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Make Trades Great Again
Are we seeing a shift toward Heat Pump Water Heaters?
Get ready to unravel the mysteries of heat pump water heaters as we dissect their performance ratings, costs, and efficiency, using spec sheets from industry giants, Bradford White and Reem. These appliances have been sparking interest among DIY enthusiasts, and we're here to break it all down for you. We'll even walk you through why you won't find Bradford White's products in your average hardware store.
Imagine this: you've just invested in a heat pump water heater. You're thrilled about its touted efficiency, but as you flip through the manual, you're confronted with a slew of operation modes. Which one's best for you? We're discussing this and more, including the significant role of heat and humidity in these systems' performance. You'd be surprised at how much hot water two 10-minute showers can consume, and the recovery time of a water heater can be a game-changer!
Shifting our attention to the professionals, we're laying out the considerations for plumbing contractors when installing heat pump water heaters. We're talking costs, warranties, and comparisons with traditional tank water heaters. And let's not forget a dose of humor - we're sharing some amusing moments about our contact information, Andy's shirtless chin, and the saga of his sinking office chair. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast, a professional contractor, or just curious, we promise a rollercoaster episode with laughter, learning, and a whole lot of hot water heater talk.
Send us your feedback or topic ideas over on our social channels!
Eric Aune @mechanicalhub
Andy Mickelson @mick_plumb
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I'm using the right video, though, too late now.
Speaker 2:I already hit the door Too late. Now you look good.
Speaker 1:Thank you. All right, man, Everybody welcome back. Make trades great again. What are you? What are you ringing over there?
Speaker 2:I'm ringing. Oh man.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what to do with them folks.
Speaker 2:I don't even know, just ringing in, just ringing in, hold on.
Speaker 1:We got headquarters going in. That's CGA headquarters HQ HQ. Welcome back to the Make Trades Great Again podcast. Everybody, I'm Eric, he's Andy and Andy, we were just doing a whole bunch of investigative journalism it was it was what they call that off air. It was really nice too For long time. Listeners of the show people, they all know how much we're into that journalism, investigative type, and this is so we can talk about this topic that we've been chit-chatting about off and on from the truck seat, you and I, yeah, but I brought it up tonight and I wanted you know you had a bunch to say too. So here we go.
Speaker 1:I had three different customers recently call. Well, two existing customers, just one random person Calling asking about water heaters, and for the first time in my life, it was consistently. People were asking about heat pump water heaters, tank water heaters. And I'd say the first time because, honestly, I installed one like five years ago and then nothing forever, and then over the last year I've put a couple in.
Speaker 1:And most of the time, andy, when I talk to people about heat pump water heaters, I'm talking to people who don't already have electric water heaters, right, although I know electric water heaters are probably the most common tank type water heater in North America? Yep, in my area, however, there is a mix of electric and gas, but man, gas is so common, Right. And so I'm starting to get in these requests, I guess about heat pumps Not as much, but in the same kind of manner of when people are asking me about tankless. Does that make sense? Yep, so I guess what I'm getting is there's a small group of people out there our potential customers who are paying attention to building trends, to maybe their way of thinking is learning more about this kind of stuff and wanting to put it in their house. Does that make sense, right?
Speaker 2:Yep, I feel like it's become in the last 10 years. If you knew about a heat pump water heater, it seems to me that you went looking for that information and that has changed to the point where it's more commonplace. There are people, there are manufacturers that are advertising. It's now kind of part of some of this initiative that's being pushed as far as this electrification. It's a bigger part of that and I think it's becoming more widely known. So people are like, oh well, what about a heat pump water heater? Can we do one of those?
