209: In Hot Water – Heat Pumps!

Matt and Sean talk about heat pumps and the when, why and how of them for heating water. Hot water heat pumps are gaining in popularity, but are they a good idea?

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Genius Of Hot Water Heat Pumps https://youtu.be/abGiNL9IT54?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7HT9O73K9oYUe19eS-wjxX

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00:00 – Intro & Feedback
17:04 – Heat Pump Water Heaters Discussion

On today’s episode of Still to Be Determined,  we’re going to talk about what Matt uses to   wash his skin. Hi everybody. I’m Sean  Ferrell. I got you with that one,   didn’t I? I’m a writer. I write some  sci fi, I write some stuff for kids,  

And I’m just generally curious about technology.  And luckily for me, my brother is that Matt of   Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look  at emerging tech and its impact in our lives. And Matt, how are you doing on this cold  and rainy early March afternoon? It is

Dreary outside. It is pretty good.  Other than that, pretty good. Yeah. Yes. It’s awful. Yeah. We thought we’d go out and meet some friends for  a lovely afternoon brunch. And somehow I think   both my partner and I got it into our heads that  it was a lovely spring day. So we stepped outside  

Wearing. Spring jackets. And it was just  beginning to rain and we live in Brooklyn. So we headed to the subway to go to meet our  friends. And the subway line that we would   need to take to get to our friends was shut  down. So we had to walk and it was walkable,  

But it was a longer walk and it was cold  and dreary and rainy and the wind started   to pick up. And then as we left the  restaurant, it had gotten even worse. So I’ve decided. I’m not  leaving my house ever again. It’s a good choice. So it’s a good choice.

Before we talk about Matt’s most recent episode,   which is about heat pumps. I said it like  that anticipating that Matt would do some   sort of interpretive dance hip thrusting,  but he did not. So I am disappointed. We always like to jump into the comments from  previous episodes and usually I go through the  

Comments and, and find ones that catch my eye. But  this time Matt has caught a couple that are really   worth sharing. So, from one of our previous  episodes from User XT. User jumps in to say,   Hey, Matt, I’m really interested in how  the audio track feature works since yours  

Is the only channel I have come across where  this feature is enabled and consequently you   start talking in German to me with a  nasally voiced version of your voice. I would really love for you to share  some details. on how this works,  

Is the voice AI generated, where did  the translations come from, and so on,   on your brother’s follow up podcast.  Greetings from Spain. So here we are on   your brother’s follow up podcast, and now is  your opportunity to talk about this feature.

And this is a feature, just to give a little  bit of background before Matt goes into it,   this is a feature that Matt told me  about, was going to be coming up,   where he said, there’s this service that  allows me to have a button on my videos,  

So that as people around the world watch them,  they will have the option to watch them in their   native language, and it will sound like  my voice speaking in another language. And I was like, all right, this is a  thing now. It was then. Two weeks later,  

And I remembered that Matt had told me  that this feature would be dropping on   this coming video. So I turned on the  video and I was listening to Matt say,   blah biddy blah. Here we are talking about  blah biddy blah. And then I clicked the little  

Button and suddenly Matt was speaking  in Japanese and it was still his voice. It clearly doesn’t align with the lips,  but it is Matt’s voice saying now,   blah biddy blah. talking about blah  bitty blah, but it’s all Japanese.  

And I had to go think about the future  for a while and think about my life,   the decisions I’ve made. And Matt, take it away.  Talk to us a little bit about this service,   how it works as far as you know, and what you,  and also just in general, what are you hoping?

To accomplish in using it on your videos. Well, there, there’s two ways to answer  that are one, YouTube is trying to,   is slowly rolling out a feature for  multiple audio tracks for this exact thing,   because they’re trying to make content accessible  worldwide. So they’re slowly rolling this out.  

