Matsushita HE-RQC2W heat pump / bath

After a month of construction, we restored the old bath at our house. It is a very traditional bath with lots of room and a bathtub that fits 2-3 people. Antipixel has a good blog entry about the art of Japanese bathing worth reading. Basically, you wash before you enter a Japanese bath and the baths are more for soaking than cleaning inside. You don't bring towels or soaps into the bath itself. There is a lot of room outside the bath to clean.

The tradition for older baths is to fill the bath up with hot water and keep it warm through the day, everyone sharing the hot water. In the old days, there was a boiler that the water would circulate through to keep it warm. The heat pump water heater we installed keeps a tank of hot water for the whole house including the kitchen and the bath. The heat pump takes care of filling the bath with hot water, managing a reserve of hot water for the kitchen and shower, and also circulates the water in the bath and maintains the temperature as you like. It's quite an amazing synthesis of modern technology and tradition.

Maybe after washlets, Japanese baths will become popular in the US. What about it Sergey and Larry?