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Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G. Takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Now let's get this show started with our host, Eric G. Welcome to the.

Around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

I have got in the studio here my brother from another mother, Mr. Water Heater himself, Greg Holiday from Bradford White.

And we are talking my favorite subject out there when it comes to water, and that's heat pump water heaters.

Welcome, brother, back to the show.

Oh, amen to that.

It's been too long since we've gotten to chat in this way and to expound on the industry standards of heat pump water heaters and the benefits they bring to everybody.

So thank you so much for inviting me on.

Oh man, it's always a good time when we do this and I you have made me a true believer of heat pump water heaters.

And it was so funny.

We were talking years ago and I was like, ah, I'm thinking about putting a gas on demand.

And you were like, you should probably think about a heat pump water heater.

And I went, huh?

And the education process began.

I put one in and oh my gosh, that is the only way to fly in my opinion.

I still remember seeing that in your garage studio workshop setup that you had over your shoulder to be able to look back and see a Bradford white Aerotherm sitting there and now we got an Aerotherm G2.

The next model in the generation that steps it up a notch is the best in class in the industry.

Man, I tell you what, and that is exciting.

And just so you guys know, out there with the gen one, I had a 40 gallon gas water heater and I'm in the Portland area Oregon market.

So our power is pretty cheap.

But I tell you what, that was saving me about 220 bucks a year going over to that to heat water with an 80 gallon unit.

So not even a fair fight.

And it's still outperformed.

Well, half of American homes have electric water heaters, 50% of the market.

And it seems like what we always keep talking about is gas because the conversation shifts to California Or Colorado, places where they're thinking about decarbonization.

And I have to remind the industry that half of American homes have an electric water heater, and this saves them 3000kwh times half of American homes.

That's decarbonization at its best, because it's the only form of water heating that pays for itself.

Yeah.

And it's amazing.

And I put it in on faith.

I'm like, all right, Greg says this is going to work.

And holy smokes, he was not wrong on this because I instantly noticed just how smooth this was.

And the cool thing was, is if I had a bunch of people over over the holidays or something, I'm like, I'm worried about running out of hot water because of course, it takes a little longer in heat pump only mode.

But no, they thought about that too.

So they've got the different modes.

So it can react faster if you're burning through a lot of hot water.

But in my house, if you're burning through 80 gallons of hot water, I got way too many kids in the shower is what I'm talking about.

Yeah, bigger tanks are always better for everybody.

Nobody ever complains about having too much hot water.

And as you discovered, the beauty of a heat pump water heater is that uses the heat pump as the primary means to move heat rather than creating heat.

And that's where the high efficiency part of it comes in, because it only draws about 550 watts of power when it's operating that compressor, condenser, evaporator, and the fan that's involved.

Whereas a standard electric water heater, it only has one solution, and that's a 4,500 watt heating element.

So this says, gosh, we're going to run an algorithm, we're going to monitor five data points, we're going to decide when and if we even need to add the ELE to it.

But when we add the element, it's because we're guaranteeing that this product is going to recover at the same rate as the standard electric water heater that it's replacing.

So the homeowner gives up nothing in performance, but what they gain is about a 75% reduction in the cost of energy, which means, yeah, 50 gallon goes from $494 a year to 117 in operating costs.

That's the energy guide right on the front of it doesn't lie.

No, it doesn't.

And in my application, it outperformed that.

So that was even better.

And that was cool.

But I tell you what, it Is so great to see a company like what you guys are doing with heat pump water heaters.

And Gray, how did you get involved in this?

You have a long history for the new people out there that are tuning in on heat pump water history.

Oh, you're just saying that because I look old.

That's getting old now.

Yeah.

I actually spent 32 years working for GE Appliances.

I live in Louisville, Kentucky, just outside of Louisville in a rural community.

I got a 22 and a half acre farm that I love to be able to deer hunt on.

And today it's got snow on it, which is pretty cool for this time of year.

But 32 years at GE Appliances where we created the first ever energy star rated water heater and I got to introduce that.

That was my baby to bring to the country, to bring the utilities and to bring to homeowners.

