Does any company make a hot water heater that uses the waste heat from air conditioning to help heat the water? Was just staring at my utility closet where my water heater sits right next to my furnace and suddenly it seemed obvious and dumb that I use electricity in to heat my water, then use more electricity to pump heat out of my condo and into the air outside
@jerry Yeah, heat pump water heaters exist. If you want to integrate it with ductwork that's a bit trickier, but doable. By default they cool/dehumidify the room they're in. Mine is basically free to run half the year because we needed to run a dehumidifier before to keep the basement from being a swamp.
@jerry my five cents after researching a lot on the topic is that there is, but it's rarely worth the cost of retrofitting
The main problems is that you want water really hot, but the air leaving the AC on the hot side you want as cool as possible.
A heat pump can move the warm air from the AC to the hotter water but it needs energy to do so, and the hotter the target the more it needs to work. Which reduces the benefit of the system.
But if you anyways need to replace something, then it's probably a no brainer, even with the inefficiencies it's still like 2x-4x more effective than just resistive heating.
@jerry Technology Connections on YouTube played around with that idea when he was talking about heat pumps inside the house.
Different appliance but same idea, I now vent my electric clothes dryer inside my house during the winter. I not only keep all the good smelling super hot air inside my house but I also add needed humidity to the air. I also do not put the house into a negative pressure state.
If you have an electric clothes dryer the kit to do this is less than 20. The main thing you need is a way to capture the lint. The kit I purchased does this by blowing the air over water.
@jerry
I'm fascinated with the topic of heat pumps it's like magic, moving so much heat with so little power.
We need to stop burning things and start using more heat pumps.
We need another ban like the one they did for the incandescent bulbs.
@ChickenPwny I will have to read up on where the water here comes from. I have a feeling there are enough freshwater rivers to supply this area, probably unlike the dangly part of Florida
Add comment