Rheem

Is My New Hot Water Heater Saving Me Money?

February 26, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Is my new hot water heater saving me money?

We spend a lot of money to upgrade our systems with the promise that they’ll save us money.

I’ve read this, I’ve been told this, but I’ve never experienced it. I’ve never seen real numbers.

So as part of a collaboration with Rheem, they’ve provided a hot water heater to put to the test. I’m revealing my actual utility costs for Water, Gas and Electricity to see what the numbers have to say.

Here’s my 1st Quarter Hot Water Heater Utility Bill Comparison:

December 2014- February 2015 VS. December 2015- February 2016

December 2014 Water (charged bimonthly): 96.12 Electricity: 115.82 Natural Gas: 88.92 Total: 300.86	December 2015 Water (charged bimonthly): 106.60 Electricity: 111.54 Natural Gas: 142.54 Total: 360.68
January 2015 Water (charged bimonthly): 0 Electricity: 135.07 Natural Gas: 135.97 Total: 271.04	January 2016 Water (charged bimonthly): 0 Electricity: 115.43 Natural Gas: 114.29 Total: 229.72
February 2015 Water (charged bimonthly): 91.70 Electricity: 111.65 Natural Gas: 183.18 Total: 386.53	February 2016 Water (charged bimonthly): 122.22 Electricity: 132.37 Natural Gas: 141.12 Total: 395.71

So, actually, we’ve spent more money that we did in the same period. Are you shocked?

If you’re simply looking at the numbers, this doesn’t look good. Especially when you look at the fact that the hot water heater was in our garage last year. Our garage is not temperature regulated and we regularly have our washer’s pipes freeze out there in the winter.

But, when I tell you about the way it’s completely changed our lives, you’ll look at those numbers and agree that it’s so worth it.

A year ago I wasn’t taking very many showers in the winter. I have bad arthritis in my knees and we couldn’t get enough hot water to fill even half our tub let alone a long enough shower to loosen my joints. Now, I can hop in the shower and relax. The water is hot and I’m relaxed. And then there’s my son. A year ago he couldn’t play in the bath. We couldn’t get enough hot water to fill it up. And since a chunk of the water was cool, the water cooled down a lot faster. I’ve stopped using hand sanitizer because I can turn on the sink to wash my hands and the water is warm. I even use the faucet for hot water to make tea. The water gets hot enough for me to steep tea!

The previous hot water heater made the winter months so unbearably difficult for me. It probably sounds silly, but I’ve saved time. Time that I would’ve spent curled up in my bed counting the days until spring. I’ve saved sanity because I can let my boy splash around in the bathtub, like little boys ask to do.

I’m using more water than I was in the same time frame than last year. So I fully expected my bills to be higher. If I wasn’t enjoying my hot water so much, I know my bills would have been lower.

It’s going to get real interesting once the weather warms up. I’m betting those numbers are going to show an interesting shift that these ones haven’t shown.

If you’ve missed the first 2 parts of this 12 part series, you can catch up on those here:

Hot Water Heater Moved & Installed

About Econet- And How To Use It

About Econet- And How To Use It

January 1, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey Guys!

I actually meant to have this post up earlier this week but there was the camera fiasco (the quality of pictures from my DSLR was consistently going downhill and I’d had enough). I now have a new one thankfully so I hope to have more posts up here soon. Today I’m checking into chat about my Rheem Econet as part of the informative series Rheem and I are bringing you.

I have to be honest, it took me an embarrassingly long time to get mine set up. I was so excited to have hot water in the house that I wasn’t concerned with getting the WiFi portion set up. I did finally take a break from hot showers earlier in the month to get it set up though and it’s actually pretty cool!

The set up was simpler than I had anticipated, but I’ll share some screenshots to give you an idea of what I did in case you’re considering getting one for yourself.

The first two are my WiFi networks, the third is the EcoNet.	Select Your Home’s WiFi.
Short pause while it connects to the home WiFi.	It’s connected!

This is where I create a new account.	My MAC address populated automatically but the information sheet reminds you to write the number down to reference here if need be.
Name the unit whatever you want!	In the event of any issues, you can be notified by your unit by your choice of text or email.

