Home Depot’s Halt on Rheem Hybrid Water Heaters
I just noticed that Home Depot has no Rheem hybrid water heaters for sale online or in store, whereas they did three weeks ago. I checked stores in the Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta areas, all climates where these make great sense, searching for Rheem hybrid on the HD website and drilling down through its navigation. Conn’s, a smaller chain, had a Richmond (made by Rheem) 50 gallon hybrid on closeout for $417 (reduced from $1499.99), but they were all gone, and Conn’s said they won’t be stocking any of the Richmond hybrids anymore. Oddly, though, a Google search for Rheem hybrids brings up links to Home Depot, where one seems still to be available, but I didn’t go through checkout to see whether it actually is. I was about to buy a Rheem ProTerra 50 gallon, but I’m wondering whether something is wrong with them that has caused Home Depot and others to stop carrying them. What do you think?
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I had the same issue (Ontario, Canada) and contacted Home Depot who told me they were on backorder and they didn't have a re-stocking date yet. Fingers crossed they knew what they were talking about as Home Depot seems to be the only way to source one in Canada.
You can get one (or the other two brands) from a plumber. Definitely will cost more, and if there's a backorder from Rheem, they will be affected too.
I can see 50 gallon units in stock at several stores in the St louis area for the normal price.
Walta
Thank you, Dan and Walter. I'm not surprised some stores still have stock. I hope they are actually on backorder at other stores, although I wonder why all of the stores I checked had wiped all traces of them instead of saying something to that effect. I also wonder whether a shortage causing a backorder might be due to a redesign or something similar.
They just retired the previous generation in the last year, so it's unlikely they're already pulling the current generation.
There are a lot of supply chain issues out there. I wouldn't be surprised if Rheem is having difficulty keeping their production levels up due to issues getting parts. It's entirely possible that the "non stock" issue is really a problem with the stores getting the units in to have them available to sell. You could probably find out by calling Rheem -- just ask them what the expected lead time is on a new unit, and if that lead time has increased in the past year or so due to supply chain disruption. Most vendors have been beeing pretty honest with this stuff.
Bill
Jeff I am wondering why I can see the water heaters on the same web site and you can not.
Could it be you are somehow looking for the older model that was discontinued?
Walta
I looked for any Rheem hybrids at each location I checked, and there were none, but they have all reappeared now. I have no idea what was going on.
Thank you, Trevor and Bill, for contributing. I learned from what turned out to be a brief disappearance of Rheem hybrids at HD. It's interesting that it coincided with Conn's closing out all of its Richmond hybrids at the same time.
Does anyone know if this could have been related to the noise problems with Rheem's 5th gen HPWH? A quick dive through the interwebs will show you that there have been a massive number of people getting ~70db readings from their new Gen 5s. I am in the market and was about to buy one before my plumber warned me of the noise issue.
Probably not. Home Depot had some sort of double secret promotion where you could buy them for like $700 for a while, stock issues were probably related. We got at 5th gen and put it in our central mechanical room,, and generally can't hear it in adjacent bedrooms, so YMMV.
I purchased a 50 gal Proterra from HD in Nov 2020 for $799 after the “magic”. I have noticed somewhat of a high-pitched tone while running, but my geothermal heat pumps are just as noisy with a low-pitch hum.