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Old 09-14-17, 07:05 AM   #8
jeff5may
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I asked my plumber buddy and he said the 80 gallon geospring units have recently been discontinued. He didn't have anything good to say about them, but said the voltex units by a o smith are built better anyways.

Straight from Treehugger:

"The GeoSpring water heater was a clever design with an air source heat pump mounted on an insulated tank. Heat pumps are more efficient because they move heat instead of making it, and the GeoSpring could save homeowners hundreds of dollars per year and could pay for itself in just two or three years.

But alas, that’s not good enough for the I Want It Now culture; Scott Gibson writes in Green Building Advisor that GE is pulling the plug on it writing that " according to published reports, GE Appliances will stop manufacturing the water heaters at the end of the year because of low sales, just four years after the energy-efficient appliances were introduced."

Evidently they cost too much, (two to three times what regular resistance water heaters cost) and GE has been losing millions on them. But there were other issues, raised by commenters at GBI:

Regular water heaters are silent, while the GeoSpring had compressors and was actually noisy, some complain that it was noisier than a fridge;

The quality, at least at the beginning, was not very good;

Lack of clear contractor serviceability; the plumber doesn't know HVAC or refrigeration and the HVAC guy doesn't know plumbing or water heaters;

And my favorite comment:

People just don't care about energy efficiency here in the USA. That's my take on it. Everyone is into the house lipstick. It's not what's inside the walls but what's the wall painted with. Those concerned with true house energy efficiency is a very small minority, especially here in the USA where electricity is still cheap.

The whole story is just sad; when you read Brian’s post there was so much excitement, optimism and hope about high tech manufacturing returning to America with a great energy saving product. Except when it isn’t, and when everyone is into my favorite new term, house lipstick."
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