in reply to Technology Connections

Yes!

I feel like you should have every opportunity to talk about the refrigeration cycle, and this only continues that trend… I've been considering these for whenever the current water heater breaks, too, since the basement could use extra dehumidification.

Looking forward to watching when time permits.

This entry was edited (Friday, August 21, 2026, 5:31 PM)
in reply to Mr. Q The Pizza Demon

@radicalrobit me too. Living off-grid with 10 year old solar PV as my only energy source this has transformed winter for me 😀 My underfloor heating pipes can be as warm as I want them for 85=95% of the year now. Previously it was way way lower.
I just wish they were clearer about electricity input. On heatpump only mode it draws only 4-500W. That's magic, perfect for my small inverter and I'd have installed one years ago if I'd known this!
in reply to Jernej Simončič �

@jernej__s oh, neat! May I ask where that is? I'm looking for rhetoric ammo against a crazy amount of Germans (I live there) who have been going nuclear for years about the gOvErNmenT taking their precious gas boilers and sort of claiming this is a German thing. Which it is not, for various reasons. But simply saying 'country X does it' would help me in some discussions.
in reply to Jernej Simončič �

@jernej__s thanks! It's always good to know how other countries are dealing with these things policy-wise. Germany being a large country completely neglects news coverage of other countries' policies in many cases unfortunately.
in reply to Caleb

@ccunning My electric water heater is 39 years old. Simplicity of resistive heating and soft water does miracles. But I’m a bit worried about how it will fail. I’ve seen some catastrophic water heaters failures and I hope it will only be a small leakage…

And I’m thinking about replacing it at the same time than my resistive room radiators, with one big multi-split heat pump that do both at once (mini-VRVs or Daikin Multi+ for example).

The mini-VRV have the same free cooling advantage but is more expansive to install, while the Multi+ have the same problems of split heat pump water heaters while also prevent you from using the cooling feature while they’re heating the water, but… they’re cheaper. I’ll see when I’ll have enough money to change all this.

in reply to Technology Connections

could your mystery cold water experience be due to the short run of hot water pipe exposed in the utility closet getting chilled?

Our heat pump water heater is just below the water line from the street with the exhaust blowing directly on it. Sometimes when the water heater has been running but we haven't been using any water for a while, there will be brief surprise extra cold tap water after a delay.

Great video!

in reply to Technology Connections

This entry was edited (Friday, August 21, 2026, 8:37 PM)
in reply to __ˣ𝙆𝙊𝙎𝘼𝙈𝘼ˣ__

connecting straight to the plug is a huge deal.

I was actually considering switching to electric water heater and relocating my water heater indoors.

I have reason to believe that new waters are not as durable to the elements even with a housing.

But electric usually isn't a plug. And most pluggables are way too small.

Also because we have a separate chest freezer the kitchen gets quite hot for about 2/3 of the year when we cook. This will literally fix both problems!

in reply to Technology Connections

Have you ever thought about publishing videos directly in the Fediverse on PeerTube?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube
Maybe on makertube.net/

I'd be totally fine with some in-video advertising for that. We all need to make a living.

This entry was edited (Friday, August 21, 2026, 10:58 PM)
in reply to Technology Connections

I'd rather have one of these where the instant hot water heater doubles as the core for your furnace

navieninc.com/residential/comb…

edit: and then you can also hook it up to radiant heat, in floor heat, etc etc

This entry was edited (Saturday, August 22, 2026, 1:16 AM)
in reply to Mx. Aria Stewart

@aredridel this is one of the reasons (it's also a prerequisite for the solar power systems class) I'm taking the introductory electricity for electricians class this fall at Laney, so I have a better understanding of what's needed to retire our glass appliances.
in reply to Technology Connections

Sometimes I wonder how difficult it would be to heat pump-ify everything and set up a building-wide refrigerant loop that would allow anything to exchange heat with anything else.

Your fridge needs to run? Route it to the water heater. A li'l cold out? Route all heat to warming the air and get some extra from the ground/air source. The biggest issues I can think of are that everything that should be able to get warm needs its own local compressor, and everything needs to be designed with the same refrigerant in mind.

in reply to Karcsesz

@Karcsesz
That was my dream-home.
A single compressor (well, and another one as backup) and lot of condensers/evaporators and even lot of valves.

Take heat from you don't want it and put it where you want, depending on season.

Fridge, freezer, water heater, space heater/cooler, and two big tankers, one for hot water and one for cold one, as seasonal thermal battery; everything connected by the same heat pump circuit.

But.

But I'm not rich, so:
youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0?is=KsNKO6…

in reply to Technology Connections

your water heater actually heats the house. The same way as a fridge heats the house.
Waste heat.
The useful heat is moved from inside the house to somewhere else still inside the house.
And the waste heat from the power consumed by the compressor also stays inside the house.
To cool the house with the water heater you need to drain the hot bathtub so that the bath does not heat up the house again.
in reply to Technology Connections

Hey @TechConnectify I actually worked on HPWH as an R&D engineer(not AOSmith the competitor tho). Very cool to see what I worked on featured on one of my favorite YouTube channels.

I think you summed up pros and cons very well. I would add for those with "Volume anxiety" I would suggest getting a mixing valve. They can be set to like 120-130 and then you can set the actual tank to 140. This way you would create more available hot water for the cost of a little bit of efficiency.