water Systems have to be at least 69 efficient I believe it is. So I'm going to say that my old one was probably 70 efficient and how much energy did it use per day ever average over the year 12.8 kilowatt hours. uh, per day.

So if we calculate 70 of the efficiency of that, it's basically nine kilowatt hours per day of heat energy being put into that gas tank. The rest is lost on I don't know how the flame works, the flu, and the hole you know actually heating up. uh, that thing. but where we were actually put in it seems around about nine kilowatt hours per day heat energy into the water and you've got to remember that's for a 170 liter tank.

Okay, my new reclaimed one is 400 well nominal 400 I think it's about four I put 415 but I think it's about 420 liters is it's real uh capacity. So yeah, for a much smaller take, nine kilowatt hours per day compared to three kilowatt hours uh, per day which reclaim claim here. and well, it's no contest just in terms of pure energy consumption. A heat pump hot water system.

in fact, in particular, a CO2 based Uh heat pump system because the new CO2 based systems are a bit better than the old school refrigerants that use. They now use CO2 as a refrigerant in the more modern heat pump systems and they're more efficient. They have a greater coefficient of performance or cop. but yeah, there's no.

there's no contest. A heat pump hot water system wins hands down compared to a gas system in terms of energy consumption. So let's now magically look at the results that I got over nine days. and here it is: I got data over nine days.

There were actually some days before that, but I wasn't measuring all the parameters and then the power failed and I've done a second Channel video on that where my power actually, uh, ironically, uh, went out. Anyway, that's the second Channel video. Go watch it. So I've got data over nine days.

Okay, for my new reclaim 400 liter nominal 400 liter CO2 heat pump. Uh, a hot water system and we'll go into how it actually uh, Works in a minute in terms of uh, the tank. But what I've got here is how much energy did it use per day? Because I was putting an energy monitor on it every day and I was able to measure you know, 2.66 kilowatt hours three so like, basically anywhere from 2.54 to 3.13 I think seems to be the uh range of kilowatt hours energy per day. so it's basically an average of 2.83 kilowatt hours per day.

And that's not far off that three kilowatt hour claim for 315 liters consumption that reclaim make. So why are we getting near that? even though I can guarantee we're using nowhere near the uh 315 liters, let alone the 400 liter tank that we're actually got here. Well, it turns out that well, they're marketing figures right now. They did actually give me some data for a site that they have in Tasmania which is right down the bottom end.

It's the map of Tassie little Aussie joke there from my Aussie audience will get what I'm referring to there anyway. it's quite cold down in Tasmania but as it turns out, the CO2 heat pump hot water systems do actually work better. They're actually more efficient Ironically in a colder climate like that. That has to do with the high pressure used in the CO2 based heat pump systems and the differential between the ambient temperature and the output temperature.

So yeah, um, it makes a difference. So obviously their figures are coming from a more optimal environment. But anyway, that my figures will actually change I Expect this average figure to change. You know it'll have a seasonal component as well, but it's almost summer here.

It's a couple of weeks away from summer when I got this data and well, 2.83 kilowatt hours per day. It's more than I was hoping for, but still not too shabby. and we've easily got like three kilowatt hours per day excess energy that we're just exporting to the grid getting paid kittens for as I said, and we're now actually storing that. so I've effectively got.

Let's just say a nominal three kilowatt hour thermal battery system Beauty So once again, right off the bat, it's under three kilowatt hours per day. or more than three times better than the equivalent at nine kilowatt hours per day. for gas. that was actually the heat energy going into heating up the gas hot water system.

it's three times better on a pure energy basis for heating up the water, let alone the losses because this figure already includes the losses. So what other data did I get? Well, I got the maximum ambient temperature for that day I didn't log that up myself I just took that from the weather bureau, but that was the peak temperature in our location during the day. Then I got the minimum ambient R temperature as well that's the overnight temperature and then I got the temperature in the bottom of the tank will go into the exact location of that in a second and then I got the temperature in the top of the tank which is actually the Uh relief valve temperature. So I could actually measure that directly.

