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Pilot Grove, Missouri | I'm late to this conversation but I'll add my experience. We moved into our new house here at the farm at the start of 2016. We are on our FIFTH AO Smith Hybrid water heater. Was told AO Smith was the THE premium water heater brand - NOT! Biggest POS ever. One of them I think lasted a whole 2 years before the heat pump failed...either the compressor leaks or some other component of the heat pump system leaks. Some have failed to an error code where they go in limp mode and will only heat to 120 degress on the elements. Others try to run the failed heat pump and never error out and you run out of hot water if you don't manually cycle the pump to use the regular heating elements. Bad thing is every 48 hours it's designed to auto flip back to heat pump mode so you have to manually cycle it back. Their design of the heat pump is 100% sealed system from the factory so ZERO field repair-ability on that part of the system. If it fails it's trash. Original dealer was great to work with in NOT registering each unit until it failed so got the first 3 replacements no hassle as AO Smith warranty policy is only ONE tank replacement. But the dealer changed hands late last year and this 4th replacement (just a few weeks ago) is registered from the start so this is my last one. A $2000+ water heater being a throw-away for a heat-pump related failure is total BS. I also had to pay the dealer to install each warranty unit. First one was only like $150. This last one was $275. I will NEVER buy another AO Smith anything ever again.
That said - IF the units didn't fail - I LIKE the idea. Over the long term I think I'd save a fair amount of money as the efficiency is like 2.7X a regular unit. I got an 80 gallon starting out as we had a family of 5 with 3 boys that like to take LONG showers and dirty A LOT of clothes. Now 2 are in college so the demand is down. I had been running in a "mixed" mode that runs heat pump until the demand is higher then would switch to regular elements as needed then switch back to heat pump. Now I have it set on full heat-pump only mode with just the 3 of us. I think the regular heating elements recover at 20 gallons per hour while the heat pump is about 7 gallons per hour. The unit is in a closed off and insulated utility room area in our basement. Lots of concrete floor/walls in that space make a good ground source "heat sink" to draw from without "air conditioning" the rest of the basement.
Edited by Skyhighballoon(MO) 9/11/2023 15:06
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Hybrid Water Heater
