By Steve Panosian
All photography courtesy of Bosch
Bosch Home Comfort offers a comprehensive range of residential and light commercial HVAC products, including:
- Heat Pumps: Air-source, water-source, and geothermal systems featuring inverter technology for high efficiency
- Water Heaters: Tankless, point-of-use, and electric models
- Boilers: Floor-standing and wall-hung units under the Bosch and Buderus brands
- Air Purifiers: Designed to enhance indoor air quality
- Controls & Accessories: Smart thermostats and system integration tools
Bosch Home Comfort is dedicated to advancing high efficiency heating and air conditioning solutions, including a focus on electrification and reducing carbon emissions in the building sector. The company plans to invest over one billion in electrification initiatives by 2030, focusing on the development of heat pumps and hydrogen-ready technologies.
I recently caught up with Dustin Gregoire, Director of Residential HVAC Sales and Key Accounts, to talk about how Bosch is transforming their brand
Steve: You’ve been with Bosch for a long time, right?
Dustin: Yes. I’ve been with Bosch for over 20 years. I began my professional career here at Bosch while pursing my undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont. My career began focused on the hot water and hydronic side of our business and that is where half of my tenure here at Bosch was focused; I transitioned 10 years ago to support the evolving HVAC portion of our portfolio. During my time here at Bosch I’ve held sales positions as both Area Sales Manager and Regional Sales Management responsible for various regions throughout the country, and then National Sales Manager for HVAC and most recently I have been promoted to Director of Sales and Key Accounts.
Steve: I noticed the rebranding of Bosch Thermotechnology to Bosch Home Comfort. What’s that all about?
Dustin: Thermotechnology is a branch of engineering that applies thermodynamic principles to heating, ventilation and refrigeration systems. When you think about it, a home’s architectural design is visual and directly affects how we feel, think, interact with one another, and even the energy level within the home itself. A well-designed HVAC system has the same quality of life attributes and peace of mind impact; however, it isn’t a visual experience.
Rebranding Bosch Thermotechnology was a necessary objective in changing the perception of the brand to align with our strategic focus. Bosch Home Comfort creates the concept, a mood, of something that is unseen, but designed to maintain the best possible experience as it pertains to effectively conditioning a space, reducing operating noise, providing premium indoor air quality and providing an overall enhanced comfort experience.
Steve: How does Bosch approach innovation with its many businesses?
Dustin: Bosch is a large international company founded in 1886 that’s been around for nearly 140 years and has been established as a business in the U.S. since 1906. Bosch does business in multiple industries. Some of the most common consumer product areas that one might be familiar with Bosch include automotive, power tools and appliances. The business we focus on in North America with Bosch Home Comfort is the heating, cooling, hot water for residential and commercial applications.
Regardless of the product vertical, across all of our different businesses, our products and technology are focused with the motto or slogan, Invented for Life. We want to focus on products that consumers want that help improve the overall quality of life, the conservation of natural resources, and enhance their home’s comfort experience.
Invented for Life can mean a lot of different things and at Bosch it is our core focus for designing innovative new products that make the user experience superior to something that our current and potential customers may have used previously.
Steve: Please walk us through the Bosch Home Comfort key products.
Dustin: Here in the United States, Bosch heat pump solutions are the core focus. We are the market leader in high efficiency air source heat pumps, but we also offer a large variety of other products including heat pump water heaters, geothermal and water source heat pumps, as well as tankless water heaters and boilers for hydronic solutions.
Our flagship products are air source heat pumps. Ten years ago, we set out to revolutionize the HVAC industry by focusing on the high efficiency air source heat pump market by launching a high performance, simple to install, price competitive inverter drive air source heat pump. Our initial portfolio included only a single series of 18 SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) heat pumps. Based on the strong market acceptance and success with our 18 SEER product, our portfolio quickly evolved to include high efficiency 96 percent furnaces and cased coils for dual fuel applications, which is a growing trend, especially in the Northern climates. We then launched a complementary higher performance 20 SEER series of inverter drive heat pumps, which was designed to meet most local, state and federal heat pump rebate standards. Our portfolio has continued to grow with the addition of a product that is on the mass HVAC market, a 15 SEER inverter drive heat pump which remains a feature, benefit and comfort rich product delivered at a more competitive cost to many of the standard efficiency, single and two stage air conditioners and heat pumps. Most recently, we launched our IDS Ultra a Cold Climate Heat Pump in response to our participation in the D.O.E. Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge. This product is specifically designed for those Northern climates where traditionally heat pumps have struggled to perform at lower outside ambient temperatures. Our IDS Ultra will operate at 100 percent capacity down to 5° F and will operate around 70 percent capacity down to -13° F, so it has a significant level of performance at that low outside ambient temperature.