This one came from the thermocouple inside the reclaim unit. I can hit a button on there and get the bottom temperature. So basically this bottom temperature of the tank was the starting temperature at 10. AM when it switched on that it, uh, you know it had to heat up from that to 63 degrees.

C So what I've done is I've tried to calculate the cop or coefficient of performance of this system even though we can't really do that because we don't have enough. Even though I've got all this data, we still can't really do it. and let me explain why. but I'm trying to get a figure Anyway, the coefficient of performance is the amount of heat energy you get out.

Remember, this is heat energy you get out of the system. in this case, basically the what comes out of the heat pump here, the 63 degree water here, and what, the energy that comes out of that divided by the electrical energy you put in to power this 2.83 kilowatt hours per day to actually get that amount of heat energy out. So it's just a simple ratio. This cop and Reclaim actually claim a coefficient of performance up to like five times.

and that's you know, the sort of like extreme end for a heat pump system, but this is a top quality one. It's the new high efficiency CO2 based uh, refrigerant in there and it's it gets maximum. It's pretty much one of the best ones you can get on the market, so we're not I don't think we're quite seeing those figures. but as I said, don't have exact figure.

It'll depend on environmental factors, income in water temperature, ambient temperature, the amount of uh, you know how you cycle the tank, and all sorts of stuff. So what I've done is also calculate uh, the amount of heat energy required to heat up the water in this particular case, from the bottom starting temperature and I've got to go into the details where this is a bit bit warm and fuzzy, but it's the best I can do with the data we've got available as I'll explain in a minute. So Q here is the amount of energy required to heat up a body of hot water. and then because we're talking about water, we need the specific heat of water which is 41 around 41.90 uh joules and then multiplied by m which is the uh mass of the water.

So in this particular case, right, we've got a 400 liter tank. It's actually 420 liters so they just round it down for marketing purposes, but actually 420 liters actual volume. But here's the interesting thing. the temperature sensor where they're getting this uh, where they're getting this bottom temperature from is at about the 30 mark on the Uh tank and I've verified all this with uh reclaim.

By the way, they've actually sent me data on this is this is where I got it from. So I'm going to subtract the bottom 30 of the tank there and just assume that that volume's not being heated up I Know this is all you know. a little bit how you're doing, but you know it's We're just having fun here and trying to calculate a rough uh cop here. Okay, efficient of performance.

So that gives us a volume of 294 liters. So if I whack that in there 294 liters, then we have to multiply that by the temperature differential which is the temperature want to raise the water to In this particular case, even though it comes out at 63 degrees Celsius It actually Heats it up until it reaches a bottom temperature here of 58 degrees. Celsius So we're going to run with 58 minus the bottom uh temperature. which is, uh, this one here the starting temperature and that gives us our figure.

our kilowatt hour figure in heat. It actually gives us in joules, but then I've converted it over to kilowatt hours there. And that's the amount of heat energy required in kilowatt hours to heat up this volume of water from this temperature to that 58 degrees set temperature there. And this is the amount of effectively the amount of energy you'll require if you didn't have a heat pump system and you had just the old school School an electric element hot.

What? You know, a direct heating electric element hot water system. You'd be using this much energy, but we're only using 2.83 kilowatt hours per day instead of like I Don't know. Let 10, 11, 12 kilowatt hours? uh, per day That would normally be required because we've got a heat pump. The coefficient of performance, as you can see, just uh, pops out here.

It's anywhere from like 3.7 to 4.45 something like that. It sounds reasonable, but unfortunately, you can't really measure the true coefficient of performance on systems like this unless you actually know the you actually have flow meters on the inputs and outputs to measure the actual volume of the water flow and the actual uh, direct temperatures and stuff like that. So yeah, we don't really have that, but the numbers kind of sort of pop out and reclaims a figure. you know, four is pretty.

uh, typical. Might vary between four, four and a half something like that. So yeah, I it's in the ballpark. I Like it now.

One of the problems here is that the tank is not just at one uniform temperature inside. Unfortunately, there can be quite a substantial temperature difference in here. As I said, the sensor is temperature sensor. The only temperature sensor is down the bottom here like this and at the 30 percent mark and it gets and it raises it until it keeps heating, pumping the heat in until it reaches a set point of 58 degrees.