Registration information is short and basic.
The screen sits on 0 while the data picks up. Took no longer than a couple hours for me.	Once set up, the home screen holds all connected devices.

So all of that was pretty quick and painless. I was happy to see I didn’t have to divulge too much information while still having control over how I’m contacted in the event of a problem. When my unit was first installed, it was automatically set to Energy Saver. Which is fine by me. It’s the setting I would have chosen but it’s not hard to change between Energy Saver and Performance.

This whole journey was for us to be more eco friendly and to save on our utilities, but if you’re in need of pumping out top notch hot water heater activity the Performance mode should do that. For reference, I figured I’d share what my screen looks like when I go into my unit. I keep my unit at 125 degrees Fahrenheit but now that I have “the power” I’m going to bump that up before my shower because I like to scorch myself 😉

The obvious control you have with this is on demand temperature changes and changing from Energy Saver to Performance mode. But you can also schedule a vacation so the unit works less while you’re away for an extended period of time and you can view your alerts.

I hope you’ve found this all interesting. I love to share what goes on with making our home more comfortable for us and this is more than I ever imagined when we started these renovations. (PS- haven’t forgotten about the bathroom, I’ll be back to chatting about that soon)

Hot Water Heater Moved & Installed

December 14, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

One of the single biggest struggles we’ve had since moving into our house in 2012 is having hot water from anywhere in the house. That’s because our hot water heater had always been located in our garage. Our garage is not insulated, it’s not attached to the house, and the temperature is not regulated.

So for most of the cooler months, showers and baths are unbearable. I have arthritis so a hot shower does a lot to help loosen up my joints and so I’ve spent most of the past few winters feeling crippled and curled up in bed.

And even during the warm months, the lines were so far from the house that we would have to waste quite a bit of water before warm water was coming out.

So at the end of last winter, I decided I’d had enough. If nothing else but one things got done in 2015, we needed to move that damned hot water heater into the house.

We have a large pantry and we don’t utilize well so the space was there.

So over the summer we began the process of a bathroom renovation. And part of this renovation involved rerouting lines for the hot water heater (as well as doing some electrical upgrades to accomidate the unit in the house). The joke was on us though, apparently at one point in time the hot water heater was exactly where we requested it be moved- go figure (thank you whoever blew up our budget having that moved back into a sane place).

We are now in December. We’ve been working on this project for 5 months. We are finally finished with the work (minus some storage and decorative stuff in the bathroom, but that’s for another day).

And we have hot water! So not only will we be wasting less water, but I imagine our utility costs are going to lower, too. The unit won’t have to work so hard in the winter and because we’ve upgraded to a newer, more efficient hot water heater, it’s going to run more efficiently on the power it draws.

We’ve installed the Performance Platinum 40 Gal. Medium 12 Year 5500/5500-Watt Elements Electric Water Heater with LCD Touch Control Display (it’s a mouthfull, but with so many different models I wanted to make sure I included the full name) and we have the EcoNet Home Comfort WiFi Module for Select RheemPerformance Platinum Electric Water Heaters. Both are available at The Home Depot.

I couldn’t be a happier person right now. I aim to be a fairly earth friendly person so this situation is ticking off a lot of boxes on my checklist.

I am proud to bring you a collaboration between A Designer At Home and Rheem to bring you real time numbers on whether or not upgrading to a high efficiency unit (and even making the investment to moving a unit to a better suited location) will make a difference in your utility costs.

Over the next 12 months you’ll see a post here on A Designer At Home covering reports of my utility costs versus last year, as well as details about the unit we’re using and the econet system and collaborative initiatives to bring you information on ways to lower your utility costs.

rheem hot water heater tucked into right side of underutilized pantry — There’s even still space above the unit for bulk storage- so it’s a triple win!

I hope you find this collaboration a source of helpful information and that it helps you make decisions on everything as big as units to small changes you can make around your house to make the comfort in your home top notch.

We’re falling right into winter and I won’t be chatting with you much more until after the new year so I wanted to get a head start and share this infographic with you so we can start preparing for the cooler season.