Rheem heat pump water heater

Bigruss

I have a small 800 sf cabin . Could I use a Rheem heat pump water heater to heat small hydronic baseboards ?

Jamie Hall

No. A heat pump water heater is designed and intended to heat water for domestic hot water. Not heating. it is unlikely — to put it mildly — that it would have anything like either the BTUh capacity or the temperature capacity. Perhaps more important, the minimum air temperature in which it can be installed is 40 F, and it can't be installed outdoors.

Depending on the minimum outdoor temperature, you might be able to use a regular air to air heat pump.

hot_rod

I set one up in my 860 square foot shop and ran it a few day to observe operation

It was noisy and displaced 43 degree air into the space. Even vented outside I doubt it would be a viable solution since 140 F is about the max temperature output, probably not enough to drive the fin tube anyways

A small gas or lp mod con turns down to 8000. Or an electric boiler.

DCContrarian

A heat pump water heater takes heat from inside the conditioned space. If you're trying to use it to heat the space, you're asking it to be a perpetual motion machine.

ethicalpaul

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1818395#Comment_1818395

Noisy? hmm, should be about the same as a small dehumidifier (mine is), and surely not much if any louder than an atmospheric gas model's burner. But regardless, this idea is a non-starter.