Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jul 05, 2019 12:18 am Hi, we are building a new home in Queensland - Brisbane bayside. Double storey. 3 bath. Just signed the prelim agreement so need to make few decisions! Our builder standard HWS is Midea Heat pump. We have currently upgraded to Rinnai 26L continuous flow. We are not sure what would be the best system to buy. Which system will have the lowest running cost, and is the difference material enough? With Continuous flow, there are some feedback that there is a long wait time. A friend of ours telling us that something like 30 seconds, which I thought is quite a lot. The benefit is that we are considering to put Controllers in the kitchen / bath - and that would be a great feature to have. Apparently can't be done in any other system. With the storage based HWS however, their durability is much lower so may need to replace sooner. Solar - I'd have loved to go with Solar as well but I think they are expensive as an initial buy/install. Someone mentioned about govt rebates but I couldnt find much info. If anyone has any idea on that? Apologies for the unstructured post. Shall be very greatful if experienced ppl can share their views. Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 2Jul 05, 2019 1:51 am vhome Hi, we are building a new home in Queensland - Brisbane bayside. Double storey. 3 bath. Just signed the prelim agreement so need to make few decisions! Our builder standard HWS is Midea Heat pump. We have currently upgraded to Rinnai 26L continuous flow. We are not sure what would be the best system to buy. Which system will have the lowest running cost, and is the difference material enough? With Continuous flow, there are some feedback that there is a long wait time. A friend of ours telling us that something like 30 seconds, which I thought is quite a lot. The benefit is that we are considering to put Controllers in the kitchen / bath - and that would be a great feature to have. Apparently can't be done in any other system. With the storage based HWS however, their durability is much lower so may need to replace sooner. Solar - I'd have loved to go with Solar as well but I think they are expensive as an initial buy/install. Someone mentioned about govt rebates but I couldnt find much info. If anyone has any idea on that? Apologies for the unstructured post. Shall be very greatful if experienced ppl can share their views. Below is where we claimed the STC for our Solar Hot Water system. We filled up a form, provided a photo showing our SHW details plus a photo of it installed in the property, provided plumbing and electrical certificates of compliance plus we also sent a copy of our council rates notice which has the lot details where the SHW is installed. STC calculation is also detailed here. https://greenenergytrading.com.au/homeo ... er-heating Owner Builders in boot-shaped Yorke Peninsula : viewtopic.php?f=38&t=80264& Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 3Jul 05, 2019 10:05 am We came across the same tricky decision. Continuous flow is the cheapest option upfront, but if you're connected to cylinders you have that annoyance, particularly if a cylinder empties mid-shower... also the future of gas prices is a bit up in the air. I've had continuous at my last 3 places and it has worked fine though - but the wait for hot water is generally up to 30 seconds. Unless you have a system that uses water flow to power the burner ignition, a blackout will see you having cold showers. Heat pump is a bit pricey, but super efficient. Solar hot water pricey upfront but then hopefully very little or not at all down the track Plus with these two, solar panels and batteries could see you going completely off-grid for water heating - very appealing to me. I think you can get a rebate on the heat pump too? My pick would be solar - plenty of sun Bayside, and you're pretty well protected against price rises in energy/gas costs. Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 4Jul 05, 2019 4:55 pm Hi twylamc, thanks for the link!!! are u able to share how much was your rebate for the system u had? I am trying to work out my upfont costs with solar. KingTaco - the 30 secs wait is a lot! With solar HWS, someone mentioned that it would be impending the area if we go for solar panels for electricity later. Does that sound a valid point to you? How much more efficient is heat pump? Anyone knows the numbers? Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 5Jul 05, 2019 5:49 pm vhome Hi twylamc, thanks for the link!!! are u able to share how much was your rebate for the system u had? I am trying to work out my upfont costs with solar. The amount came up to be $840 at the time (late in the year 2017). Location of the system is in Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. We have the Thermann Evacuated Tube Solar Electric Boosted 315L, 30 tubes. Maybe heat pump is even better, dunno but with what we have, it’s great. It’s paying for itself. We had our sparky connect the hot water to off peak. Owner Builders in boot-shaped Yorke Peninsula : viewtopic.php?f=38&t=80264& Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 6Jul 05, 2019 5:56 pm Heat pumps are better than 300% efficient depending on the model. We only run ours for a couple of hours in the afternoon and get all the hot water we need. Just me and my Wife The power consumption is 900watts/hour, doesn't usually run for the full 2 hours. As we have solar panels its using those panels most days to provide the power which would otherwise go back to the grid for 12cents /Kw hour Probably costs us between 10 and 20 cents a day. The Harder You Try - the Luckier You Get ! Web site http://www.anewhouse.com.au Informative, Amusing, and Opinionated Blog - Over 600 posts on all aspects of building a new house. Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 8Jul 06, 2019 9:19 am vhome KingTaco - the 30 secs wait is a lot! With solar HWS, someone mentioned that it would be impending the area if we go for solar panels for electricity later. Does that sound a valid point to you? Yeah definitely it would get in the way of future solar panels. So it also depends on how much roof space you have. Like bashworth says, if you set it up right you could power a heat pump quite comfortably with solar panels and the rest of the time all of the panels are working for you, as opposed to some of them only working for the hws. Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 10Jul 08, 2019 2:20 am vhome I am leaning towards heatpump now... Just dont know if I should try to get the brand upgraded from Chromagen to something else... The Chromagen models seem to have good reviews online. But if you want to look at other models consider the BoschCompress 3000, Steibel Eltron WWK's & Sanden. Stay away from the Rheem & Dux units, both units have heaps of bad reviews. Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 11Jul 08, 2019 9:56 am We have Chromagen Solar in our new house. It is a complete PITA. When it switches over over from Solar to continuous booster you get up to a minute of ice cold water. Of course this usually happens at night when you are in the shower or topping up the bath that you are in. I have done some research and spoken to Chromagen and this is apparently normal. It really sucks. Re: Hot water system - heat pump vs continuous flow vs solar 12Jul 08, 2019 12:23 pm Our heat-pump hot-water is a Rheem 325L, it's been fine since we moved in nearly 4yrs ago. Had 5 adults using all 3 bathrooms for about 18 months and never had any supply problems (not that it's on off-peak or timed to run with the solar collection times). The biggest electrical bill I've paid was about $300 one quarter, with a 6.2kWhr solar install & no battery (& no gas) - we'd have had the reverse-cycle aircon running & had 5 adults living/showering/cooking there at the time. So it can't be using a huge amount of juice. You can get heat-pump boosted solar now, but in our place it would've taken-up precious roof space & reduced solar cell installation. The stats said that for element-boosted solar, on average & in Sydney, it used the same electricity as non-solar heat-pump … so we figured we were better off just installing cells and a heat-pump. the sun master is the solar heating to "warm" the water in the tank the S26 is your hot water system which will heat the water (25 degrees?) so with both turned on you… 2 12390 18 90421 Good luck with it. I don't know what the cost of a nice bidet seat with a 25mm air gap will be but you are obviously deducting the cost of a RPZ valve and its… 9 6973 |