zlacker

>>PaulHo+(OP)
I've been keeping an eye on heat pump water heaters for awhile, but right now they mostly make sense in warm climates. The big problem is they're still specialty products and marked up like crazy, but also they tend to use cheap components which makes them loud and prone to failure. If you run A/C for the majority of the year then they pay themselves back reasonably quick, barring early failure, but in colder climates they make your house work that much harder to keep the space warm.

The most optimistic hope is that the government mandate will force enough demand that manufacturers can enjoy some economies of scale and actually try to compete on price. I don't think this will happen anytime soon.

>>jandre+Cr3
You're about 20 years behind.

My heat pump is working great at 0F. It's 7 years old.

>>gwbas1+KE3
It really depends on how well your home is insulated. Heat pumps don’t work well on old, poorly insulated houses in cold climates. If they can keep up, which is a big if, the price of electricity generally dwarfs natural gas, even if the heat pump is running at 250-300% efficiency.

>>hippo2+sY4
To clarify my parent post: My house is also 7 (now 8) years old and has 6 inch (15cm) walls with air-tight walls. We built with solar, which got the cost of electricity down to an estimated 4-5 cents per kilowatt hour.

At that price, resistive heating cost about as much as what I paid for gas at my old house.

I went with a heat pump to hedge the bet. (I was also pointed away from geothermal.)

If the insulation wasn't as good, or electricity more expensive, I would have used a different heat source. I was looking at pellet furnaces at the time, but never seriously got into the research before the solar proposal came in.