And then 52015 we private labeled it for Bradford White because Bradford white needed an 80 gallon sol as a result of the DOE changes.

And then next year something really unusual happened.

GE Appliances got bought by the Chinese by high air.

I wake up the next morning thinking what just happened to me?

I was working for an American company, now I'm working for a Chinese company.

And our CEO at the time said yeah, and we're not going to stay in the heat pump water heater business.

So Bradford White hired me and then six weeks later after that bought the GE plant, picked it up out of Louisville, Kentucky and relocated it to Middleville, Michigan.

We continue to make the only American made heat pump water heater.

Nice, nice.

And that is cool.

That is something that's here and it is something that, that's designed for pro install because you know you want to have it done right.

This isn't, you're not going to see this on your home center shelves.

But this is also union made in America and repairable as well.

The only one in the industry right now that is 100% serviceable.

All of the other top competitors, they scrap the whole water heater if anything happens.

Well, equity companies have been buying and putting together plumbers H Vac air filtration for the home electrical contractors, they want to do everything in the house and it kind of hurts their feelings when they can't work on the sealed system of a heat pump water heater like they would the refrigerator or the H Vac system.

So we're the only manufacturer that brings them the full package.

We don't sell in retail, which cuts us off from half of the American market for selling water heaters.

But we believe in the trades, we believe in contractors doing professional installations.

So we provide them with the best in class, professional grade product for them to be able to put it out there.

And contractors are loyal to Bradford White because they see that record bearing out.

True.

Our Vitro glass tank lining system that we've had for over 30 years is the best bonding of glass lining to a metal tank that causes it to move at the same rate and they last longer when we prove that every.

Day, you know, and that makes a difference right there.

And everybody's had that at some point in their life.

Usually a leaky water heater where that thing's failing, and that's because of that part failing, whether it's damage, abuse, old age, whatever it is.

And if you can get more years out of that tank, the better off you are when you can keep that thing moving just a little bit longer.

It's horrible to have a great water heater that's working and then to have it leaking out the bottom.

And now you got a flood situation going on.

Well, and you'll notice that all of my competitors offer a leak detection on their water heater.

And I'm thinking, I've never had a water heater do much leaking, but if your tank is not as good as ours, I can see where that could be a concern.

So I had always promoted whole home leak detection because the water heater is one component in miles of plumbing that's in a house.

And all it takes is one stray drywall screw that may take months or years to work its way through.

Or better yet, the valve on a dishwasher that starts to leak and you don't see it.

The valve on the back of an ice maker, on the back of a refrigerator, you can have a washing machine hose that bursts and breaks.

That is the word that is my.

Neighbor up the hill.

They left for a two week vacation and the toilet upstairs leaked through, hit the main floor, hardwood floor, and went through to the basement and they came home to about 4 inches of water.

It was a hundred thousand dollars worth of damage.

So I'm thinking my dad always said when you leave for vacation, the last thing you do is you turn off the water to the house so that you don't have any issues like that.

So I went out and started doing some research on whole home leak detection and found Flow Logic had the best reputation in the industry.

So I dropped their picture in my slide, headed in there for about a year and a half.

And then again, another strange thing happened.

Over a weekend, I get a Note from our CEO to the whole company that says, we just bought Flow Logic to offer leak detection under the Bradford White umbrella.

And I'm like, Bruce, that's been in my pitch for a year and a half.

I have one now sitting in a box in my basement that over this Christmas break I will install, have the app installed on my phone so that I can see that and control it from anywhere that I need to.

And it will tell me when it just even leaks 2 or 3 ounces of water over the course of several minutes.

So I love that protection.

And that's the way Bradford White thinks differently in acquiring the things that we need to put the pieces of the puzzle together to serve that contractor that we need, because that's our business model.

We need to make sure they have everything in the toolbox.

Man.

Greg I had a project probably 15 years ago when I was living in Seattle.

Contractor called me in for this remodel and I'm like, what happened in this house?

Beautiful three story house, nice view of the Puget Sound area.

