Comment by cucumber3732842
1 day ago
Is that 2-3x before or after the plumber marks it up?
What an exceptionally moronic thing to ban, the market solves this naturally. Resistance heaters are 100% efficient whatever fraction of the year is heating days. So if that's 1/2 the year and the water heater can't last 16yr because of water quality the heat pump heater will never pay you back.
This reminds me a lot of the time some jerks in west coast desert states convinced the feds to regulate plumbing fixtures so that eastern "we take from the river and put back in the river" municipalities that have more water than they know what to do with have to suffer through low flow everything.
Heat pumps are effectively more than 100% efficient fyi. You put 1000W of electricity in, you get 2500W of heat going into the water. (Numbers are only illustrative)
Running cost of heat pumps for heating is much much lower than resistive heating.
Heat pump water heater (hybrid/HPWH, e.g., 50–65 gallon equivalent): Unit prices range from ~$1,500–$3,000+ (most common models $2,000–$2,500), with total installed costs $2,500–$5,000 (higher if electrical upgrades or space mods needed). Average retrofit/install often lands around $3,000–$4,000.
And for small households they virtually never pay for themselves before they die or need expensive maintenance... It only makes sense if you use a lot of water or if your electricity is very expensive. In my case it's even worse, with solar panels and self sufficiency they literally cannot break even
Electrical upgrades are almost always required, and price is more like 7k-9k around here. It's going to be seriously painful for a lot of people.
If you were in the market for an resistive electric heat pump, you likely had the service for it already. A heat pump version will almost always require less power.
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Ehh 120v models exist. My 65 gal runs fine on a standard 20a breaker.
If you currently have an electric resistive water heater, a heat pump water heater with the same heating capacity will use 3-4x less power, which means you can use a much smaller circuit.
A 6kW 240V EWH uses 25A, it’ll need #8 wire and a 35A or 40A breaker.
An equivalent HPHW would use 1.5kW at 240V, or 6.25A. You can use #14s and a 15A breaker.
Is the heat pump heater taking heat from inside or outside the house?
Depends on the model, but a lot use the air from their own room, that's why they can't be installed in small rooms. Models pulling the heat from outside are more expensive and require more labor obviously, and they don't make a lot of sense for places that are bellow 0c multiple month a year as the COP will drop to 1.x and you will most likely need extra electricity for the anti frost cycles
But dumping the waste cold air into the house when it's below 0C outside doesn't make much sense either.
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