Heat Pump vs Natural Gas Heater in Ontario Canada

[MarkSullivan]

Hey Everyone!

Just curious if there's any members in or near Ontario Canada that own Heat Pump Heaters, and what your operational costs look like vs Natural Gas Heaters (if you previously owned one). My gas heater is about 10 years old and I don't plan on replacing next season or anything, but in the event of a major failure and it's not worth fixing, I'm really leaning towards heat pump.

Our natural gas prices continue to rise, and I've seen some nasty gas bills this past summer. We like to keep our pool around 82-85 all season long so you can imagine my 250,000btu gas heater is getting a workout. We would consistently see gas bills of $400 or more per month. I'm curious what a typical heat pump owner is paying in hydro per month.

Thanks!

 

[Newdude]

We would consistently see gas bills of $400 or more per month. I'm curious what a typical heat pump owner is paying in hydro per month.

In season the HP is king, but you have very short seasons and it will struggle to extend them by more than a couple of weeks.

A solar cover, as much as a PITA as they are, would retain most of your heat during the season to reduce gas costs, and then the gas heater would be better suited to extend the season if you wanted to.

 

[Bill1974]

When I redid my pool I looked into putting in a gas line for a pool heater and the operating cost of a gas heater vs a HP based on my utility rates. The HP would be in theory be a little more than half the cost of a natural gas heater to operate at the time (2 years ago). The downside to the HP is how slow it is to heat compared to a gas heater (~130k btu vs 400k btu). If the cost (estimates from $7K to $10K) to install a gas line were not so much I would have put one in. But I just installed a larger electrical service (I was already changing this with the pool reno and it was something i could do myself) so I could add a HP at some point. With a HP i would figure I would need to have it running a lot more and also need to have a cover when not in use for it to make sense. A gas heater I could pretty much use it when needed and only need to deal with a cover at the beginning or end of the season or not at all and just use the pool on weekends at that point.