heat pump helper

Jim Hurd

I have 2800 sq ft, 22 year old home with 8 of us in Phila PA with heat pump, electric aux, and electric dhw, NG not available. It's not enough hot water and I was thinking of getting two big water tanks like the marathon 105's, but I am also considering a boiler of some kind and indirect tank. I would use the boiler to heat DHW, a zone for the basement (not currently heated) and help for the heat pump. june to september my electricity is $.145/kwh and .065 october to may. That makes my biggest bills june to september, not in february.

1. Can a boiler act as a true aux, or will it cut off the heat pump?
2. What are some good low cost solutions to the problem? My first quote (not including basement zone) was $8000 for wgo oil+indirect system which of course is a really long payback. I have two more quotes on the way.
3. The basement will be used only occasionally for band practice, is there a small coil/air handler that I could run off a boiler zone to heat the basement air on demand , say 58 degrees to 68 degrees in less than an hour, it's approximately 900 square feet.

Thanks,

Jim

Joel_3

heatpump

Up here in mass that's a nice part of mywork converting heatpumps. our payback up here is very quick but it's colder here too. a boiler is the way to go you can have as many zones as you want. You can do anything you want with wiring. you can set up your heat pump to run to say 55 outside then kick in the boiler. Any good HVAC company should be able to do this for you. actually up here payback is instant in the sense of resale value. If your selling a house here with electric the price will typically be discounted more than the cost of conversion!! This makes it a no brainer investment safer than anything on Wallstreet!

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Jim Hurd

An interesting point, but do you think the same is true of oil (some people are scared of oil tanks)? Anyway, I doubt I will ever move from here, so I can amortize whatever I get over the life of the equipment, resale will be someone else's problem . One positive thing about oil equipment is that it seems it will last 25-30 years with only regular maintenance. My Heat pump is not proving that reliable.

On paper Geothermal using Econar's Invision looks like the bee's knees. Am I just paranoid about not wanting to using something that probably only sells in the hundreds of units per year? It should cut my cooling bills as well as heating and hot water bills and should last 25 years thanks to being indoors/underground. But it could also be a very expensive piece of landfill if it breaks and can't be fixed.

Jim