And I'm like, it was floor to ceiling down to the studs, not a piece of drywall in the structure.

And I went, what happened?

Well, customer, client went to Europe and the washing machine hose broke on the hot water side right after they left on the top floor in the master suite, that water ran down all the way down to the daylight basement.

Word filled up until it pushed out the pane of the sliding glass door.

Oh my gosh.

And that house was down for over a year.

It was like, it was basically the same thing you would have if you had a major house fire.

They probably could have almost started over cheaper than what they had to do there because it was just the outside shell they could keep.

And it was water damage on three floors.

It was disgusting.

Well, I tease my competitors because when they first came out with leak detection, all it served as is an alarm that sent you a note on your phone saying your water heater is leaking.

And I said, if I'm from New York, I'm probably sitting on the beach in Boca Raton somewhere and I get an alert for this.

What am I going to, I, I can't do anything about it.

So I would tease them and now they've come out with a shut off valve.

This is now on some models, it'll actually shut it off.

Well, I'm thinking, okay, how are you going to do that and stop the tank from continuing to leak?

So I had to do a little research and reading and it was like, oh, you're going to put a shut off on the cold water side only.

And then you read in more fine print and it creates a vacuum lock.

And then it says, as tested without an expansion tank with only 40 psi.

And this is the kicker, no additional faucets are opened in the house.

Because what happens when you open a faucet?

Drop the vacuum, you break the vacuum lock.

So I'm like, this is a false sense of security.

And I still stay parked with the fact that whole home leak detection is the only way to go because you don't know where that leak is going to come from.

Amen, brother.

And it's so funny how these companies do that.

It's the same kind of thing.

My buddy William, same kind of thing.

He has his cabin lost power hour and a half from here in Portland.

And we talked about on the show a few weeks ago and power came back on.

Pipes were unthawing in the house, unfortunately.

And upstairs he's like, hey, what's going on inside?

He had a camera inside the house and for security.

And sure enough, he's like, what's that flicker?

Oh, it was water coming through the can light.

But it took him an hour and a half to drive up there to turn the water off.

So yeah, flow logic makes sense.

Well, back to water heaters, man.

The thing I love about the heat pump water heater that I think is so smart is if you're running backup power and you need to run a generator or something like that and you've got a really good clean inverter generator, you can fire that thing up on heat pump mode and really have it where you're not using a lot of electricity to heat that water.

And with the insulation package you put on that thing, there's not a lot of heat loss when you're not using it.

You're exactly right.

And you always hit this generator question with me before.

And here I'm at Harbor Freight looking at generators on sale for Black Friday.

And every time my wife knows when I go in there she's, is he going to come home with one this time I'm like, we've lived out here for 35 years and we've never had our power off for more than two hours.

Because my rural electric co op takes good care of all of that.

But every man wants a generator.

You got to have that ability to get off the grid and it's got to be a clean one.

You got to be able to take care of the electronics.

And I think, all right, I need to do this.

I Need to have something that I can fire up and make sure that my house still has power if necessary.

But you know, when you.

Even if you have a small generator, if you turn the heat pump water heater on first and then change it to heat pump only mode, it's not going to draw more than 550 watts of power.

Now you can turn your refrigerator on if you need to.

You can add other things to it.

It's not a big draw like it would be if it was taken on a 4,500 watt heating element.

So is it going to take longer to recover?

Yeah, but it's going to recover.

It's gonna still do what you need it to do.

So you build a fire in the fireplace, you turn on your stove whenever you need it, and you can still survive even with a probably a 5000 BTU generator.

But yeah, I want the 12,000, I want the big one.

We were just talking with Champion Power Equipment and those guys have a new 20,000 coming out the trifle.

I'm like, oh, there we go, there we go.

Home improvement time.

Yeah.

Which is cool.

But I tell you what, and the cool thing is with the insulation, you guys don't lose a lot of power when it's off too.

So really, you could run it on the generator for a few hours, let it catch up, shut it back off again and not worry about it.

And then if you did that a couple times a day, you got plenty of water.

You know, we've always had about 2 inches of insulation around our tank and now it's over 2 inches.

