Chances are you’ve been there: Your formerly hot shower suddenly turns cold, darkening your mood in the process.
Maybe someone in your household took an extra shower or you did a few too many loads of laundry. It’s a classic case of supply not meeting demand. Michael Rigney thinks he can predict when a household will need more hot water, eliminating cold showers without turning to expensive alternatives like on-demand water heaters.
Rigney’s quest started a few years ago when he began researching water heating. What he saw “was really eye opening,” Rigney told TechCrunch in a recent interview.
The basic technology behind most water heaters, whether they’re gas or electric, hasn’t changed much in several decades. They might be cheap to buy, but they’re not cheap to run.
Heat pump water heaters have started to change that for many homeowners, improving efficiency and lowering utility bills. But even there, “I saw a tremendous opportunity for improvement,” Rigney said.
He founded Cala Systems in Boston in 2020 as heat pump water heaters were beginning to take off. Because of that shift, he said, “there was an entrepreneurial opportunity to build the best heat pump water heater.”
Water heaters tend to be fairly straightforward appliances: At their core, they have three basic parts: an insulated tank, a heating element and a thermostat. Most people set the temperature once and forget it; on rare occasions, they might set it a bit higher when overnight guests arrive. As hot water is drawn from the tank, cold water replaces it, driving down the temperature inside. When the temp gets low enough, the thermostat tells the heater to turn on.