Speaker 1:And so I wouldn't disagree. I think that's what I'm trying to say is, I think people are starting to learn about it one way or another, probably because they're out there looking for it, or maybe they're consuming the kind of media that just it's part of these DIY shows that comes up on those. Oh yeah, definitely the bath crusher. Whatever those shows are, that's the one that calls us here in Minnesota all the time bath crashers. Yeah, hey, can you come remodel this bathroom tomorrow? No, no, dude, I can't Right, it's impossible, sorry, but nonetheless, maybe they're seeing it on TV, right, yeah, and their consumers, just like our customers, are. Just, we're just like them, except for when it comes to, maybe, what we're talking about, we might be more educated, sure, or trying to stay in front of the questions that are coming in. I guess that was. My point, though, is that I'm starting to get.
Speaker 1:I had three in the last couple of weeks, I had a couple over the summer, so not a ton, but my opinion aside, or anything like that, I started telling my customers look, what do you have? Now Would be the first question, and if they have gas, I basically just tell them I'm not exactly sure if you're going to be happy with the performance. That's kind of how I put that out there. And so, to move the conversation along, you and I were just looking into performance ratings on these units, just looking at spec sheets published on the manufacturer's website, right, yep, you had some Bradford wide, I had some Reem spec sheets, yep, and what we figured out? Well, these are two main competitors with one another, right, sure, reem being one of the biggest. Yeah. Then you got what in in the United States? Basically, you see ream, you see a osmith yeah, you see a couple off-shoot brands from those two companies, sure. And then you see what, like state yeah, which is a a osmith.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is a osmith.
Speaker 1:Okay, I believe it is yeah okay, and then you see Bradford white Right for like your major brands.
Speaker 2:Yep, I think you see less of the Bradford white In my opinion, because you don't see it in Lowe's, you don't see it in Home Depot. It's not nice hardware, it's Strictly at your wholesale.
Speaker 1:Sure so you're. You're saying so Because the DIY, you know people are doing their own water heater, so sure that just adds more out of the into the industry. You're saying, yep, field yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you look at the product offering that Bradford white has, for instance, and not not I'm not, this isn't a dig On Bradford white but if you look at the product offering, it's, we've got, you know, a short and a tall 50 gallon. We got a short and a tall 40. We got a gas in this in the, in a Several different variants high output, low, you know, standard output, power vent, that kind of thing, yeah, but you don't have like complete different model lineups, like series is where like you're just you're not selling retail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, so yeah, okay, yeah, I get it. Yeah, what you? So you can buy a ream water heater at Home Depot, sure, but it's probably gonna say it have a different name on the top of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be a classic or whatever, whatever it is, and maybe they offer a professional, but maybe only one in. The rest are like classics or something. Right, yeah, gotcha. Well, back to the so.
Speaker 1:So, however, I've seen a couple of these heat pump water heaters on the shelf at retail locations. Yeah, I have as well, and my customers are asking. So maybe they're seeing them there too, right, yeah? And so my customers have asked me and we've had conversations one with the gas I, it hasn't turned out. We've installed one to replace a gas, is that? Yep, I I'm not.
Speaker 1:It's not that I try to steer my customer away from it. I do try to educate them with the facts. And if they ask my opinion right, my opinion is isn't against the product, it's Against putting myself in a position where my customer is not gonna be happy. Yeah, so, like, I feel like, if I can get the right kind of you know what, how much water do you think we use? How many times you shower, what's your shower? You know all this kind of stuff we can kind of try to determine that Based off of some facts, what we know, like how many gallons per minute their shower is, and Then I try to get real numbers from people how long do you take a shower, because I think nobody understands that they take a shower probably twice or three times, as long as they think you know that kind of stuff, yeah, but you know it's not for me to judge.
Speaker 1:And then I just tell them, like, look, here's the real-life numbers on these heat pumps, and Recently I had I put one in and I didn't put the other two. You know like it, we went tankless on two of them and the other one had an electric water heater and so you know they were. They really wanted to do it. I think you have a similar story, yeah, and I gotta tell you it's crazy. So we started looking up the numbers because I had the idea that a hybrid Heat pump which is kind of like the. It's like the what I hate using the word the Cadillac, right, but it's like the premier premiere.
