Plumber recommendation for heat pump HWS installation

[jamespipe]

Hi,

My current hot water system needs to be replaced.

Anyone got any suggestions or can recommend any plumbers around Derrimut area that won't rip me off?

An office guy recommended me to apply for government rebates and get it installed through timetosave.com.au.

How reliable is this installer?

Any guidance would be of great help.

Thanks.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

@oz-plumber mate any advice / guidance on the subject

 

[oz-plumber]

What sort of hot water unit do you have at the moment.
Gas Storage, Electric Storage or Gas Instaneous?

If you go for the Government Schemes of having a Heat Pump installed, you can't question what plumber you get.
You get who is allocated to the job.

As for Free Installation.
I are in Melbourne also and continuoulsy get calls from these mobs about Free Hot Water.
Being a Plumber I question them a lot when they call me.

The current standings from my phone conversation with one of them yesterday, was that I would be up for minimum of @ $1,100.00.
But that was subject to a site inspection.
They wanted to send someone around to inspect the installation, so I can only imaging that price would be for a like for like change over install.

We have a Gas unit at the moment, so I would suspect we would be up for Electrical works and so on.

Post some pics of what you have got and I will let you know whats best

 

[jamespipe]

What sort of hot water unit do you have at the moment.
Gas Storage, Electric Storage or Gas Instaneous?

If you go for the Government Schemes of having a Heat Pump installed, you can't question what plumber you get.

Post some pics of what you have got and I will let you know whats best

I have Rinnai B26 continuous flow water heater.

 

[oz-plumber]

If that's what you have, I would replace like for like with the same unit.

They only use gas when you open a hot tap and electrically only use power when the water is flowing.
They use very little power when idle.

With a heat pump you will be using a lot more power keeping a 200 + litre cylinder full of hot water @ 65C.

I cannot see a heatpump costing less a year to run than one of these units.

 

[jamespipe]

My hot water usage is going to rise this winter. The installer is claiming that with 150–200 litres of daily hot water usage, a heat pump hot water system would be more efficient than my current unit.

The installer has recommended Ecogenica 215FR hot water system, the one they are offering on their rebate page.

 

[oz-plumber]

Tell your installer to give you recovery rates and energy consumption rates @ 7C instead of the 20C they have on their brochure.
Even go further and ask for the same at 3.5C. Which is the base low temperature in Melbourne ( It does get lower than that, but we use that when doing heat loss calculations )

I saw a brochure for a heat pump hot water system the other day stating a COP of 5.76 @ 30C ambient temperature that a customer gave me. I rang the crowd and asked what the COP was @ 7C. They couldn't tell me!!. I'm almost sure didn't know what I was talking about.

What are they going to charge you for the install?

Little secret: Your existing unit is the benchmark for efficiency in hot water.
Any new system coming on the market has to be more efficient than your current unit or it is not allowed to be released on the market.

Fudging the efficiency of new units will be the norm.
Quoting efficiency @ 20C ambient temperature is fudging.

Of the heat pump unit you had selected: 210 lts first hour. ( Cylinder full of hot water) Recovery rate 67 lts per hour.
67 ltr recovery rate p/h , with 15C cold water & 40 C temperature rise @ 20C ambient.

7C ambient temperature: At a calculated guess 30 lts p/h recovery rate, with lower incoming water temperature also.

Also, they are only stating figures which only give you cylinder temperature @ 55C.
Stored water in a cylinder has to be heated to 65C to stop Legionella forming.
No mention on brochure how the cylinder is going to be heated to 65C to kill off the bacteria.

If it were me, I would replace your current unit with the same type of unit.