I saw a post about hybrid water heaters in here and I just thought I would make my own thread to warn people about the AO Smith hybrid water heaters.
I have 2 of them, one in my 4 car garage and the other in my 6x12ft laundry room. The one in my laundry room randomly started throwing a ECC code which according to the manual means you need to contact AO Smith. I did that and they sent a service tech out from a third party to diagnose my water heater. His diagnosis was the problem is my hybrid water heater is not in a 10x10ft room so it doesn't have the air flow it needs to work right and on top of that, they charged ME $170 for the service call because the problem "wasn't AO Smiths fault". About 2 weeks after that, it started working like normal. I didn't do a thing to it, it just decided to start working again and has been working fine since then (it's been about a month or two now).
If you are looking for a hybrid water heater, DO NOT BUY AO SMITH. I can't speak for any other brands, but I can say the principle behind them is great. They only use 500 watts ish when using the heat pump.
One thing to consider with any hybrid is the location, they need air flow and if you are planning to put them in a non-climate-controlled environment that gets below 55-50 degrees in the winter, you will not be able to run the heat pump because of the cold. It will just run forever without doing much, if it doesn't just freeze up with ice. On the other side of that, the hybrid water heater we have inside is nice for the summertime with the extra cooling, BUT, in the wintertime you still get that extra cooling you don't want so there's a tradeoff between saving power consumption from your water heater at the expense of your HVAC system having to heat more in the winter to offset the cooling from the hybrid water heater.
To recap, DO NOT BUY AO SMITH. Ever. Also, be aware of the unique issues hybrid water heaters can cause in the wintertime.
I have 2 of them, one in my 4 car garage and the other in my 6x12ft laundry room. The one in my laundry room randomly started throwing a ECC code which according to the manual means you need to contact AO Smith. I did that and they sent a service tech out from a third party to diagnose my water heater. His diagnosis was the problem is my hybrid water heater is not in a 10x10ft room so it doesn't have the air flow it needs to work right and on top of that, they charged ME $170 for the service call because the problem "wasn't AO Smiths fault". About 2 weeks after that, it started working like normal. I didn't do a thing to it, it just decided to start working again and has been working fine since then (it's been about a month or two now).
If you are looking for a hybrid water heater, DO NOT BUY AO SMITH. I can't speak for any other brands, but I can say the principle behind them is great. They only use 500 watts ish when using the heat pump.
One thing to consider with any hybrid is the location, they need air flow and if you are planning to put them in a non-climate-controlled environment that gets below 55-50 degrees in the winter, you will not be able to run the heat pump because of the cold. It will just run forever without doing much, if it doesn't just freeze up with ice. On the other side of that, the hybrid water heater we have inside is nice for the summertime with the extra cooling, BUT, in the wintertime you still get that extra cooling you don't want so there's a tradeoff between saving power consumption from your water heater at the expense of your HVAC system having to heat more in the winter to offset the cooling from the hybrid water heater.
To recap, DO NOT BUY AO SMITH. Ever. Also, be aware of the unique issues hybrid water heaters can cause in the wintertime.