Hot Water Tank Install
ecosense25
| Posted in Energy Efficiency and Durability on
I am about to install a AO Smith hybrid hot water heater. It has water connections on the top and the side. I assume an internal pipe takes the cold water to the bottom. Any idea if it is still more efficient to use the side connections that have cold on the bottom and hot nearer the top?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Search and download construction details
Replies
On my AO Smith hybrid the side connections are positioned right below where the cold air comes out. Since it's in the basement and the pipes run along the ceiling, it was hard to run them so that the cold air wasn't blowing directly on them. It came with about 4' of pipe insulation with instructions to use it if the pipes were in the cold air, but that just seemed like a bandaid to me.
That's a long way of saying I think it's more important to route the pipes so the cold air doesn't blow on them.
Thanks. That makes sense. I plan to duct mine a bit to just move the exhaust a bit farther from the intake. I also want to duct to protect the intake and exhaust from having more debris from the ceiling potential fall in.