Speaker 1:Yes, the premiere. Stop, you know Technology, it's, it's the top of the line when it comes to like a heat pump. It has a one electric element, resistance element, and it's getting put like all the juice to the water, apparently because we figured out when we were looking at the specs on just a standard electric right which I assumed somehow in my head it was more powerful and gave you more water, right? It doesn't, doesn't?
Speaker 2:no, it's the same 4500's, 4500 watts. It doesn't matter how you slice it, it doesn't it well?
Speaker 1:in the water, in the, yeah, but when the, when you that's so that 4500 watts that's a standard electric, sure resistance tank water heater, yep 240 volt input.
Speaker 2:You're gonna get 4500 watts out of that standard element if you put 208 volt on it, right, You'll be 3500 watts right.
Speaker 1:So then you've got this, the heat pump, and you've still got a 45 watt, 4500 watt element. Yeah, but then you add to it the compressor, and you figured that out very quickly how much power that compressors putting into the this process and which was what Six gallons an hour so 500.
Speaker 2:It's about 500 watts yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, it's a standard. One was 4500 watts, but the heat pump has the capability of get taking, using 5000 watts and putting that energy into the water Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Add that extra, extra 400 watts to your 45, and now you get a little bit more. Now, the benefit there, though, is that if you took the the 500 watts, by itself it's I mean, it's it's a low amount. You know, if you were in a heat pump mode only you're going to drop your that, that capacity down, and I think that's where some people get, I guess. I guess I guess we're kind of like. What you were saying is that you know you're like oh, it's a heat pump, it must have, like all this capacity. And if we, if we took a three ton heat pump and crank this thing up, you know, let's say like a three ton Mitsubishi hyper heat outdoor unit and crank this thing up into a 50 gallon tank, yeah, it's going to put 36000 BTUs worth of heat into it. Sure, that's a whole different animal.
Speaker 1:It will, if you have that available. Where it's heating, you know pulling the heat from sure, yeah, summertime summertime.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, off season. But I mean, you know, I mean, that's, that's what I'm saying like a hyper heat. It'll make 36000 BTUs worth of heat on a three ton unit, like a one to one single zone at minus five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, if you put in like some kind of like flat plate heat exchanger and water through it. Yeah, but see, that's the problem with, that's not what we're doing. Yeah, these, these, these heat pump tank water heaters have the the. Is it great to call it refrigeration lines? Yeah, okay, well, it's called for for a conversation purposes. Has these refrigerant, the refrigerant lines, wrapped around the outside of the steel tank so it's can, it's conductive heating? Sure, those, the heat pump is just trying to heat through the steel the its contact with the steel tank.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's basically pulling pulling the heat out of the air, compressing it running around the outside and in turn, you basically get a cooler space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so because these heat pumps are what they're, 4200 watt, compressors 501. Right, 40, yes, I'm sorry, 500 watt, but they're. They're 42,000 BTU, that's what I'm. 40 to 400 BTU, four cheese, I can't even talk to them I this is like 40,000.
Speaker 1:Holy I know I'm looking at like three charts on my screen on once, okay, okay, 4200 BTU compressor, 500 watts, maybe six and a half gallons per minute. Add that to the standard tank and you're actually getting, yeah, increased output on a hybrid mode through a heat pump, but you had a really. So we always as contractors or even, I guess, as a as a consumer the first thing you're gonna say then, after we've learned okay, well, heat pump does have better performance. How much more is it cost, though? And you looked up that just based off your price in some round numbers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like 50 gallon tall water heater. You're about 600 bucks, you know electric tank gallon. Yeah, 4245, 100 watt electric elements, super standard regular old tank water heater. Sure, a heat pump is going to run you about 1900. So just a little more than three times the cost.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's a fair amount. That's fair amount, and I guess I don't know we've. We've put a handful of men. I haven't been unimpressed. However, I've also we've all left all of them in hybrid mode, and I've had one customer, most recently, said oh, I don't want to run it in hybrid, I want to run it in heat pump mode because that's the most efficient, and that's why I put this in. I was like Okay, I'm by me. You, however, you suit yourself, however you want to do it. Here's how this thing works, here's your specs. We talked about this upfront. This is this that you goes, no problem. We shower in the morning and we don't use any hot water until we get home at five o'clock that night, he goes. So it'll be just. This is going to be awesome, perfect.