My channel got this multiple audio track  feature, and then I started looking into,   well, I need a service to help me dub these  videos, and there’s a service called DittoDub. That I finally came across. I tried several  of them, wasn’t impressed. And then this one  

Came up and I got to do a video on AI. I’ve  got, there’s so much stuff to talk about,   but specifically there’s all this horrific  stuff we’re seeing where it’s like, Oh,   OpenAI has this thing called Sora where they  can make it look like anybody’s doing anything.

And it’s, Oh my God, our future is going to go  down the toilet with misinformation. But there   is awesome stuff you can do with this stuff.  This tool, what it does is that whatever video   you throw at it, it will take all the voices in  that video, detect how many voices there are.  

So like if I did you and me, it would detect two  voices and it would say person one and person two. And then what I can do is I can then tell  it to clone that voice and then Take that  

Cloned voice and put it in German, put it  in Japanese, put it in this. But here’s the   thing that blows my mind about this service  is that not only does it do a very good job   translating to these other languages, but  it will strip my voice out of the video,  

Leaving all the music and sound effects in  place, and then reinsert my cloned voice   speaking in Japanese or speaking in Chinese  or Hindi or whatever languages I’m picking. And so you end up with a video that  still has all the music, sound effects,  

Everything, and then just this. Voice that  is clearly speaking a foreign language. It   is mind melting. It’s awesome because it’s  going to open up. My hope is it opens up a   new potential audience because  YouTube will only push videos. It prioritizes videos in the person’s net,  you know, natural language because Germans  

Are most likely going to watch German videos.  Japanese are going to watch Japanese videos.   There’s also cultural differences for why  people would prefer one video over another,   but language is the primary one. So if  you have a video that’s in the native  

Language of that viewer, it defaults  to German or defaults to Japanese,   and it’s more likely to then get Recommended  on their homepage or the suggested videos. And so it’s kind of like starting a dozen new  channels in a way on my channel. So it’s like,  

It’s opening up new potential audiences and I’ve  already started to see some comments in Arabic,   some comments in Japanese. I’ve already  started to see that pop up and it’s   freaking awesome to see that. Um, I’ve also  joked my wife that I got a marble mouth.

I have, I do a horrible job speaking in English.  I joked, I should probably have it translate my   English audio into English and then just use  that audio because it would probably pronounce,   the pronunciation would be way better than  what So I’ve, I’ve thought about doing that,  

But regardless, I’m probably going  to be doing a video about AI. And I want to use this tool as an example  of one of the good things you can do with   large language models and machine  learning. And I also want to try Uh,  

Some patrons suggested I do this is take  one of my videos, translate into German,   and then have the tool translate it back  into English and see what it’s like. Not even that. I thought it’d be funny to do  that and just keep doing it back and forth  

Again and again and again and again and again  and see what kind of game of telephone ends up   happening. Like what’s it sound like after  six translations? After 12 translations,   how bad does it get? Yeah. You’ve  gone so far down the rabbit hole.

Like, is it going to be talking about a completely  different topic? What’s it going to be talking   about? Uh, but regardless, that’s the whole, the  whole point of doing this. And, um, I’d recommend   anybody that’s interested go check out DittoDub.  com. It’s very interesting what they’re doing.

I think it’s interesting, as you said, it  would take music and sound effects and pull   the voice out, those remain in place,  and then the voice is added back in,   which makes me want you to include not only  what you said about like taking a track and  

Dubbing it back and forth into various languages  and seeing what it comes out with, the stage six,   stage seven, but also like Have a video with  tons of sound effects in the video, like (Sean makes cartoon noises) like just  locomotives and honking horns and like,  

Uh, and see how effective it is at actively  pulling the right track out and leaving those   things in place. I’m curious about that  side of it as well. There were also a   couple of comments that made Matt laugh  about us laughing about the Hindenburg,  

Which as I say it like that makes  us sound like terrible people. But regular viewers and listeners will  remember there was a episode of Matt’s channel,   which was about hydrogen used in blimps.  And of course the Hindenburg comes up from  

