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This is Andrew Twidwell, with ABT Plumbing, Electric, Heat & Air, once again with the show, You Got This! And I”m recording this with, what’s your name again? The second time in this conversation when I couldn’t remember a name. It’s been one of those weeks. Can’t remember everybody’s name and yeah, calling my son Paul or whatever. Yeah, for the umpteenth time. His name is Theo. So yeah, go figure.
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I have a dog named Theo. So you’ve got a funding view. I’ve got a Theo. When I say something that I do, it’s like very different than what you say about the
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weird little world. And I can’t remember names because yeah, now it’s gotten to the point where I’m 56 years old, and I can’t remain to anyway. But now we’ve got 30 people that work here, like trying to remember people’s names is Yeah. What’s your name? Again, especially some of these guys have been here for like three or four weeks, we get a couple of new guys. It’s like, what? One of our new guys. One of our managers is calling him Jacob. And then I come out to find that No, his name is not Jacob. It’s Caleb. Kevin, do you need to you need to figure out who your guys names are? And don’t tell me Scott don’t call Jacob. Jacob. And I did call Teresa. Jennifer. I think for the first week or Rachel, one of the two. Yeah. And she went correct me. So yeah,
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really? That’s me. She didn’t correct you. That’s all I’m gonna say. This is
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early on early on in a relationship. Yeah, it’s been five years now. Six years now. But early on in our relationship. Yeah. Apparently, I scare people. Until they until they get to know me a little bit.
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That’s No. Wow. Like, the one thing I will say is, I think you’re probably more afraid of me than I am you. But that’s a person more
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afraid of everybody than they should be in me. That’s for sure. Yeah, true. So yeah, trying to remember names anyway, we’re zooming in will not give any were reciting. Because that’s our platform around. We have been using zoom for the longest time for this show. But now we’re using Riverside. Hopefully that sound is better. We have had some technical difficulties on your end for sound. We’re still working on that. Hopefully, you sound better. We’ll find out once we air this product. We don’t really know until we actually get it up and produced. But yeah, so fun times. And we’re videoing this. So if you guys want to, you know, if you want to see what our bugs look like, you can see this one. As you make silly faces. I actually have, you’re not using your little halo light. I’m using my Halo light and everything. Now
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I get enough light coming in after it reflects off my glasses on the technology. So like my phone lights.
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I got the rings of my glass glasses. Yeah. But I’m in a windowless our new conference room. We hired a new ops guy to Scott Eagle. He just came over from Sierra Pacific. Neither one of our huger competitors down down in the Bay Area, but down in the Sacramento region. So he got our old conference room with the window. And now I’m in the windowless conference room. I got to use light. So either had the LED lights and the circuit light or that’s it or it’s dark. So yeah. No sunshine.
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I just opt for let it be dark. They’re not here to see me. They’re here to hear you talk about DIY and plumbing and electrical and heat and air. And we have something exciting going on this weekend because birthdays coming up.
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Yeah, so it’s on Friday. I think it’s the 21st Right?
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Remember, I think Earth Day is a 22nd it’s actually Saturday. 22nd It’s actually
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Saturday. All right. I couldn’t remember. But anyway, yeah, we’ve got the Sacramento Earth Day fair or fair. Earth Day fair. It is hosted by the E C. O S, which I’m assuming is something or other. I can’t remember. I should know more. Right? Do you know anything about the Okay, you leave this up? Why am I talking? You’re on it. You sent me the text and that’s I got it.
4:29
That’s about it. You can’t remember anything. Okay, so the environmental
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people’s names, let alone what are we doing this weekend? Yeah.
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Oh my gosh. Okay. So anyway, so the Environmental Council of Sacramento, which is often called the EC O ‘s. They’re hosting Sacramento Earth Day, okay. It’s going to be at South Side Park in Sacramento this Sunday, from 11 to four, and they’re gonna have environmental education, community building music, family stuff, food, all that good stuff. And we are going to be down there, representing we’re trying to make more connections in the Sacramento region, of course, because we are building and expanding. So we just thought we’ve got some cool products we want to talk about a little bit, which we’re also going to talk about on today’s show, because they are environmentally friendly. They help you save money, there’s rebates available. So we thought this would be a great time to talk about that product.