Speaker 1:Well, wait a minute, okay. So listening to you say that, and I listened to our initial conversation, where we we determined that you get six and a half gallons per hour on a 90 degree rise out of the heat pump only yeah, okay. So six and a half gallons, yeah. So if you this, lee, I work a 10 hour day.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty close. Yeah, if you, if you deplete the tank of water, 50 gallons of hot water or 54, or whatever the man, what is the? What is the first hour rating? Our rating is 65 on a 50 on a 50. Like that's what I was reading there.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, ream says 67. So okay, so it's probably marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, marketing Focus focus. That's tick tock, numbers, that's right, yeah, but I mean, if you let's say, let's say that you, you're in the shower for your you know, two of you are in the shower for two 10 minute showers, or you got to start taking showers.
Speaker 1:Double up, now double up.
Speaker 2:You got to double up on your showers now.
Speaker 1:So maybe there's some benefits, I don't know. Well, you're asking, that's true.
Speaker 2:That's true, but you think about it. Two 10 minute showers is going to burn about 30 gallons oh, not quite. You're about 15 gallons for a 10 minute shower of hot water.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you're too well, it's 80.
Speaker 2:It's generally speaking, it's 80% Round numbers. Yeah, 15 to 20 gallons every 10 minutes. So if you're in and out in 10 minutes twice, you've depleted 40 gallons of hot water.
Speaker 1:Let's just say that, yeah, consecutively right, concurrent showers. Okay, yep.
Speaker 2:So how long does it take?
Speaker 1:eight hours to recover 40 gallons to divide about six and a half.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How many hours? Is that eight ish, seven, something like that? Yeah, seven it's a little over 42.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's called seven. Seven hours to recover After you've depleted, if after you've used 40 gallons. Yeah, so if you're going to leave in the morning, then come back and take a shower immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yeah because it's Satan's butthole outside, that's right. So friggin hot, that's right, that's right. And so so, surface of the moon you come home. Your water heater, by default, if you don't duct it out, is actually kind of it's going to cool the space that it's in, so bonus of its summer and tonus, yeah, and we won't get into using paid for heat to heat your water. But right in the winter Then you move to. Are you on the edge of having enough hot water, or do you think it's actually going to be recovered?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean in theory if there was more than seven hours, it is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, After seven hours it should be you should be able to walk in and look in the mechanical room and be like, oh look, it's in standby, Cool.
Speaker 1:Perfect. But what if you're not? Is that when your customer calls?
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that what you call your plumber? Well, and so it came down to a thing. So if we look at these specs, the spec on the Bradford says based on hybrid standard heating mode with 67.5 degree ambient air temperature, 50% relative humidity. So you might find that in some places where you've got that, where you've got 68 degree ambient temperature, that's going to be there for that entire seven hour duration and whatnot you might 50% humidity.
Speaker 1:Relative humidity is high.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these things are replacing. They're reducing the humidity, they are drying it up. Yeah, sure, so is that? Do you think that's truly affecting the performance over time?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean it certainly could, because the heat content in air with a low humidity is low, right yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking about my own basement, right? Yep, there's nothing directly cooling it. I live in a two story. My zoning is heated, but when the AC is cooking in the middle of summertime, everything on the main and lower level turned off.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's conventional wisdom. We'll tell you if you're running AC, just pump it in that upper zone, even though we have zoned heating right. Right, the reason why is because we have a two story staircase. Staircase go all the way to the basement. Sure, three levels of living space. And I can tell you for sure just by the laws of gravity and the way my house is built and the fact that I can't physically isolate each floor fully from itself. I'm getting that natural air movement and as we're cooling that upstairs down, it's cooling automatically, just through air currents in the house, the density of the air, everything. It's cooling that main level and then the longer that system has to run to cool the very upstairs upper level, the more that basement's getting cooled in the same way too, right? Oh yeah, I'm thinking of my basement in 85 degree day here in central Minnesota and I'm thinking my basement relative humidity is 40 or less. I really am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it could be. I mean, as the temp drops. I was just going to say let me just look at my little lyric in my basement here at home, but I think that it is. Yeah. So I'm 65 degrees in my mechanical room currently and my relative humidity is 64%. So that's right there. That would be. You know, we're premium operating conditions.
