Energy efficient equipment

Today I'd like to talk about some of the cool equipment that you can get for your new green home or remodel. This pic shows my Rinnai water heater next to my 16 SEER variable speed heat pumps. In the Southeast it's all about the AC baby. The great thing about these Rinnai units is that they only heat the water when you are using it so not only are they economical, you never run out. I got the R94 model. They can run on natural gas or propane. I've got propane. My distributor wanted to be safe and get me two of the smaller units since I have three baths and the master shower has all of those heads like a car wash, but the propane rep and I decided to chance it on the one big unit since they're not giving them away. Works great. Comes with a little indoor keypad so you can adjust the water temp up or down to where you like. I just set mine on 125 degrees and left it. My heat pumps are 16 SEER by American Standard. They have two stage drives so most all of the time they run at 70 per cent I think. That's when they run at all. Over the winter they didn't come on much, in the spring I hardly heard them at all. Now that it's June and 95 outside every day I'm starting to notice them. They still use a lot less juice than at my old house. As good as they are, I really think that most of the efficiency is in the fact that all of my duct work is sealed and located inside the building envelope. I've been going on remodel jobs from Forest Acres all the way to Lake Murray, where people are buying new units and not even checking the ducts for leaks. Nobody even mentioned it to them....Of course not! Fix the duct work and they might not even need the new unit!