[Greenbuilding] Nyle Geyser HPWH - Preliminary Results (was HEAT PUMP WATER HEATER)

[Paul Eldridge]

Hi Richard,

I've extended our runtime to three hours. The heat pump kicked-on at 
06h00 this morning, as scheduled, but the tank didn't quite make it back 
to 49°C before the timer pulled the plug at 08h00 (this after the first 
of two showers). As the heating season progresses, inlet temperatures 
will inevitably fall, so a single three hour stretch should allow the 
tank to fully recharge and for the Nyle to shut-off on its own accord.  
Our consumption this morning came to 0.97 kWh, so I anticipate that with 
an extra hour available to do its thing, our daily usage will likely 
fall somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 kWh per day (I'll have a better sense 
of this tomorrow morning)..

Regards,
Paul


----- Quote -----

Paul:

Thanks for this information. It's a game changer. Putting it on a timer
will improve efficiency, reduce cycling on and off for small draws, and
increase product lifespan. Very impressive numbers. I'm checking out where
are local distributor is as soon as I hit Send!

Thanks,

Richard

=====================================================================================

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 11:23 PM, Paul Eldridge <
paul.eldridge at ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:

 > I installed our new Nyle Geyser heat pump water heater earlier today (
 > 
http://www.nyle.com/water-**heating/geyser-r/<http://www.nyle.com/water-heating/geyser-r/>)
 > and I'm pleased to report that the results are even better than I had
 > anticipated.  It took 1.64 kWh to bring 115 litres of water from 
16.7°C to
 > 49°C, with a maximum draw of 672-watts (average ambient air temperature:
 > 17°C, relative humidity: 58%, and total runtime: 2 hours and 57 minutes).
 > It's not as loud as our dehumidifier and it operates at a slightly lower
 > pitch, which I find generally less irritating.
 >
 > If we had an electric water heater as opposed to a side arm the numbers
 > would have been presumably a little better, because some of the heat
 > supplied is inevitably syphoned-off by the feed and return lines that
 > connect the tank to our oil-fired boiler. All in all, not too shabby 
given
 > that it would have taken 4.3 kWh to do the same job using electric
 > resistance.
 >
 > I ran two loads of laundry back-to-back in our Bosch front loader, 
both in
 > warm water.  The first load, plus a couple hours of standby tank losses
 > came to 0.42 kWh, and I know from past experience that a similar size 
load
 > with our small electric water heater would have consumed in the order of
 > 0.90 to 0.95 kWh.  Our second load of laundry used just 0.29 kWh, which I
 > find particularly impressive.
 >
 > I noticed that the Nyle consumes just 1-watt in standby mode (it has a
 > temperature probe that continually monitors the temperature of the 
tank so
 > that it knows when to turn itself back on); that's welcome news. I've
 > plugged ours into a simple mechanical timer that has a twenty-four
 > push-pull pin wheel, so it's not scheduled to come back on until 
06h00, at
 > which point it's free to run for up to two hours before the timer 
kills the
 > power again; if need be, we'll add a second cycle for the evening, but I
 > expect that once per day will suffice.
 >
 > This is a solidly built and well engineered product and I think it's a
 > great option for anyone who currently heats their DHW with either oil or
 > electricity.
 >
 > Cheers,
 > Paul
 >
 >
 > --- Original post ---
 >
 > Hi Alan,
 >
 > I just purchased a Nyle heat pump add-on to supply heat to the side arm
 > attached to our oil-fired boiler.  It's a 115-volt system that draws a
 > maximum of 800-watts and has a rated heating capacity in the order of
 > 1.8 kW (6,275 BTU/hr). This one can be used with an electric, solar,
 > gas, oil-fired or indirect water heater (the Geyser RO) but there is
 > another version designed specifically for electric tanks (the Geyser R).
 >
 > 
See:http://i362.photobucket.**com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/**Img_1914.jpg<http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/Img_1914.jpg>
 >
 > The cost of the Geyser RO is not unreasonable at $1,150.00 CDN (the
 > electric-only R model is cheaper).  Installation is pretty straight
 > forward and you don't have to discard your existing tank or modify your
 > plumbing.  The fact that it works in conjunction with your existing
 > water heater also eliminates the risk of hot water run outs or sub-par
 > performance in the sense that if your electric or oil-fired water heater
 > can keep up with your DHW demands today, it will be no different
 > tomorrow or the day after, except that the Nyle will presumably take
 > over the lion's share of the work.
 >
 > Another nice thing for us is that the Nyle will supply us with all the
 > DHW that we require (at about one half the cost of a conventional
 > electric water heater) *and* it will provide us with "free"
 > dehumidification.  As it stands now, I run our dehumidifier eight months
 > of the year, seemingly non-stop some days, and so this responsibility
 > will be handed over to the Nyle, in whole or in part (the outdoor
 > relative humidity as I type this is 100 per cent); in effect, we'll
 > receive two services for the price of one.  In addition, we'll have the
 > added benefit of free coolth during the summer.  But what about the
 > winter months you ask?  I'm not overly concerned.  Our home is heated by
 > two high efficiency ductless heat pumps that supply us, on average, two
 > and a half to three kWh of heat for every kWh they consume. The Nyle
 > will "steal" some of this heat to heat our DHW, but we're still way
 > ahead in that the heat we sacrifice will have been provided to us at as
 > little as one-third the cost of electric resistance.
 >
 > At the moment, our DHW is supplied by a small 70-litre 115-volt/1.38 kW
 > electric tank that was originally intended to pre-heat the water feed to
 > our side arm.  We wanted to minimize the amount of oil that we consumed
 > for hot water purposes and the electric tank did cut the runtime of our
 > boiler by roughly two-thirds.  Then, rather than let the side arm call
 > for heat at will, we decided to limit the boiler's operation to a single
 > ten minute run twice a week, and eventually cut that to once a week.
 > Ultimately, we decided to stop using the boiler altogether, which means
 > that we have to pull enough hot water through the system to offset the
 > standby losses of this larger second tank. Consequently, we take
 > somewhat longer showers than we would otherwise, wash our clothes in hot
 > water and occasionally open up a hot water tap for no good reason; if we
 > don't, the supply temperature falls off rapidly and we experience cold
 > showers. Since we'll be using the heat pump to heat the water stored in
 > the side arm, we can now remove the electric tank from service and
 > eliminate this needless usage.
 >
 > Presently, we use an average of 4.0 to 5.0 kWh a day for DHW purposes
 > and I anticipate that our new Nyle will cut that by more than half --
 > not a huge savings by any means, but still worthwhile from our
 > perspective.  First of all, we'll eliminate the standby losses of the
 > electric tank which at 47-watts works out to be just over 1.0 kWh a
 > day.  Secondly, we'll no longer need to wash our clothes in hot water
 > and can eliminate the other steps we take to prevent the side arm from
 > cooling off.  The additional heating demand during the winter months --
 > perhaps 3.0 kWh per day which translates to 1.0 or 1.2 kWh actual with
 > respect to our two ductless heat pumps -- will be offset in large part
 > by the reduction in runtime of our dehumidifier come spring, summer and
 > fall.
 >
 > I'll have power monitors installed on our Nyle and our two ductless heat
 > pumps and will log this data in a spreadsheet so that I know precisely
 > how much electricity is consumed by these three appliances on a day by
 > day and hour by hour basis.  I'll provide the list with occasional
 > updates once I get the unit up and running.
 >
 > Cheers,
 > Paul