Speaker 2:Now, however, if I put a unit in there and ran and produced so let's say we ran for what'd you say? Let's say 4,000 BTUs an hour by seven, is what 28,000? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So we're going to put 28,000 BTUs worth of cooling. We're going to remove 28,000 BTUs worth of heat in the basement Over the course of a seven hour day, yeah, over a seven hour run cycle, and that's going. I mean in my basement it's going to drop the temperature, no question. Yeah, I mean it kind of has to, and I think that's part of where I mean the most recent heat pump that we put in.
Speaker 2:That's the challenge we're up against right now is homeowner says no, I don't want to spend the extra money to duct it up, we're just going to. We're just going to. We're going to put some floor return on the on the down by the floor in this of our mechanical room. We're going to put one up high and it's going to the air is going to just transfer in and out of the living room space and everything's going to be fine, you know. So this thing's in his, basically in his laundry room, his laundry room furnace, you know water heaters all in the same. I don't know pretty good size room 10, but 10 by 15, something like that, and then he's got this living room, and this is in the basement.
Speaker 2:Right, well, after a month of running like this, the living room, the little living room area down there, is like 54 degrees.
Speaker 1:So basically, they're using a ton of water and the things running all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, every day it's nice and you know it's doing all this nice cooling and he's like you know, it's sweet when you come home and it's 80 degrees or 90 degrees outside, you go downstairs but you can't. How are you? He goes at 55 degrees. You got to go put a sweater on to watch TV, wow, you know. And so there, you know there were, we're looking at it going okay. Well, how do we duck this thing in?
Speaker 2:He's got a super old antiquated furnace that doesn't have, you know, it doesn't have a good way to control the fan control on it without it being super noisy. So he was kind of like, ah well, all right, maybe I need to replace my furnace. But you know, I just spent like five grand on this heat pump, water heater, yeah, yeah, yeah, or whatever. And so I, I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence. I mean, I like the idea, I like the concept. I wish there was a bigger trade-off. In my opinion, I'm less interested in this ultra high premium efficiency of the heat pump. I would rather see, like some of these, like the sandco or the sand and units yeah, that's recently rebranded, I'm not sure what, I don't remember which one is it.
Speaker 1:I think the sandco now, or something like that yeah, I would rather tank water heater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would rather tank like that, where it's, you know, 25,000 BTUs or something like that, cranking heat into the, into the tank. You know it's got a pretty high recovery rate and I think that's yeah, so it's a split system.
Speaker 2:So you have a yeah, you've got your compressor outside More cost for sure, but I guess I would like to see that as an option. If if we're coming in to say we're going to do gas replacements, let's just face it, North Americans are. We're in a society where we absolutely enjoy lots of hot water. The hotter the better.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was getting at earlier when I said I basically can talk my customers out of it just with the facts.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But but they're not willing to change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, we want that, we want it to be efficient and I feel like I mean, I don't know I feel like this Well, they're definitely efficient.
Speaker 1:I mean the heat pump. They are hot. The heat pump energy is more way more efficient than just electric resistance heating. Yeah yeah, there's no doubt For sure, and I know it's a hybrid situation. But you're still increased or you're still lowering your operating cost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, using technically more energy, but the return is higher in comparing the two. And I think these hybrid modes only exist because people are not willing to live without hot water.