This is an R19 energy blanket wrapped around this water heater.

And remember, the condenser coil wraps around the tank under all of that blown in foam insulation.

So it only loses about 5 degrees.

And in 10 hours of standby.

Yeah, it means it's just not running when you're not at home.

If even in a normal condition, it's not running when you're sleeping at night, it's only running for maybe three hours in the morning after your morning showers, not running all day.

And then maybe three, four hours in the evening time based on how you spread out hot water usage.

And then with our new app, you can actually look at it and see, how is this thing doing?

How much am I actually using in energy?

And it shows it right on the app, how much you use for heat pump and whether you even brought on the heating elements themselves.

It proves the savings.

It's not a guess.

Yeah, it actually does what it says.

It'S going to do.

Man, that is a must have for a vacation home because now you can turn that thing off and on, put it on standby, go.

Hey, I'm heading out in the morning to that.

Let me put it on heat pump only, get it brought up, let it sit there and just slowly cruise its way up there so you're not using a lot of power and you're not having to keep hot water there the whole time.

That's.

And we've changed on the G2 a couple of critical things to give zero clearance because you know what's going to happen here in a few years.

Everybody in those 50% of American homes that has electric water heater, they're going to have to change because the new DOE requirements will go into effect in May of 2029.

That says electric water heaters above 35 gallon have to be heat pump water heaters.

No choice.

Yeah.

So you want to be ready for that.

So what we did is we know that it's got to go sometimes in a tight spot.

The previous model and some competitors products have to have 7 inches around them or more.

We don't.

We're zero clearance because we moved all of the air circulation to the top of the water heater where We've got an 8 inch duct ready piece already in there that says this is where I'm going to draw the air in and inhale.

And behind that towards the back is where it's going to exhale.

So if you ever had to run ducting to it, which is almost never done, all you got to do is slide it over, put a zip tie around it, clamp and boom.

And you're finished.

But the zero clearance just provides a huge benefit for being able to fit in more spaces than pretty much anybody else's water heater will fit.

I love it.

I got a funny story for you.

And this is to our building inspectors out there, that for transactional home sales and things like that, you might want to do some research on these things because it's a little bit differently.

I was doing laughing because I had the inspection on my house when I sold it.

That guy goes, you need an upper strap just a couple inches down from the top of the water heater.

And he was trying to put it around, wanted me to put around right where the compressor is.

And I'm like, hey brother, that's not how this works, man.

That's not how this works.

Oh yeah.

And you're right.

And it was very fortunate that somebody from the IPMO invited me to come out and to Teach them in Palm Springs.

Now, the IPMO covers the country with plumbing inspectors.

And the plumbing inspectors knew that changes were coming and they needed to be ready.

They didn't know the change was coming this fast and this furious that it was going to literally be thousands, tens of thousands going in and virtually they're going to see these in every home in three and a half years as people time out that 10, 12, 15 year replacement mark.

So going in and being able to teach contractors actually doing contractor work, sometimes themselves, to get into that position of a plumbing inspector and to be able to show them and teach the difference between the words recommended and required, you and I know how different those are.

And sometimes other people don't understand.

So I did a class for an hour and a half that ended up being the most attended, highest attended class that they had for people that needed to learn those things.

And I say this because they no two manufacturers of heat pump water heaters do it the same way.

So we as an industry have discouraged anybody from ever teaching about proper installation for anything except one product.

And they wanted me to do it for five products.

That's like teaching language in five different languages.

Right.

It took me weeks longer than I anticipated.

They were very patient with me, right up to the last minute of me saying, I'm waiting for a couple of manufacturers to answer some questions that I have, because when I present this, it's not going to be Greg's opinion.

It's going to be, here are the pages from their book compared to the pages from these other four manufacturers books and highlighting the differences and the similarities between them.

But contractors have to learn this.

That's why we hang these books right on the front of the water heater.

And one of the things I discovered that I didn't know because I'd never read everybody else's book, is that an installation checklist.

Almost every manufacturer provides that.

And it's somewhere between six and 10 boxes to check off.