Our inverter driven, air source heat pump portfolio is designed for easy installation for the contractor and with the goal of improving comfort by reducing humidity , reducing operating costs and reducing the operational sound levels all possible by the unique inverter drive products that exist within our air source heat pump portfolio.
Bosch geothermal is our flagship product in terms of efficiency and longevity of product life that is North of 20 years. All of our geothermal and water source heat pumps are manufactured here in North America; manufactured in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We offer a mix of entry level water source solutions for residential hi-rise and commercial applications. By providing several tiers of single-family residential and commercial products we are able to provide a portfolio that provides options for a range of efficiencies and features, including longer warranties. Geothermal or ground source heat pump solutions remain a technology largely recognized as the most premium products on the market. Although these products (and their installation) have a higher cost barrier to entry due to cost of infrastructure for the ground loop installation, they offer significant advantages in terms of the longevity of a product – roughly twice the life expectancy of a standard air source heat pump or air conditioning unit – and deliver efficiencies up to three times greater than a standard air conditioning system or heat pump.
Steve: Inverter drive products may continuously operate, does this impact energy use?
Dustin: Inverter drive products are designed to have longer run times which are critical to driving the comfort that we stive to provide to our customers. Inverter compressors modulate to use the necessary amount of energy required to heat or cool your home. Inherently by doing this you are reducing your operating cost significantly over a single or two stage air conditioner or heat pump. A byproduct of this system modulation is the impact on operating noise levels as well, although units can ramp up to 100 percent capacity, in general they are designed to satisfy the thermostat within the home and find the capacity needed to maintain that temperature vs continually turning off and shutting down to maintain comfort within the home.
Steve: What can you share about the growing hot water on demand market?
Dustin: We offer standard efficiency hydronic boilers under the Buderus brand and higher efficiency solutions under the Bosch brand. This product, because of its compactness, can be wall hung or floor mounted. They are condensing boilers with greater than 90 percent efficiency and offered in different configurations. Some have the ability for only heating and hydronic applications, and we also offer combi-boilers featuring the space saving ability for supporting domestic hot water.
To stay ahead of the electrification transition over the past 10 or 15 years, we also have a portfolio of electric tankless water heaters. The product that’s spotlighted these days is actually the heat pump water heater that provides a great deal of operating cost savings. The efficiency and cost savings make it popular. The system is designed to increase the temperature of the tank efficiency by extracting the heat from around the system’s vessel and the storage tank.
What’s also fascinating is energy can be captured to both heat water and cool spaces at the same time. One of the important benefits of our heat pump water heater is it does have a ducted option. If you’re taking heat from around the vessel, the tank or the heat pump, the cold air must go somewhere. By capturing the cold-air discharge, it can be ducked into a garage and offers some latent benefits to cooling other spaces in the home especially in the warmer climate states.
Steve: What are the latest market demand growth trends for the heat pump product category, including the hot water on demand segment?
Dustin: The heat pump market has seen accelerated growth recently and now makes up nearly 45 percent of the market mix versus the non-heat pump HVAC products. This trend toward heat pumps growth is expected to continue over the next 5-10 years making this technology the primary source for heating and cooling residential and commercial structures in the future. Following this data trend, one might decide to install or upgrade to heat pump as their preferred way to heating with electricity exclusively, or using dual fuel as an optional back-up heat source. I think you’ll see that same trend, or it’s safe to assume the same trend will also be recognized in the heat pump water heating market.
Steve: What remote access options are available to keep tabs on these systems?
Dustin: Bosch offers a Wi-Fi based smart app we call EasyAir. The Bosch EasyAir App happens to be a key selling feature for our high efficiency equipment that consists of our Smart Touch Screen BCC-110 Thermostat, the IDS Premium Air Source Heat Pump, and our IDS Ultra Cold Climate Air Source Heat Pump systems.
Homeowners can use the app to monitor the home’s energy usage during different seasons, like hot Summer months or cold Winter nights, and control their Bosch smart thermostats while home or away. Through the app, critical alerts about a connected Bosch HVAC system can be directed to any homeowner authorized mobile phone making it possible to simultaneously alert the contractor with information to get the system up and running as quickly as possible should it go down.
Contractors can use the Bosch EasyAir app as a one-stop shop for troubleshooting our connected IDS heat pumps and, by simply navigating through its menu, you can easily access information about the installation, warranty registration, and how to monitor the system remotely.
Steve Panosian is a Senior Editor for Technology Designer Magazine. He is an independent consumer electronics industry consultant specializing in the CE Home Theater and Custom Installation (CI) market with over 40 years of experience in retail sales and various manufacturing roles.
