{"id":333,"date":"2011-07-06T16:22:32","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T14:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/?p=333"},"modified":"2023-12-12T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T14:50:06","slug":"is-it-really-worth-installing-solar-or-heat-pump-geysers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"IS IT REALLY WORTH INSTALLING SOLAR OR HEAT PUMP GEYSERS?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has always been our\u00a0intention\u00a0to install either solar and or a heat pump\u00a0geyser, the main motivation being to try reduce our carbon foot-print. I have however long maintained that claims made by industry regarding the\u00a0potential\u00a0savings and payback periods on\u00a0equipment\u00a0to be\u00a0optimistic\u00a0in the least.<\/p>\n<p>It is not uncommon to see claims of payback periods of 2-3 years and electricity savings of 40 % in adverts for solar or heat pump products, but I simply\u00a0didn&#8217;t\u00a0buy this. So rather than dive right in I decided to to put an electrical meter onto the geyser so it could be monitored\u00a0separately. I have been doing this since August 2010 and feel I have enough data to make a few\u00a0assumptions\u00a0to refute some of wild claims made by some of the installers.<\/p>\n<p>But first our\u00a0set-up, which I consider a\u00a0reasonably\u00a0average:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>House is a brick and tile house, 3 bedrooms<\/li>\n<li>Family of 4, kids share a bath daily, parents shower at least once daily<\/li>\n<li>Geyser is a 100L element type inherited with the house &#8211; no pipe lagging or geyser blanket.<\/li>\n<li>Temperature set on highest (70 deg) or else we run out of hot water in the morning.<\/li>\n<li>We use gas for most of our cooking which will reduce the total usage, pushing geyser percentage higher.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other things to consider, we are currently under water\u00a0restrictions,\u00a0but through clever water\u00a0management (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/?cat=7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rain water<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/?cat=5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grey water<\/a> elsewhere on my site) we have been able to maintain the luxury of decent length showers and baths\u00a0whilst\u00a0still doing our bit.<\/p>\n<p>So here are our figures, I have inflated them to include the latest\u00a0tariff\u00a0hike of July 2011 (R1.05 \/ kWh)<\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\">\n<dl id=\"attachment_336\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 730px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/electricty-usage1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-336\" title=\"Electricty usage\" src=\"http:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/electricty-usage1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/electricty-usage1.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/electricty-usage1-300x93.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<p>So what does this mean ?<\/p>\n<p>Well for one thing we definitely\u00a0don&#8217;t even come close to using 40% of our bill on heating water, secondly even if we managed to\u00a0eliminate the total geyser bill this\u00a0would\u00a0only save us about R310 \u00a0\/ month (was R203 prior to this month&#8217;s increase).<\/p>\n<p>So even with Eskom rebates you only going to break even after 5 years at which point you will probably need to replace the old system (assumes R17 000 outlay,\u00a0financed).<\/p>\n<p>I think my point is don&#8217;t believe everything you&#8217;re told and be especially suspicious of mates who claim their bill has halved since installing their solar\u00a0geyser unless they have documented the before and after scenarios\u00a0. I realise that everybody&#8217;s situation is different \u00a0and this needs to be taken into account, I think however manufacturers must be using some rather\u00a0extreme\u00a0case studies to punt their\u00a0products (well that&#8217;s nothing new is it?)<\/p>\n<p>I am going to wait a year, by then Eskom would have hiked prices again, I think there will be more competition and the rebate issue might have calmed down (that&#8217;s another whole post &#8211;\u00a0suffice\u00a0to say I believe you ending up paying more with the rebate than without). In the meantime I am adding lagging to the pipes in the ceiling this weekend to see what a difference this will make. I&#8217;ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has always been our\u00a0intention\u00a0to install either solar and or a heat pump\u00a0geyser, the main motivation being to try reduce our carbon foot-print. I have however long maintained that claims made by industry regarding the\u00a0potential\u00a0savings and payback periods on\u00a0equipment\u00a0to be\u00a0optimistic\u00a0in the least. It is not uncommon to see claims of payback periods of 2-3 years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[50,49,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insitucon.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}