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Yeah, so yeah, we got our new guys, Scott Costa, who came from water heaters only, which is actually a local company, but they don’t sell water heaters in our market. They just sell water heaters down in San Francisco, and the LA market, but in we’ve hired him on as marketing developer. And so he’s been doing all of our marketing developing and he will be down doing the show, and it’s something they did at one Hooters only. So really looking forward to that. He’s doing a fantastic job. And one of the things we’ll be promoting down there are heat pump water heaters. It’s we’re having you and I were having this conversation yesterday, like what is a heat pump water heater? And how long have you been out. So it is a relatively obscure product, but it’s been out for some time, I believe they they’ve been out for a long time, but really hit the market. Hard about 10 years ago, we actually installed one for Tom Fitzsimmons and his wife about five years ago, maybe even longer, I can’t remember. For he replaced his electric water heater with a heat pump water heater, and save substantial amount of money on on his energy bill. The interesting thing with a heat pump, so not a lot of people understand how heat pumps work. So I’ll kind of talk to talk to you a little talk a little bit about it. So you got heat pumps for water heaters, now for heating water, and you’ve got heat pumps for heating air inside our homes. So one of the cool things about heat pumps is all they’re doing is they’re transferring heat. So it’s actually an air conditioner working in reverse. So an air conditioner. So the weird thing about heat and cool is there’s no such thing as cold cold is just the absence of heat. In thermodynamics by, you know, junior high school level or high school level of understanding thermodynamics. There’s no such thing as cold, there’s just an absence of heat. So all we do is we either heat stuff, utilizing some form of energy, fuel, be it natural gas, propane, wood, those sorts of things that we burn and form heat. Or we extract heat from the environment and move it from one area to another. So that’s what a heat pump does. It literally just takes heat out of the air and moves it to another area via the refrigerant. So it’s either moving heat to like for when you’re trying to cool the house, it’s pulling extracting the heat from your house and dumping it outside. And that’s why the condensers will ice up, right? I mean, it’s literally moving of that, of moving that heat away from the other area. That That makes sense. Why is it icing there remind me forget what I just said. It’s moving the heat from the inside to the outside. What we do for heat pump is we reverse that. So we’re taking heat from the outside and putting it in. So one of the interesting thing is that technology and heat pumps have gotten so great. There was a time when heat pumps work to about 40 degrees ambient temperature, so if the outside temperature was four degrees or greater, it extracted heat from the outside and put it into the inside. We’ve got heat pumps, now that will work in negative 15, negative 20, they’ll they’re still in that heat because it’s not absolutely zero, they’ll literally take there’ll be an abstract enough heat and dumping into the house and heat your house even when it’s below zero degrees outside Fahrenheit. And the same thing works on the electric the electric isn’t quite that efficient. So even when it’s down in the 30s or colder, it’s not pulling that much heat out of the air. So but it does have a heating element in there. So if it’s really cold outside, it might use the heating element. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because if you’ve got an electric water heater, that’s what we’re using anyway. And the way we heat water right now with electric element is it’s literally a toaster oven or a toaster element. So like if you can picture like looking down in your toaster, that little glowing wire, what we’re doing is we’re taking electricity and running it through this resistance coil we’re resisting the flow of electricity so it puts off heat, just like if you were to run a really high amperage piece of equipment on a really skinny electrical cord or extension cord. The the electrical cord gets hot. Same thing is happening we’re slowing the pore slowing the electrons and it’s giving us the heat right. So the same thing works with electric water heaters. It uses a lot of energy to do that to produce the heat by using every Since resistance coil uses very little energy to transfer heat from one area to another, so we’re transferring the heat from the outside into our lecture or into our water heater and filling the water heater. The other cool thing about an electric water heater that a lot of people don’t talk about, for the longest time, it was kind of you know, gas water heater was actually cheaper to run than electric water heater. And that’s still true to a certain degree, if you were to just talk about heating the water. But when the water one of the things about a tank water heater, is we heat this bucket of water, if you will, this tank of water, and we pull water off of it throughout the day, right, we’re not depleting the entire tank of hot water, it’s still sitting in there. In a gas water here, we have a flame that’s underneath this pot or this bucket or this tank. And then we have to have this flue chamber through the middle of it for the byproducts of combustion. You know, as we burn fuel, you have carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and some other trace elements in our byproducts combustion in our flue gases that we need to expel, we need to get out of the unit. And they do that by a flue chamber inside the water heater. Well, when the burner turns off, it’s not really doing anything other than radiating heat, it’s literally taking the heat from inside that water heater and you can put your hand on top of a water heater even when it’s off you when the pilots off if the tanks hot, you can feel huge amount of heat being extracted and going up to the flue electric particularly in the hands of artists nice little insulated thermos bottle, there are