@derek oh, yes. It got down to ~20ºF in Seattle and i found out that there’s a secret option to turn off the heat pump until you change it back. Turns out our garage was colder than outside during the winter because the heat pump was constantly trying to heat the water and effectively sucked all the heat out of the garage. Now it works brilliantly and we have enough water in the 60 gallons for multiple showers in the morning. Will turn it back on for summer…
@Luke Ah yes, I know the hybrid electric HP have an option to switch to using just electric when necessary, but it’s good to hear your real world experience. We’re looking to replace our aging gas tank WH and looking to switch to hybrid electric HP. It will be in our basement, so much less exposure to very cold temps, but I do worry about it’s ability to keep up with the cold water entering the house in the winter.
Are you happy with it otherwise? Would you do it again?
@derek@Luke I was playing with the thought to add a hybrid electric HP boiler as well. Seems like they could even be combined with our decentralized community heating. I heard it’s a good idea to put them in the same room as the drier to use the excess heat from that. But unfortunately I haven’t read anything about the incoming water temperatures they can handle.
I think it should be able to handle colder incoming water just fine, but it may just take longer to get to the set temp and/or we may have to use the electric heating element instead of just the HP (but I hope to not have to do that).
@derek@Luke it sounds cooler than it is. Our area has its own little wood pellet plant with gas as fallback. We have to use it which would be absolutely fine, but it’s super expensive because they calculated it with inefficient houses from 2 decades ago.
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