A safety perspective. And then a commenter  on that video pointed out that. He knew   an anecdote of somebody who had been on  the ground when the Hindenburg blew up,   witnessed somebody running from the disaster,  who fell and then managed to run on his hands  

And knees just as fast as the running  people out from underneath the disaster. And I’m starting to laugh again as I recount  that story. So there were a couple of comments   like this. From Mark Loveless, who said,  thanks, I now have this crazy mental image  

Of Lance Armstrong cycling, Simone Biles doing  gymnastics, Wiley Coyote running with 85 legs,   and the little robot thing Chewbacca  growled at running from the Hindenburg. Collapsing. I would watch that movie.  There’s also this from NJ Slacker who wrote,   I haven’t laughed while listening to  a podcast in a long time. Listening  

To the story of someone running on all  fours from the Hindenburg and hearing   you two laugh about it was so funny to  me. Well, it was funny to us too, NJ. Thank you so much for the comments. There was  also this one from our most recent episode,  

Episode 208, where we were talking about  solar net metering. Reid jumped into the   comments to say, such a brother vibe,  brother one, I’m sick. Brother two,   laughs. So it was that. That’s  about right. Michael von Apert. Came into the comments to say, after seeing  how the power system failed in Texas during  

The snowstorm a few years ago, and the state’s  indifference to the losses suffered by Texans,   I’m not surprised solar with  individual storage has become   popular. I’d bet they are getting larger  storage systems than the average as well.

I’m curious, Matt, do you know about. On a state  to state level, or region of the country level,   are there regions of the country  where solar and battery is simply   becoming more widely accepted for reasons  like this because of natural disasters,  

Because of lack of belief in the grid  maintenance? Are we seeing pockets of   the country where battery Storage purchase and  solar purchase is on the rise for that reason in particular. Uh, my data is a little out of date, but  California and Massachusetts lead the charge  

In the country for residential solar. Um, and  they, they have a lot of battery installations,   but it’s. A very small percentage of overall  solar that’s getting installed. I have anecdotal   references to Texas. Um, a lot of fans of the  channel, patrons I’ve been in contact with,  

There’s a lot from Texas and solar is  extremely popular among those folks. And batteries is part of that conversation  because there’s a, there’s a fierce independent   streak in Texas. Um, and being in charge of  your own destiny is very important. And so  

Batteries would go along with that. So I think  that’s part of the reason why, uh, but I don’t,   I don’t know offhand If there’s been a surge  in battery usage because of things like that,   that snowstorm that knocked things out,  I’d have to look into that to find out.

There was also this comment that stood out  to me from AI4pix, who wrote in to say,   The way many power companies calculate the value  of the power you sell them will cause what I call,   Stingy solar. That’s where I do not  enter into a net metering agreement,  

But rather produce when I need  and run my house on batteries. I won’t sell power to the grid at all. I’ll  only buy on rainy days. Many inverters,   such as solar, can measure what comes and  goes out of your meter and will make only  

Enough to run your house. But not sell  any power. I wonder if there is a growing   number of people for whom pulling off of  the grid entirely in this fashion is the   preferred method to avoid the headaches of  what you talked about in your video within that metering issue.

It is again, I don’t have. Like research data  behind it. I have a lot of anecdotal data behind   it, but there’s a lot of people that reached  out to me that are all very pro DIY solar,   or even if you’re not doing DIY, going  off grid for this exact reason. Uh,  

And I get it because some regions like  Texas and others, they might have the   net metering rules may almost incentivize you  to kind of go at your own because it’s too. laborious to get grid connected because of  permits or the rates that you’re going to  

Get paid out actually are almost negative to  you. So it kind of incentivizes the opposite,   which is what states shouldn’t be doing.  They should be doing the opposite thing. But   I hear from a lot of people that are talking  about SOLARC that are doing their own thing.