no flue chambers in it, it’s got insulation all the way around it. So the standby time on it makes up greater than the risk the the amount of heat that we’re losing in a water heater. So it may it may be true that it takes less energy, and it’s cheaper to heat water with gas. But on the daily basis of utilizing that for that water heater. It’s actually cheaper to use electric water here. And then you double that by using it utilizing a heat pump water heater. Now the sun, it’s exponential, because actually heat pump water heater is greater than 100% efficient, which is kind of weird. But because you’re you’re moving energy, you’re not producing energy, you’re literally moving the heat energy from outside and putting into your tank. Or from the actually they don’t take it from the outside, they take it from the environment that they’re in wherever that happens to be. So it’s usually in the closet, in the attic or in the garage, but there’s enough heat in there to actually extract it and heat it up. So it’s, it’s more than 100% efficient. A regular water heater, electric or gas, you’re probably talking, you’re talking in the 60 to 70% range. So for every dollar of energy you put into it, you’re reaping about 67 cents of that thing, so it’s a substantial savings. So if you are thinking about replacing a water heater, specifically an electric water heater, it’s a really good idea to educate yourself on a heat pump with the heat pump water heater. They are more expensive. And I don’t remember exactly how more expensive they are. But you’re talking not hundreds but 1000s of dollars more, but they will pay for themselves. So it’s it’s one of those weird things. Water heaters are one of the things you’re going to see a quicker payback than you will on on furnaces. And even like cash if we want to talk about savings like a thermal thermal solar water heater pays back a lot faster than PV panels for electricity. It’s ridiculous. But no one we just don’t We don’t have enough tax credits and people aren’t really clued into it. Most other countries don’t use gas, natural gas or electricity to heat water these aside. But that’s a whole other thing.
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Any event that we do have some when I was I was trying to get some information ready for this product so that our business guy could present it and have it available. So one of the things that I thought was so interesting was the rebates that are available are kind of staggering. To be honest with you, I was shocked at how good the rebates are. Around was 30% you can get Yeah, up
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to 30% back up to like two grand for a heat pump water heater for PG and E. And depending on what market you’re in, I know SMUD if you’re in this mud market, they give even more. And there’s you know, things have changed so much especially with this build back better program. I haven’t even been able to keep up with all the rebates that are available out there but there are some rebates from build back better to go towards a heat pump products, whether that’s a heat pump, furnace or heat pump, water heater, there are a lot of incentives and tax credits and rebates that are available from both utility and the federal government. And I think even California has got some in there. Don’t quote me on that. But you know, it’s a good idea if you are on the fence thinking about you know, Changing if you’ve got if you’ve got a electric water heater that’s older than 11 or 12 years old, it’s time to start thinking about, start saving some money to replace that thing and do some research in terms of what I should be putting in. And I would highly recommend if you got electric water heater really look at heat pump water heater, it’ll pay for itself pretty quickly, especially if you already have electric water heater. The reason I say that is because of the fact that if you’ve already got electric water heater, you’ve got the electrical hookup already got all the water and everything. It’s substantially cheaper, because you’ve already got the circuit there, if I if we have to pull a circuit from the main panel there, the paybacks gonna be a lot longer because of the fact that you got to pull them all in their circuit. But it’s kind of you know, when we were talking yesterday about it, it’s kind of I liken it to like in the old days for converting taking a tank type water heaters and putting tankless water heaters in we usually had to put a new gas line in, so that jumped the price of quite a bit. And tankless tankless water heaters are 90% efficient. So again, you know, electric heat pump water heaters are greater than 100%, they are the most efficient form of water heating, by using utility, barring using solar, you know, again, we don’t do a lot of solar here in the United States for for thermal heat, but a heat pump water heaters, this, it’s kind of a no brainer. It really is, it’s substantial savings. And then with these rebates and things, you’re probably going to talk you’re probably talking about the same amount of cost, once you get all the rebates and stuff of just a regular water heater, but you’re getting, you’re getting a heat pump water heater for free, or at least the upgrade for free. And then that little bit is going to be paid for by energy savings. So it’s it’s pretty cool.
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I think, not to not to get all focused on the price. But I think as an example, and this doesn’t include like having professional installation or whatever. But when I was poking around trying to get some data pulled together, I think it was around 28, or $2,900 is what I saw for this water here. And then when you think about that, with the rebate, you know you’re really looking at then just slightly, maybe average price for water heater, maybe a little bit higher sell. But you know, the savings on your energy bill. And then also, the reason we’re talking about it connected to Earth days, because you explained the process and its plight pretty clear from that, that it’s more gentle to the environment, it’s more environmentally conscious, which is, which is important to some people, a lot of people.
