Posted on 07/12/2025 9:52:06 AM PDT by Renkluaf
“Proof positive that the road to hell is paved with the good intentions of idiots.”
More like the EVIL INTENTIONS of very smart people.
Anyway, given the cost of electricity in Europe in order to ‘stick it to Putin’ (3 to 4 times as much as the US)...the problem will first be finding the money to turn on the heat pumps.
That makes sense, but it seems like our spring and fall seasons here consist of one week between winter and summer.
It’s funny how we get wiser in our old age.
It’s funny how we get wiser in our old age.“
Not always. There is nothing worse than a dug in old Democrat.
“and I could use it as a back up to the natural gas furnace.”
not much of a selling point: a good quality NG furnace will last at least 50 years ...
Heat pumps are good for a more temperate climate, but they aren’t popular in my neck of the woods.
Yes, you can’t become wise if you don’t have a brain to begin with.
Yep
The story doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve showered almost everyday for the past70 years in water from a water heater that never reached 60 degrees C (140 F). Most people in the US could also say the same.
Similarly, the water in a heat pump, even the heat pumps that generate domestic hot water, never have the heat pump water mix with the water in the hot water heater. This makes the temperature of the primary heat pump irrelevant.
I have installed and used heat pumps since 1988, that first one being a ground water heat pump that also provided domestic hot water. It pulled 52 degree water from our well, and dumped the colder water to a lake. My present heat pumps are air to air.
The problem is the water *IN* the hot water tank that you use in the house. The hot water tank never gets warm enough to kill the legionella bacteria just like in the cooling towers at the hotel where legionella got its name.
I'd probably have gas heat to supplement the heat pump if I didn't have solar and battery to power the home through most nights. And the heat pump water heater giving me free cold air (see post 11) that I put into an air receiver for my home during the warm half of the year, is efficient in part because my HVAC is a variable speed heat pump with var speed air handler. In other words, my HVAC is almost always running, even if at low speed. So just about any time of day that my water heater gives me free cold air, my HVAC is running to draw in the free cold air to spread through the house (so that my home heat pump can be in low speed a few more hours of the day and not have to work as hard making cold air for the home).
Where do you draw air from for your heat pump water heater? Mine has a duct to draw air from the attic (usually warm air, or even really hot air in my Alabama attic). Thus, my water heater heat pump doesn't have to run as long to find enough heat energy to heat the tank. So the attic often has free heat energy that's used to help heat the water tank, and the water heater give me free cold air that I use to help cool the house. The water heater is efficient, and the HVAC is efficient, but the two work together better than the sum of their parts.
I honestly don't understand how this can be. See posts # 11 and 29 for two FReepers with experience with heat pump water heaters keeping the water thank at 135F or 140F like we would with a "normal" water tank.
I’m speaking as an operating engineer that worked large cooling and heating systems for over 30 years. I attended numerous courses on the prevention and mitigation of these and other biological, chemical treatment, and contaminant problems.
Yes, the heat transfer fluid does not normally enter the domestic water system, but it’s the hot water temperature that poses the risk.
Water can have legionella and not affect people if the concentration is low enough, but keeping your hot water below 140* is dancing with the devil.
I keep my DHWT at 160*f. Yes, that’s a bit hot and perhaps a bit wasteful, but that’s my preference.
Has the heat pump installation reduced your total energy utilization and energy bills? How long would it take for the savings to equal the capital expenditure?
I no longer live in the house and had to replace the heat pump after only 10 years. It was a 100% well water system. The primary heat exchanger was well water to Freon. It corroded, leaking water into the Freon. and was no longer available for replacement since the company went bankrupt.
While it worked, it was great. The AC was best. It had a water to air heat exchanger. It primarily used only well water, which was 52 degrees (here in southern Michigan). The system had a feature where it could run the heat pump and use even colder water if the AC cooling was inadequate. It would then dump the heated water into the hot water tank and then out the discharge when that was up to temperature. I never even turned on that feature since the well water air conditioning was quite adequate.
I kept the well water heat exchanger for cooling when the Freon system failed, and it is still doing all the air conditioning in the house some 35 years later.
I had used an ordinary electric water heater tank as a storage tank for the hot water. When the Freon system system failed, I installed a gas furnace for heating, and hooked up electric power to the hot water tank for hot water.
Thanks for the tip on the water temp.
Yes the heat pump greatly reduced my energy consumption (Alabama weather). If energy costs rise a reasonable 3% annually, the overall project will pay for itself on the 9th - 10th anniversary (summer 2031). Admittedly, it's been a while since I crunched the numbers on just the heat pump alone. It's something I did in the fall of 2021 after I installed solar earlier in the spring of 2021 and noticed that the power input was tracking my expectations based on the average daily peak solar hours for my area. Call that "Phase I". On the 1-year anniversary I exported the telemetry from my solar inverter into a SQL database and realized I'd get more ROI if I upgraded it (doubled my solar panel capacity and inverter capacity, tripled my battery storage). And since it was about time to replace my wife's gas crossover anyway, I replaced it with an EV crossover. Every month when I get a power bill I look at the EV's odometer, the price of gas in my area, the monthly price of natural gas Alabama , and export the latest month's worth of power telemetry from my inverters (recorded in 5-minute candles how much power was consumed, how much power came in from solar, how much power was stored or pulled to/from batteries, and how much power was pulled from the grid). I paid for all of that using a HELOC with a low fixed interest rate that I pay monthly payments to instead of a high natural gas bill + lots of gasoline for driving 1,500 miles per month on home charged miles alone + high power bill (though I still have a low power bill). To date it's saved a total of $6,400 in my cash flow (trying to keep the energy portion of my budget like it was in 2019, the last year of Trump before covid distorted energy prices).
As the HELOC is paid down, the minimum payment goes down. But I take money from the HELOC to pay the EV payment until the EV is paid off a year from now, so that make the HELOC balance go up more than down. When the EV is paid off, the energy and transportation portion of my budget will pay down the HELOC really fast. In summer of 2031, the total cash savings ought to equal about as much as the balance left on the HELOC (I call that the payback date). But really the payback date is a lot sooner because the cash flow savings year after year equates to that much more money staying in our Roth IRAs growing tax free. But I'm not including that in my spreadsheet math for the purpose of allowing me to have a little pessimism.
Thank you for that detailed answer. It does look like a very good investment on your part
The catch is to see how well any or all of these various steps relate to your particular energy consumption habits. Another catch is to turn off the political feelings about alternative energy. Us conservatives are right to support nothing but hydrocarbons (and my hydro power) for the grid and for transportation. But any time you can put the word "decentralized" in front of something, as in "decentralized solar" it's worth at least looking into to see if it can reduce your dependency on things that are overregulated by govt (like energy availability and pricing). It's a sweet feeling when only about 25% of all the energy you consume has to be bought. Especially in the political climate with the warmageddon cult Dims sometimes being in power, and also talking more and more against Christians. I wouldn't be surprised if soon they have a mild version of the mark of the beast with energy availability (sky high energy prices unless you bow to the hedonist Dims).
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