Like one of my patrons, he is, he’s built his  own little tiny home. And it’s off grid. It’s   like he’s basically off grid. He’s got a  whole battery system. He bought used solar,   so he got it dirt cheap. And he did  all of that because he doesn’t want  

To be relying on the grid. He doesn’t want to  deal with the grid because of this nightmare. From my personal perspective,  Massachusetts, which is,   actually has great, Net metering and stuff like  that. Permitting is a nightmare. It’s like I’m,  

I had my solar installed months ago and I’m still  waiting on my batteries to get installed because   of a stupid permit and the utility allowing  it to happen because it’s grid connected. If I wasn’t grid connected, those batteries would  be installed right now. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s  

A, it’s kind of a. It’s a, it’s a, I don’t know  what you would call it, like a bag of pain, like   a, it’s a hell hole that you kind of wade through  with the permitting. It’s not fun. A term that,

A term that I, uh, came across actually in work,  my work environment was bureaucratic violence. That’s what this feels like. That’s what  it is. It’s bureaucratic violence. It is   the infliction of pain for no reason  other than bureaucracy doing a thing.  

So somebody somewhere for probably, at the  time, considered very good reasons said,   well, we should make sure people have permits  to put these in. And if I had to guess At the   time that that rule was put in place, the number  of permits being sought was a very small number.

And now you’re in a situation where  probably a huge number of people are   looking for those permits, and yet they have no   greater number of permit providers. So  you end up with bureaucratic violence. But my specific situation, what is perplexing  to me, it’s the same utility, it’s Eversource,  

And my solar system, without batteries, is  going to be pumping excessive amounts of   energy in the middle of the day into the grid,  which creates that thing called the duck curve,   which puts strain on the grid, and like, the more  of that happens, the utility has to manage that.

If I had a battery system, I would  That would, they would avoid that,   right? That problem. So it’s like, you’d  think the utility would be like wanting   to green light that battery system as fast  as they could to get that on the thing. So  

I’m not like pouring all this stuff into  the system. And then I also want to sign   up for the connected solutions program,  which is the virtual power plant system. So the utility can actually use my battery at  times of excessive use on the grid. So I would  

Actually help in the grid. So again,  you’d think they’d green light them   as fast as they could, but they’ve been  dragging this out for months. It’s like,   I don’t. I don’t get it. I don’t  understand. It’s so perplexing. On now to our conversation about Matt’s  most recent episode. This is his episode  

Titled The Genius of Hot Water Heat Pumps.  And he released this episode on March 5th,   2024. And amongst the comments that I found,  there were a lot of people who are basically   in the same boat as you. They use these, have  potentially used them for quite a long time.

So the anecdotal evidence supports a lot of  what you talked about. Like this comment from   Derek Ross, who wrote, I live in Nova Scotia.  I installed a 50 gallon heat pump water heater   in 2018, but I didn’t remove my old 50  gallon electric water heater. Instead,  

I have the cold feed supplying the  HPWH. and the HPWH feeding the EWH. That way the heat pump does the majority of  heating and the electric water heater just   keeps the water at temperature. Doing that  immediately cut my household electricity  

Costs by a third and doubled the amount of  hot water available to me. Thus no problems   with recovery time and the basement is  well ventilated so I have no regrets. It’s worked very well over the last six  years. I think this tandem water heater  

Setup sounds It’s really like the best  of both worlds. And I was wondering,   is there a model of hybrid heat pump slash  electric water heater that is available for   somebody who wouldn’t do what Derek  has done, added one to the system? Is there one for somebody who’s  building a new home who says,  

I want a combo, the heat pump and the electric? That is the one I’ve got. My Rheem  Proterra water heater is a hybrid system. It   has resistive. Heating elements inside of it,  as well as the heat pump that can heat it up.  

