The tech costs more than conventional options upfront, but federal tax credits, new 120V models and strong savings have made them more appealing than ever.
Can you get a single heat pump system that does both?
We have a geothermal heat pump that we put in when we built our house. It uses water (closed loops) to exchange heat/cold instead of air. But that unit also has a desuperheater that does supplement hot water. The ideal setup is to have a non-powered water heater that is warmed by the output of the desuperheater, that feeds a powered water heater. This creates a situation where the water entering the powered water heater is already pretty warm requiring less work for it.
unfortunately, my knowledge at the time wasn’t where it is today, and our installer was also not well versed. So we just have a single water heater, but it is plumbed into the desuperheater at least. Ours just cycles water through the desuperheater into the powered tank. Probably still helps some but I suspect not as much.
We have a geothermal heat pump that we put in when we built our house. It uses water (closed loops) to exchange heat/cold instead of air. But that unit also has a desuperheater that does supplement hot water. The ideal setup is to have a non-powered water heater that is warmed by the output of the desuperheater, that feeds a powered water heater. This creates a situation where the water entering the powered water heater is already pretty warm requiring less work for it.
unfortunately, my knowledge at the time wasn’t where it is today, and our installer was also not well versed. So we just have a single water heater, but it is plumbed into the desuperheater at least. Ours just cycles water through the desuperheater into the powered tank. Probably still helps some but I suspect not as much.