Ours have happens to be eight.

And I tell contractors, if you will do these eight things, you will always install my product correctly.

And to make it easier, we did something that nobody else has ever done.

We put a QR code on the front of the book that says, pull your phone out, hit this QR code, choose the language you want to read the instructions in, because it's available in English hanging there, but also on your phone or your iPad or you can tell it you want it to be Canadian, which probably covers some of your market, because the Canadians come south and then Spanish.

But the same Thing is also available on the control of the water heater.

We have the only multilingual display.

They said, well Greg, it's really trilingual.

No, it's try now.

Multi means we can add other languages anytime we want to.

And right now the biggest request that I'm getting for it is Mandarin.

They're like well, where's Mandarin spoken?

Yeah, go to San Francisco.

Whole big community where I've had to translate literature for them to be able to sell.

In the community that these installers live in.

We just thought of some cool things to be able to add that make it much easier to install and to do it correctly.

Well, I gotta give it to the government, they're not usually very good with these DOE things because half the times it seems that they come out with standards before the industry has them finalized.

And I'm going to say this like the 1.6 gallon toilet fiasco of the 90s.

Yes.

Oh, I feel sorry for those people.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

That was such a debacle where oh yeah, we're just going to use less water and oh, no one checked to see if it worked first and so yeah, it was bad.

And oh my gosh, well this is one where they did.

Even though none of us like the government telling us or getting involved in our day to day lives because that generally means inefficiency and more cost in anything we do.

This is one of the things where they fell backwards and said wow, this really was the right thing to do.

Whatever the reasons were, it turned out to be the right thing because a homeowner appreciates the fact right now that they can have that word that I love to use now more than ever, affordability.

Right.

My water heater take out at a minimum about $400 a year with a 10 year warranty.

That's $4,000 during the guaranteed life that you're not going to pay the utility just based on looking at the energy guide.

And energy guides are based on 14 cents a kilowatt hour, which is the national average.

But the number of kilowatt hours are also listed there.

And you can normalize that to your utility whether it's higher or lower and make that comparison.

But when it pays for itself, people appreciate that when it gives the same volume of water, they like that as well.

You give up nothing.

Yeah, I tell you what, it's funny to see what the kilowatt hour prices differences are across the country when you start looking at what it is.

We're pretty cheap out here.

We're used to be way cheaper, but we've had a couple 28% increases and things like that where it went up.

But we're still one of the cheapest places in the country.

But, but there's plenty of places across the US where I'm like, wow, it's way bigger than what's on that guide.

I think we're in Kentucky at about 12 after you add the taxes and stuff to it, which is still relatively cheap.

When I go to Hawaii, it's like 35, 38 cents and they're still putting in solar thermal water heaters.

And I keep talking to them and they keep wanting me to come back and teach some more.

And I'm like, well, until you guys get serious about wanting to switch to electric heat pump water heaters on new construction, your market's not going to turn over over if you keep that loyalty to a technology that doesn't always work.

And when it doesn't work, what does it do?

It causes home damage when all that water comes through the roof and it just doesn't make sense.

And even in California, where you might be paying peak time that's 35, 40 cents a kilowatt hour, you gotta do the math to make sure that replacing a gas water heater actually does make sense.

Because we don't want the homeowner's bill to go up just because somebody thinks an electric product is going to be the better product put in for the state.

And California is electrifying, but they're not preparing for electrification.

My opinion generally we've built stuff we know before you start building, you start planning and you write up plans and then you have steps you can't put the roof on until you got a roof structure to add it to.

And you would think that somebody would have started by drawing a circle around utilities and saying everything within this first 10 miles is going to have 200amp service in the home.

So that when you can add had the electric cooktop, the electric dryer, the charging station, the electric heat pump water heater.

Because These are all 30 and 40amp draws on each one.

Yeah, no, it's more.

Let's just have people put them in and let's figure it out as we're going.

It's like building the boat when it's raining real hard outside.

Doesn't work well.

Well, yeah.

I mean it's.

Whenever you get this stuff going, it's like they're talking about how many nails are going on the trim board, but nobody's poured any foundation yet.