Celsius And when you do that, it's going to the top of the tank is actually going to be at 63 degrees Celsius because the heat pump actually pumps out a fixed 63 degrees Celsius water. So we've got what's called a stratified tank here. which means there's going to be a thermal gradient in here and thermoclines in here where Like, there is actually differences in of course hot water rises. So there's going to be thermal differences in these layers here.

So they've got that that temperature sensor at the 30 degree Mark So that's where the set point is for actually, uh, stopping the Heat going in like this. And by the way, yeah, it does run for about three for that 2.83 kilowatt hours per day. At around about that one kilowatt power drill. it does actually run for around about three hours.

something like that. and I Don't expect that to change much during the season, so you can easily have a timer on here to come on to Just power this thing once per day. Now, of course you have to keep the temperature elevated and there's a reason that they have the 63 degrees coming out. that's to prevent Uh Legionella build up in the tank.

So it's also got a cycle that if it doesn't reach that temperature once per day, it'll pump energy in to ensure it gets there at least once per day. so it kills any Legionella and other bacteria stuff in there. So yeah, Unfortunately, to get a true measure of the coefficient of performance here, we really need flow meters on here. Um, so yeah.

basically the cold water actually from the tap actually comes in here like this and goes out the bottom as well. and that goes into the CO2 Heat pump, which then using the heat pump actually transfers it from the ambient air. So the Ambient Air Temperature is going to make a difference, as does the cold water income in temperature like this. but it'll always pump out 63 degrees Celsius water like that and then that slowly makes its way down via stratification in the tank until this temperature sensor reaches that uh, set point of 58 degrees.

and then during the night when you shower, it's just basically being pumped out of the top here and that thermal layer sort of stratification layers just sort of like go up as the extra cold water because remember this is our Mains pressure Fed So this cold water kind of like being fed into the bottom and there's hot water coming out the top. So there's the stratification layers like move up like that and how they mix and all that sort of stuff. I Don't know, but there are thermal layers in there and I did actually capture. Uh, one day where the heat pump did actually turn on.

This was actually uh, the first day we used it and you can see here that there was a three hour window there where it actually uh, switched on and then it was. You know, anywhere from 950 watts to low 1.1 kilowatts. something like that pumped it in for about three hours. that 2.083 kilowatt hours on average to three kilowatt hours.

Something like that. that was enough energy to heat a 420 liter tank. Now here's an interesting graph of a CO2 based Uh refrigerant, hot water heat pump, hot water system like we've got here versus an old school refrigerant, the Rr410 a refrigerant which is, you know, a fairly typical one used and you can see the coefficient of performance is higher over a Uh great over the temperature range compared to that older refrigerant of course. the higher the coefficient of performance, the greater efficiency you're going to have.

And you can see it's kind of like a reasonably flatish down to like five or ten degrees something like that. So it's not too bad. So that's why in a colder climate, this is an output referred Uh figure coefficient of performance. So that's why in a colder climate like Tasmania you're actually going to be more efficient and you're going to do better than in a Uh environment like this.

But there is a semi-complex trade-off with the incoming water temperature in the Uh Ambient Air Temperature and the pressure of the Uh refrigerant used and the thermal insulation of the tank and the size of the tank and the amount of you know water flow that you're using all that sort of stuff. You know, you really can't measure these things unfortunately unless you have proper water flow meters and proper temperature sensors in there. But I've done the best we can, so it's it's not too bad. I Rather like it.

So there you have it. I Hope you found that as interesting as I did I Love getting data like this and analyzing uh, the results and well am I happy with my initially happy with my heat pump hot water system. Yeah I am Even though I expected a bit less power consumption based on the amount of water that we actually use, it looks like it doesn't really make a huge amount of difference. and if you go in and analyze like individual numbers like this, there's kind of like not, you know it's it's hard to correlate anything because we don't know the exact amount of water that we actually used and uh, it's it's just difficult.