And so in one unit it’s kind of doing  what he’s doing with two separate units. Yeah, because I, I brought it up in the video  and it caused some people to ask drop comments   of like, how does that make sense? Where  if you run it in what they call eco mode,  

Which is using the resistive and the heat pump,   it uses less energy overall than if you’re  just doing heat pump. And you would think. Just doing heat pump, which has got this high  COP, it should be the best way to do it. Um,  

When you read into the description of from Rheem  is why that works that way. It’s because of like   what, um, Derek is writing about. It’s kind of  like, uh, imagine like an electric car that has   two different motors and one’s good for higher  speeds and one’s good for like lower speeds.

So you’re using one like low speed motor  to kind of get you going and then you’re   using a different. You’re using a different  motor when you’re at speed because it’s more   efficient than the other one. So it’s kind  of like flipping between the two. It’s the  

Same thing for heating water. If, if like  you have a family of four that basically   drains two thirds of the tank and it’s  refilling with two thirds cold water,   it’s going to take the heat pump by itself a  very long time to get that up to temperature.

But the resistive heating element can get it to  temperature much faster, but it uses way more   energy. So imagine they’re kind of working in  tandem with each other, consolidating that time   down. And the amount of electricity that’s  used in the burst is a lot of electricity,  

But it’s for a much shorter period of time,  which means over the course of days and months,   it’s actually using less electricity because  it’s working in tandem with each other. So that’s kind of the benefit of having this  kind of like hybrid system. And a lot of these  

Water heaters are hybrid. Um, and there’s even  ones that are like where mine looks like it’s   a regular water heater with a hat on top.  Uh, there’s ones where the hat is actually   disconnected. So it’s like, it’s just the regular  water tank and then it has tubes coming off of it.

And then you’ve got a separate just heat  pump and you can put it anywhere. You can   put it in the same room. You could  actually put it outside and have   it vented inside. So there’s these  systems that allow you to kind of be  

More flexible in how you’re using it and  putting it. Uh, but the bottom line is. These hybrid systems are kind of like where  it’s at. That’s kind of the best solution. There was also this comment from Jonathan Daviris  who wrote, Plumber here, I’ve installed maybe 10  

Of these and they’re pretty cool. The downside is  the inlet and outlet are on the side of the tank,   which makes installation a little  tricky to look neat and organized. Also, they have extra step since the Condensate  needs to be piped to the floor drain. One  

Small downside for end users is that the  filter needs to be cleaned once monthly,   where a tank water heater only  needs maintenance once a year.   Do you have any experience with the  filtering aspect that that Jonathan is bringing up.

It does have to be cleaned and dusted  out because stuff may build up in it.   But once a month seems excessive to me.  I don’t know what models he’s installed,   but like my Rheem does not say that I should  be doing it monthly. Um, I’m just going to  

Be checking it probably every six months. But  again, I’ll let you know in time how that works. But yeah, it’s, it’s not like it’s hard to clean.  It’s just something that you have to kind of keep  

On top of because the, it’s like a radiator. So  like as if dust and gunk starts to build up in it,   it starts to lose some of that effectiveness.  You just have to kind of keep it clean. There was also this comment from N Hunter who  seems to be channeling the comments  

That you were just talking about,  about indoor outdoor installation. I also live in Massachusetts and says,  and have had a heat pump water heater   for 12 plus years. A lot of people are  commenting that these units should be   installed outside of the building  envelope, but you can’t practically  

Do that in Massachusetts or any Northern  climate because the pipes would freeze. If you live in a warmer climate zone,  it absolutely makes sense to put it   in a garage or somewhere similar, but  not here in Massachusetts. Is there. A  

Strict limitation on that in Massachusetts.  Would you agree with that? That putting it   outside just doesn’t make sense. Or are  there models available that would be more   of a standalone and super insulated, probably  more expensive to keep the pipes from freezing? I. In Massachusetts, I never see any kind of water  