The Concrete's just sitting there, Concrete trucks there.

But the forms are not yet.

But somebody's over there building the trim for the soffits, going around the outside and it's.

We got a long ways to go on that and I think, I think we're starting to realize that.

But I think one of the best ways that we can do it sensibly is to save on the electricity side.

So if you sit there and say, hey, I'm not running 4,500 watts to heat my water, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it with 550.

Okay, now that's freeing some space up for our under built infrastructure out there.

Yeah, the infrastructure has to match.

Even induction cooktops, they still require more electricity than the gas did.

So you're actually building load.

And most utilities are struggling to keep up.

So they either have to lower their energy cost in California to make it more affordable or figure out how to get everything up to speed.

Where a heat pump water heater that's 240 volts.

The workhorse of the energy, I'm sorry, of the industry that provides exactly the same recovery as the standard electric water heater.

It's replacing is what makes sense.

Nice.

That makes sense.

That really makes a lot of sense.

So Greg, what's the biggest changes on this version 2 of the Aerotherm?

Now that came out, I'm well versed in the OG, shall we say.

But this new stuff, you guys have really cranked it up a notch.

We really did.

One, we bumped up our uef.

The uniform energy factor is the DOE calculation of how much energy does the a water heater used when it's put in a test chamber with 68 degree water running through with a set water draw, 50% humidity for 24 hours, simulating home usage and how much does it cost?

And every manufacturer's water heater, regardless of what style it is, has to go through that testing to get that nice energy guide on the front.

That is your comparison.

We are now at a record 4.20 UEF and everybody out there scratching their heads and well, what does that mean?

Yeah, well that means that it's not what a standard electric Electric is a 0.93.

This is 4.2, 0.93 means you lose 7 cents of every dollar you spend to heat water.

4.20 means you spend a dollar and you get $4 and 20 cents in actual hot water.

Hence the payback.

And that's because moving heat is cheaper and easier than creating heat.

It's the Same as your refrigerator.

Refrigerators don't make food cold.

They make make food less warm.

I put a hot pot of deer chili in there.

And the refrigerator's job is to extract the heat, relocate it outside the box underneath where the condenser coil and a fan is, and it blows that warm air on your feet in a cold winter's day.

And you say, wow, this feels good.

Having no idea that the transaction even took place, the water heater says, I just do it the opposite.

I need something above 37 degree ambient air temperature around me and I can extract that heat from the basement or the garage, wherever it is, transfer that heat to the Freon, take that Freon gas and replace, I'm sorry, change it from a liquid to a gas by compressing it and releasing that heat, wrapping it around the tank, and gosh, we need to play my video.

We need to add this on to the end because we've got the best video that explains and shows this in two minutes.

And I always tell contractors, just pull that up on your phone, on YouTube, type in Aerotherm G2 video and hand it to a homeowner owner.

Let that video sell the heater.

Because you watch this Star wars quality video that our marketing team just knocked it out of the park with and people said that makes sense.

Yeah.

And it does.

And you know, that's the thing.

And you guys have just continued to lead the industry with this.

And I think part of that is one, you guys are a great company, but two, you guys were the early OGs on this to really get it going with your work, Craig.

So you've had a lot of time to take it it, study it, make it better, improve it, make it more efficient, and no one else is doing, make it repairable in the end.

So if something breaks and like you were talking about, if something is to go wrong because it's still machinery, things happen out there.

And if something breaks, you're not filling up the landfill with this big thing, you're getting another part.

And that plumbing H VAC company, whoever you're working with for around your house, comes out, does a quick repair and you're back in business.

We took about seven or eight years.

I've been at Bradford White now for nine years and we took about seven or eight of those years to learn the industry and figure out by hiring the best in class engineers.

I watched this company expand in the last nine years right before my very eyes, hiring the best talent from wherever it could be found and bringing these engineers together.

This is where we came up with this better system to bump our UEFA to 4.20.

This is where we came up with a multilingual display.