Speaker 2:No, I think they kind of get a little bit of a warm and fuzzy from having the heat pump.
Speaker 1:I mean I look at it in my own home.
Speaker 2:This may be not the right thing, but there won't be one in my home at this point until that recovery rate improves.
Speaker 1:I guess, as a plumber, in understanding this a little bit and then having installed these systems, I actually took one out, but that was an early model, years ago at least. I put one in family too. I put one in and then we went two weeks and pulled it out. But those early models were not the same, I mean not even close. The few that I've put in this year have been ducted out. One because there simply wasn't enough volume. I couldn't meet the mechanical space that you close that door, boom, we're talking not enough volume. And they weren't going to go put a new door on with louvers or, like you know, whatever Ducted out seems to kind of solve that problem.
Speaker 1:For the freezing out the basement scenario, a lot of people listening don't have basements or their water heater might be outside. In those scenarios I think these things, when you compare it to a standard tank electric tank water, they obviously make sense. I mean you can't argue that they don't. Which brings me to the one argument that might, besides price, that might have a little bit of standing, might turn people off a little bit. So your typical plumber, having only been trained in possibly servicing water heaters of all types, the traditional water heaters of all types Electric tank, water heaters, gas tank, gravity vent, gas tank, power vent. What do you got then? You've got tankless, okay. So maybe most plumbers are totally okay with that. Capable will service you, sure.
Speaker 1:We're not talking about the typical water heater, though, because now we've got control system that's very capable, very. You know. It's not just a thermostat with a couple of buttons. These things are actually Wi-Fi connected. You can access and do some things, you can program them, so they're running only just certain times a day, all that kind of stuff. And then that control is not only hooked to an electric resistance element and a thermostat, which the standard tank has two of you know, right, it's also connected to a heat pump, something that most plumbing contractors who is typically going to install your water heater, right, right, most of them are not trained to troubleshoot and service these plug-in. You know off-the-shelf plug-in models, not plug-in. You can do plug-in, but you know, obviously, hard wire. You get what I'm saying, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying. We don't have to vacuum and put a vacuum on these things. And you know we don't have to evacuate and then and fill and measure. You know refrigerant nothing when it comes to installing it, right.
Speaker 2:For the most part, I would say that largely I mean the models of heat pump water heaters that I've looked at. You really, I mean, short of adding your own, short of doing the ducting and, you know, changing that and cleaning the air filter, there's really not a lot of maintenance to them, not maintenance, but you really can't even do repair on that.
Speaker 1:heat pump module Diagnosing though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could do some basic diagnosis. But I mean, it's like not like you're gonna be connecting a set of gauges to it. You know, I'm looking. I just pulled up the install manual because I remembered seeing this. So on the Bradford White, on the Aerotherms, so they're a 500 watt compressor, they're charged with R134A and they have 29.1 ounces of refrigerant in them. So they're not here, they're critical charge. So as soon as you put gauges on that thing, if there's even gauge ports now you've lost an ounce, depending on. I mean, if you're using just like a smart probe or something, you might lose an ounce or something. But if you've got something that's got hoses on it, you could dump some charge pretty quick. And then now you don't know, is it leaking? Is it my gauges? Did I?
Speaker 1:just take it yeah, you'd have to evacuate to a test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are difficult systems to work on when they're in that micro capacity.
Speaker 1:Well, to my point, though you're helping me make. The point is that these water heaters are not you're not talking to. You might be getting an installation by a standard plumber. They might be offering them, and I hope all my plumbing competitors and all our friends are offering these things and making money on them. But my point was is that most normal plumbing contractors aren't going to be able to then turn around and service and repair these things? Yeah, regardless of the details, what might need to be done? Just simply because they're not trained and operating and tooled up to work with the cooling system, the heat pump itself. So that's, you know, or a heating, I guess we're talking about water heaters.