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Yeah, that’s important. I mean, it is a major a major, the footprint of these things is ridiculously small compared to a regular water heater gas water heater is really dirty, especially in our market because we don’t have to worry about NOx that you do in Sacramento like in our rural environment, we don’t have they don’t, they don’t fall into the exhaust regulations that gas appliances fall into in Sacramento County, the barrios arrays. So in our area, we’re pumping out a lot more NOx Noxious Fumes than we do even but even even the ones that pass the NOx standards, they’re still pumping out quite a bit of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other gases that aren’t necessarily good for the environment or good for our health. So and that’s a whole other subject. If you guys want to do any, you can go down the rabbit hole about gas appliances, like we’re talking about here. Birthday. So I’ll talk about gas gas for the low gas range compared to an electric induction range. We actually converted to induction and whatever places in oh my god, night and day, so nice. No, no carbon monoxide in the house. Heat transfer, the heat control was ridiculously better than natural gas or propane. Cooking with is is a breeze. If you are looking at replacing your range really look in two induction, you will say not only will it save you money on electricity, because it’s not forming heat. Again, it’s just magnets. It’s a completely different type of way that it produces the heat. And the heat control is so much faster than we are awesome. We’ve got a rental that has the elements style range, and they’re kind of not the greatest for heat control and cooking because you know, once it heats up, it’s really hard to cool it down. It’s really hard to fluctuate the heat. But yeah, adduction is great. And to be honest, when we were moving that way, right? I mean, the world is moving towards electric because we’re moving away from fossil fuels. And if you can get ahead of this, you’re gonna save some money in the long run. And you’re just you’re a trailblazer on this So heat pumps, the way to go for your furnace heat pumps the way to go for your, for your water heating, induction. So we’re gonna go through your range, we can move completely away from natural gas and propane and use electricity. I know a lot of people are going to be like, well, you know, I live in a rural community, and we don’t we run out of electricity all the time. Yeah, that is an issue. I can’t can’t address that other than, yeah, you know, generator, standby generators, or solar panels and backup and backup batteries to be able to deal with those those times. But we are moving away. I know, you know, I think it’s by 2030. In California, that any new construction, we’re not going to have any natural gas products, in any new homes, it’s all going to be electric. So we’re moving that way anyway, you may as well be in front of it. California is a leader in energy reduction. California has been in the leader of clean air, it’s in water use, we’ve been the leader in everything, and we’re gonna be a leader in moving away from fossil fuels. So you may as well be ahead of instead of, you know, behind it.
21:07
Okay, so that was a beautifully packaged before we sign off for this show. Can I just bring up? I would love for you to talk for just a minute because it’s all you have about the electrical safety inspection promo. Right now.
21:23
Speaking of electricity, so we’re promoting electrical, whole house safety inspection. And we’ve got that going right now to the end of the month for 49 bucks. Why would you want somebody to come in and look at your electrical system? Well, if your house is over 25 years, most agencies recommend that you have your electrical system inspected, you don’t think of things, your wiring going bad, know your wiring is probably going to be fine. It’s the connections that we got to worry about when we have thermal expansion contraction, we’re going to have that and connections get loose and when connection connections get loose, bad things start to happen. We start having arcing, we start having, you know what’s an arc arc is a little mini lightning bolt that’s jumping the gap in the air for the electrons to jump. So we want to we want to find those. So we’ll go and make sure that the panel is you know, is holding together doesn’t have any these issues. We’ve got another issue in our area when there were some major rebates for going all electric back in the 70s and 80s. A lot of these panels were installed called zinsco. Since go panels, we got a lot of them. If you look inside your panel and you got a panel that’s got a lot of orange and blue, kind of pastel II colors, not just black breakers, you got a sense go panel. Those have an aluminum busbar aluminum is not really good for conducting electricity it was something that was done back in the 70s 80s we had a lot of aluminum wiring going in a lot of aluminum going in we’ve got a lot of problems with those there were some recalls on this on that product and unfortunately the lawsuits and all paid out but we we’ve seen I know personally have two house fires that happen up here because it’s in scope panels. That’s just the ones that I know about. You should really have those inspected at least have us inspected and look looked at make sure we don’t have any arcing. So for 14 bucks I mean come on. Take a look at that. Yeah, and I gotta wrap this up. So thank you for that that cue if you can, you can reach us at if you need any plumbing, electrical heating or take advantage of 14 and all electrical inspection you can reach us at 530-230-9092 That number again 530-230-9092 You can find us on the web@plumbing.com are easy as abc.com and with this with that, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you guys next week. Bye