This is where we came up with a color display that says, now I can see graphics that actually make sense and toggle through things to the point that even a contractor can stand there and see the readings of temperature as it's changing the temperature and compressing the liquid to turn it into a gas.

We can understand all of those, and it makes it faster and easier for us to repair.

Which brings us to the last thing here, and that's the fact that we never close.

We are open 24.

Seven for plumbing contractors.

Because plumbing contractors, they don't always have all the answers, and we don't expect them to, especially on a new product like this.

But on anything we make, we provide 24.

7 technical assistance, parts replacement, service analysis, anything that contractor needs.

It doesn't matter what coast you live on, we never close.

So we want to make sure.

And our motto is really this.

We want you to be able to service this product, especially in one service call.

So don't go out to the house.

When a homeowner calls and says, hey, something's wrong with my water heater, and this number is flashing in the display, and I always remind them, as if something happens to the heat pump, it automatically switches to resistance heat and they still have hot water.

Not an emergency call.

If something happens to the heat, the electric element side, it switches to heat pump.

Again, no emergency call.

So always ask that homeowner that first question.

Do you still have hot water?

Yes, I do.

Can I get the model number and the serial number?

Can I get the fault code that's showing up?

And then let me do a little research and I'll get back with you.

And then I say, now you pick up your phone.

Six o' clock in the morning at the office, six o' clock at night, we don't care.

Call us and give us that information.

Let us tell you.

Oh, that fault code indicates that it could be a problem with the fan.

So instead of you going out there and saying, yeah, Greg, it really is a problem with the fan, let us just send you, you the fan replacement part.

You look like a rock star going in.

You're going to verify that it's actually bad, and if it is, you're going to replace it.

If it's not, you're going to have a part for inventory to just hang on to just in case.

But we're going to walk you through that repair.

One service Call so you can get it done.

And I don't know how you guys do it, but you guys are like Amazon on getting parts out.

It's no joke.

There are companies out there where I had to get replacement parts or something, and I'm like, all right, cool.

I got shipment notification.

It's been nine business days.

Awesome.

And then it's coming the slow boat to wherever.

And you guys are so on it.

I have never dealt with anyone in the building plumbing community that does a better job of getting parts out the door.

Oh, thanks for noticing that.

Our distributors and our contractors are our partners.

Our rep companies are our partners.

They're part of the Bradford White family, and you take care of family.

That is really where we hang our hat on so many of these things.

We want to make sure that everybody is satisfied.

And we may not be the biggest water heater manufacturer out there yet, but we're the best because we provide that support.

And contractors are very loyal to Bradford White, even though the homeowner does not see our name anywhere but in their basement.

They're not going to see us in Lowe's or Home Depot or any other big box store, but they're going to hear it from the guy that says, this is what I have in my house.

Amen, brother.

Amen.

And guys out there, if you're thinking about, okay, what's my energy usage right now, you're tired of that.

That expensive natural gas bill.

You're tired of paying the higher electricity bills.

This is the way to go.

And it doesn't matter if you've got a big house, a small house, or anything else, they've got them sized for you.

And.

And I tell you what, if you've.

If you're building something that's energy efficient, you're going to do it off the grid.

This is one of the best ways to do it because again, you're just using a little bit of power to make a lot of hot water.

And it sure saves you on the pocketbook.

And it actually pays for itself, which is pretty rare in home improvement these days.

Yes, it is.

And the last thing I want to remind the people listening about, we have the only tank that's micro ban antimicrobial finish.

Microban is a California company that, gosh, during COVID got real popular.

Now you can't buy a dishwasher that doesn't have a microban coating inside.

Food service has always used it on the utensils, on the cookware, on the countertops, the floors.

We.

We're signing an Exclusive deal with them to infuse this with our Vitro glass tank lining.

So you get one added layer of protection that no other manufacturer can offer.

Man, that is great.

Especially if you're on well water out there, guys.

Come on.

That is a natural right there for that.

Just because that just helps keep everything cleaner and keeps any scum from getting build up in there like you would see with.

With.

Especially when you're dealing with well water and things like that.

Yes, it does.

Absolutely.