Heater outside. I’ve never seen that.  I don’t care if it’s gas, electric,   heat pump. You really don’t see that partially  because of what he’s saying. It gets too cold.   It gets below freezing temperatures. And then  for a heat pump water heater like my Rheem,  

It’s only really effective the heat pump  portion down to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if you have a basement or a garage  that doesn’t get below 40 degrees,   you could put it in there. Uh, but you’re kind of  asking for problems, I think, in this region. Um,  

And to kind of jump off of what NHunter is  bringing up here, there was also a ton of comments   I saw about these don’t work in cold climates  or it’s stupid to do it because It’s going to be  

Stealing heat that you’re using from your, your  HVAC by your heating systems, heating the air. And then this thing is stealing the heat  from the air to make the hot water. Um,   and that’s not effective. And my rebuttal to  that is it is effective because the amount of  

Heat that it’s pulling out of the air is so  negligible compared to what you’re doing to   heat your house. You’re not going to notice. in  a electricity use or your bill that this thing   is doing it because it’s so much more efficient  so much more efficient that even though it does  

Kind of eat into your HVAC costs and usage just  a little bit you’re still coming out ahead it’s   it’s still beneficial and I don’t think people  are kind of wrapping their head around that um and on top of which, a lot of  people here in Massachusetts,  

Mine’s in a mechanical room. My mechanical  room was like a meat locker when I first did   it. I talked about that in the video. Most  people have them in a basement. It’s like,   you’re not heating your basement.  You’re not heating the mechanical room.

So it’s like, it’s not going to be fighting  as much with your HVAC system as you think   it might. Um, so I think a lot of those  comments might be coming from people who   don’t live in this climate or people  who have heard The grape Vine that  

You’re not supposed to do this, but  as somebody who’s living with one,   and I know lots of people in this area that  live with one in the exact same way I am. It works great. First hand experience. It’s,  

It’s doing what it’s supposed to do and  it works just fine and it’s not jacking   up my HVAC costs. Um, it’s, it’s, they  work surprisingly well in cold climates. So listeners, viewers, let  us know in the comments,   do you personally have similar experience to  Matt or do you have an experience that Matt  

Maybe hasn’t touched upon in either  his original video or in this one? Let us know in the comments and yes. One last thing. I got to apologize  to people. There was a graph I put in the   video that got some people worked up and  they were right. Um, I had a graph that  

Came up and showed my old gas heater therms  to kilowatts. Kilowatt hours. And the graph,   of course, it’s two, it’s like  apples and oranges on one graph. And so it’s like, uh, what, what am I looking  at? And people were saying you should have  

Converted that to kilowatt hours and they’re a  hundred percent right. And so I just wanted to   put it out there on my website. I put a link to  this in the description of the YouTube channel,   but I also put it on my website, a new graph  where I converted therms to kilowatt hours.

So on the graph, it is apples to apples  comparison for how much energy the gas   used versus the heat pump and It’s kind  of fun to look at because holy crap,   if you want to see the efficiency  difference, that graph drives it home. It’s actually clearer and  more useful in that regard.

Yeah, it’s way clearer and much more useful. So before we sign off, Matt, do you want to give   our listeners and viewers a hint  about your next video coming up? Oh man. Um, the next one is, it’s about Small  hydro, because some people have asked about,  

Can you do hydro at home? Like  if you have a creek or a river   in your backyard, can you do something with that? So I did a video about small hydro  and one of the systems we talk about  

Is a turbine that actually has no blades.  It’s crazy. Kind of trippy how it works. Looking forward to that one. As usual, jump  into the comments. You can also like and   subscribe and share it with your friends. All  of those are great ways to support the podcast.

And if you’d like to more directly  support us, you can click on the join   button on YouTube or go to stilltbd. fm  and click the become a supporter button   there. Both those allow you to throw coins  at our heads. We appreciate the welts and  

Then we get down to the hard business of  talking about the Hindenburg yet again. Thank you everybody for taking the time to  listen or watch and we’ll talk to you next time.