All we can do is like, you know, ballpark, uh stuff kind of thing. Even though we've got like exact measurements for some things, it just is going to vary quite a bit with like the amount of water that we used I'm sure you think that you have the same amount of showers every day, but you probably don't and there's a couple of bars uh thrown in there as uh, well I believe. So I do have those noted uh in my data somewhere but I couldn't really find any correlation there. so it looks like like we deliberately went for the bigger tank and it looks like um, yeah, it's It's a good thing because we'll now have uh, much greater uh, heat capacity, a greater heat thermal heatsink effectively for really not much if anything more in energy.

So yeah, I'm quite happy with it. We're using our Xsr solar energy around three kilowatt hours per day. As I said, that'll be seasonal, but we've got more than enough excess energy sometimes. where you know, like, double digits, we're just thrown away exporting to the grid per day.

we're not using it. So if we, so this is Step number one in sort of like storing that energy locally and using it. And we've gotten rid of our gas uh, hot water system, which was incredibly old. Even though it was a high efficiency one, it's nowhere near as efficient just in terms of pure energy, uh, consumption to heat up water compared to a heat pump.

So just from a cost point of view, if you're willing to, uh, pay the extra money, it looks like, uh, this thing will probably pay itself off over you know, five years, something like that, and then it's basically our free hot water after that. And for those who are concerned about like, oh, heat pumps are so noisy. nope, it's about 36 DB I think um, there is is it's rating and it's even if you stand right in front of it, you can barely hear it. uh, going full ball.

So yeah, it's noise isn't AR problem at all. It is for those like larger uh pool pump Heat pump hot water systems. And in terms of uh reliability I Don't expect this to be any less reliable than any typical reverse cycle aircon we've got where we've got four reverse Cycle Aircon Systems One of them is 18 years old, hasn't failed yet. Um, so yeah, and the others are.

Some others are like 10 years old. They haven't failed yet. So I don't expect this one. It's a quality.

Japanese I believe it's made by Mitsubishi Quality Pump. So uh yeah I don't expect, you know I I Think well, you know it's not going to die in the first five years. I'd be before it pays itself back I'd be very surprised. So I'm liking these heat pump.

Uh Hot Water Systems so far uses excess solar energy. It's a good choice and certainly a good choice if you've got an electric element, a direct heating element, electric hot water system as you saw before. Yeah, I didn't actually erase it. There you go.

What was it? Um, it required like the equivalent energy? No it. no. I did actually have it on here. It required the equivalent energy of like 10 to 12 kilowatt hours per day, day or something to heat up that volume of water.

Those temperature differences and stuff so you know it's it is significant. Advantage As I said, like coefficient of performance is, actually you can achieve well over a coefficient and performance of four times. And no, this is not over Unity It's heat pump systems. Okay, there's a this is not breaking the laws of physics.

Captain Uh, there's even though we're only putting in 2.83 kilowatt hours per day of electrical energy and we're getting out. You know, the equivalent of 10 to 12 kilowatt hours in heat energy. That is a different thing to the electrical energy used. And of course, for those who are saying oh, five years something payback that's too long.

Well, we could have paid half the price of this system. at least in fact, in uh, some states I believe you can almost get them for almost free installed. they're with government rebates and uh, stuff like that. the real low quality you know, made in China crap systems.

but the company that I use that installed those and they said they refused to even install those. real crappy. Bottom line: uh systems, they just and they just break down. it's not worth it.

Um, so yeah, you could save some money up front. So we we paid the extra for like a top of the line made in Australia system Japanese pump and it should last quite a long time. I hopes anyway I don't know I'll come back in a decade. Five years I might give you a payback a period thing.

and of course, with the rising gas prices here in Australia that's happening everywhere. Um yeah, the payback could even be shorter than that. So there you go: Heat pump, hot water system I'll keep you updated on any extra videos I Do they'll be over on the EV Blog 2 channel so I hope you liked that and found it useful. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

Remember to subscribe. hit the you know subscribe thing, the Bell icon and everything just in case YouTube's stupid algorithm unsubscribes you or something and that's the way to get notified and also exclusive videos. over on my Odyssey Channel as well. and leave your thoughts and comments down below and also on the EV blog Forum link down below.

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