Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
I mean, there isn't a whole lot to it. If you're pulling 100K btus out of your ambient air to heat your water, you're going to need to replace that during the heating months if it's in a conditioned space. Whether that's forced air, radiant heat, or whatever, or at -30º vs 10º outside, a heat pump water heater is going to drop the air temperature of the room its in and increase the space heating needs by the amount of btus it pulls out of the air. If it's warm enough out that youi're not heating, then it's extremely efficient. But for most of the year, there aren't really any efficiency gains (and it's a net loss in places with electricity that's generated from gas because of the inefficiencies in that process).
In a region with cleaner electricity generation, the environmental benefits vs. gas are worth it. But burning gas to produce electricity and then using that electricity to heat water is way less efficient than just burning gas to heat water, even if you're gaining some efficiency with a heat pump water heater.
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Interesting.
So it seems to be more efficient if you have a REALLY warm climate (middle to southern US), or even perhaps if you need a lot of air conditioning in the summer as it can help with that?
Here in Manitoba we have all electric heating, and use heat pumps for air conditioning in the summer (outside air). Works great. Always wondered if it would help to use a heat pump water heater, as it SHOULD be more efficient than a normal Marathon electric hot water tank. And then in the summer you can route the cool air generated from the heat pump hot water heater into your ducting that is used for cooling to help with that.