Speaker 1:I got many splits on my brain, yeah, and you brought up earlier, though, the split system. Yeah, that for sure is kind of that's likely to be, it's coming, but I think it's likely to be not in the wheelhouse initially for most plumbing contractors, sure, and I think a lot of them, like me, are expanding into that and just taking on more training, things like that, so they're more, more ready, and that's that was my motivation. To be honest with you, yeah, these water heaters, seeing that the heat pumps, obviously, that have been passing along to ringer for years, you know. So there you go. Yeah, I don't know. You already talked cost. There was about a three times the cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I don't know it's it's you kind of look at it and go, okay, well, it's got to last longer, right? No, not really. It's still still still a steel tank. Yeah it's actually still got a six year warranty, I think. I think actually most of the heat pumps are running in 10 year now, which so you get some marketing thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a marketing. I'm not trying to drag on them, no, I think they're. I think the manufacturers saw that you know, look to get these things off the ground, and I think they're going to be like to get these things off the ground and off the shelf. One of the factors that's going to help is a longer warranty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, longer warranty, Yep, For sure. You know, like I say, they've got their place. We've got a bunch of I don't know six or seven of men that I've put in in the last 12 years.
Speaker 1:I haven't replaced any of them. You know well, I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, yeah yeah. I mean we did a couple of the 80s, yeah, in residential capacity, and part of it was right after we had the big change. What was that? 2015? 15, 14, 15. 14, 15.
Speaker 2:When we had the big change where they dumped all the high capacity electric and gas tanks, you know, and dropped that down to 55 gallons. And then we had customers that were like I have this 80 gallon electric in my basement. What do we do? Yeah, well, you wait till it leaks. That's what I tell them. Well, yeah, definitely, but you know. So we put a couple of those 80 gallon heat pumps in there and I think one of those customers runs that on, strictly on electric, because he's tired of listening to the compressor.
Speaker 1:So that was the biggest complaint. Yep, that was the biggest complaint, the one I took out the noise yeah.
Speaker 1:But these things have changed so much. I've actually stood next to him listening to him going. You know, power vented water here is louder than this. Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely, I mean you. I've never been in a house or around a power vent gas tank. We power vents are most common here, right? I've told you that a million times. Yeah, I've never been in a house that has one that if I was within, let's say, 20 feet of that mechanical room, you can hear that. You can hear that freaking squirrel cage. Yeah, you know exhaust motor. Yeah, just ramping up. Yeah, so loud, they're so loud. Yeah, how many of them sound like that? Every one of them, every one yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it's interesting. Yeah, so my three customers like I said earlier, recent calls were two were no's, they weren't once we talked it over. And they just gave them real numbers over the phone, like look, this is just just for comparison. And you end up that tank list and you're like, well, I mean it's endless.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, and does it cost more? It smells like burning dinosaurs.
Speaker 1:But you know it's the cost you more to operate. Yes, but you know also how big is your conscious. You know like, yeah, hope you can't trip over it. That's right, because you're going to love those hot showers, I think. Just get yourself a.
Speaker 2:Prius and you can have two. Yeah exactly. You can have two, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You can get a hybrid transit, that's right, I don't exist yet. Oh well, when can people get a hold of us, Andy? They?
Speaker 2:can get us at the on the IG, yeah, then get you at Mechanical Hub, get me at Mick, underscore plumb. Or you can send us an email, so long as you're not trying to invite us to have one like a the host on there, because we're getting a lot of that lately.
Speaker 1:People are knocking on the door. They want to be on the MPPA.
Speaker 2:That's right, but other than that, I don't know you could get us at maketradesgreatagain at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and you can also go, maybe over to like watch us in a video format where today, if anybody isn't watching now, you're going to want to go look, because we can only see Andy's chin up, apparently shirtless.
Speaker 2:Oh no, he's shut up. My chair is the chair. I think it's about time for a new office chair, because my chair is down, down, down, as you sit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny. So I'm just giving you a hard time. All right, everybody. That's it, we're out. We're going to stop right now. Dude Face, See ya.