That is great.

So Greg, what's the best way for a consumer out there?

That's okay.

I like what Greg's talking about here.

This is new to me.

What's the best way for people to find out more information and of course be able to jump on and go, okay, time to upgrade.

And of course there might even be some rebates in your local area that'll help offset the cost.

Depending on where you're located.

Absolutely.

Depending on where you live.

Right now one of the biggest rebates is in Tennessee.

Nice.

Now, not that you don't have them out there, but Tennessee is offering a $1300 rebate for electric to electric.

Electric change out because 80, 90% of their water heaters, the TVA is doing this.

You still got the energy trust of Oregon that can do up to $2,000 on a heat pump water heater rebate.

Some states are offering 750.

That would be like the New England states.

You can get 850.

I think right now in Maine that they bump theirs up a little bit.

You know the incentives, you're seeing them right now.

But guess what?

In three and a half years, they're going to go away.

Yeah.

Why are they going to go away?

They're going to go away because now it becomes a regulated product that you have no choice about putting in.

So if you're going to do a heat pump water heater, now is the time to make this happen.

Between now and the end of the year, if you can get one installed in your house, 30% federal tax credit up to $2,000.

That's parts and labor, plus your utility rebates.

So I'm asking the utilities, what are you going to do next?

When all of a sudden your credit SC for putting heat pump water heaters in and helping this market transformation take place, it all evaporates.

You did light bulbs already, they're done.

You did heat pump water heaters and now they're done.

I said, you know what, I got an idea for you offer on bill financing.

Yeah.

Nobody ever walks into an ant store and pulls their credit card out and says I want a new phone.

Oh, that'll be fifteen hundred dollars.

Well let me give you my card.

Or do you want me to peel out 100?

No, you end up putting it on your phone bill because it's expensive and a heat pump water heater is more expensive.

But you get all your money back.

2, 3, 4 years typically is your payback time.

But if you had some help from your utility doing some on bill financing and there are lots of states that I've been into that I was even seeing up in Massachusetts since the guy was right beside me in the booth at the does this where you can get 0% utilities?

They do this in Canada.

You lease a water heater in Canada.

So we need to make it easier for people to slide into a heat pump water heater, feel the extra money in their pocket every month back to that affordability to help them out and then it gets paid for.

And then somewhere 12, 15 years down the line, maybe now it's time for the next generation.

Yeah.

Something will be even more efficient and that's.

That would be so smart to pay an extra extra let's say 35 bucks a month on your power bill to have that and that really helps carry the cost of that and that way that's brilliant.

We need more of that.

Good idea Greg.

I like helps the utility.

It helps them by selling less electricity.

It helps the homeowner and everybody's happy.

Especially Greg.

Exactly, my friend.

So what's the best way to find more about this Aerotherm and things like that?

It's just that over Bradford White's website.

Bradfordwhite.Com you're going to see that we separate the site.

When you go in it's going to ask you are you a consumer looking for something?

You're going to say yes.

If you're not, you're going to be a contractor.

We're going to take you to another page where we can provide different services for the contractor.

We're going to be able to provide with a zip code.

Contractors in your market to be are able to do that and I don't care.

You put my cell phone up, you put my email in your stuff.

I answer anything from everybody for the entire country.

My wife will attest to that.

You've called me before in the evening time.

I answer my phone.

He does, somebody calls me.

It's important and I will answer your questions and take care of business.

You got it brother.

Thanks for coming on today.

It's been way too long.

I can't wait to see if we can meet up at one of the next shows out there and hang out like we did a few years ago.

And you were up helping me on stage and that was great to see you then.

And maybe we can do that in 2026.

I would love that.

I got some good bourbon choices.

Castle and Key is a new one that I've been tinkering around with, and I've got a couple I'll tell you offline to avoid.

But I love promoting the good bourbons out there and Kentucky has a bunch of them.

Yeah, they do.

And I don't want to tell our audience about it because then when I go into the liquor store, the shelf's empty.

I've learned that lesson.

Thank you so much, Eric.

Greg, thanks for coming on today.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the House.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

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