Give Me ALLLLLL The Hot Water
Have you ever been frustrated about having to wait for hot water? Have you ever run out of hot water? Girl, that is one of my biggest pet peeves. #FirstWorldProbs.
I take a daily shower and two to three times per week I soak in my tub, too. On the weekend, it isn’t uncommon for me to soak in my tub then immediately get out and take a shower. It’s a girl thing…. if you know, YOU KNOW. But, here’s the thing: I don’t want to run out of hot water and I don’t have the patience to wait minutes for hot water, either.
This is our Rheem Performance Platinum Hybrid Electric Water Heater with 80 gallon capacity
Here is our secret sauce: an 80 gallon hybrid hot water heater with an added circulator. When we were prepping our home build we chatted with our local power company about their recommendations for energy efficiency and one of the big things they mentioned was considering this hybrid unit. We were initially contemplating a tankless hot water heater but those are not very energy efficient unless you have a gas hook-up. Our home site did not have a gas line close by and the gas company told us we would be responsible for paying to have the line run under the roadway and several houses down to get to our home. The price and hassle just did not appeal to us. Especially after researching this hybrid water heater. It runs off electricity and one of my husband’s favorite features is that the unit itself breathes out cool air. We have it installed in our garage and with fully insulated garage walls, we have never had an issue with our garage getting hot. It’s awfully nice to live in Florida and pretty much have a climate-controlled 2.5 car garage to work in without having the cost of ducting AC.
So, if you are planning to go electric with your water heater and you want a bomb system, you should definitely check into a hybrid unit. I’m telling you, it is a D R E A M to always have hot water, no matter how many people are taking showers back to back or soaking in the tub.
Wishing you all the hot water your heart desires,
Matt’s take: Since most of my stuff is out in the garage anyway, I appreciate the fact that we have an extra element of climate control. My Dad and I spent about 7 hours (at least) lining the walls of the garage with insulation to ensure that the cool air put out by the water heater would not be easily lost. In my opinion, it has paid off so far; there are hot summer days that I will walk out into the garage and the temperature is around 75 degrees or so, which is really nice. One thing to keep in mind is that the cool air is not blowing constantly like in an AC. The cool air is only pumping out when the water heater is cycling. So there are times when the water heater will blow cool air, then the garage door will open and let the cool air out, and it will take a couple of cool air cycles from the water heater to cool the room down, so it’s not instant cool. Definitely worth it though.
A note on the circulator: Because our water heater is on one side of the house, a circulator was needed to ensure that the whole house can get hot water in a timely manner. The circulator uses the same amount of energy as a fan, and the circulator must be plugged into an outlet. Since there may be times in the day or night that you don’t require instant hot water, an outlet power control device can be plugged in between the circulator plug and the wall outlet, allowing you to control the amount of time that the circulator is receiving power. Also, running the water heater at the super energy saving economy mode is not recommended with a circulator, which we found out by getting some intermittent lukewarm showers. When we switched the water heater to the standard setting energy mode, no problem getting all the hot water we ever needed even with the circulator.
BTW, our electrical bill is so low, which speaks to the efficiency of this machine. We pay practically the same as we did in our previous home. Insane. Just to compare, our first home was 2200 sf (newer and well built/insulated) with only 3 family members living in it with 1 AC unit. Our current home is nearly double the size, now with 5 family members, 2 AC units and 3 climate zones.