Okay I currently have a Oil Boiler with a direct hot water coil on it. (I know very inefficient) we just did a big renovation and 3 grand to do the indirect heater I just couldn't make happen at the time. In any case in the next year or so I want to switch from the direct coil to something more efficient, and that can handle my family of 3 kids, 3 1/2 baths, and all the normal appliances.
Yes we can only have one thing using the hot water at a time and we've adjusted to it. But in the long run as my kids get older it won't fly.
So I started looking and I noticed the new heatpump hot water heaters, and I'm wondering if there's one out there that will use my oil boiler as the backup heat. And/or will allow me to use the heat from the boiler in the winter when the HVAC (it has a heat pump now as well but it still uses the oil as a backup) is running.
I'm basically looking for some ideas as to which direction I should go indirect, or the hybrid? Really I want to save on the oil and while the heat pump is a neat idea it'll probably require more maintenance then an indirect heater. Please any comments/info is welcome.

 

In a typical winter, how often does the heat pump require the backup oil system? What I'm getting at is whether you NEED the backup... I imagine you do, but curious about what percentage of the winter it is actually needed?

So the oil is probably more or less only being used to heat your water then? Terrible waste to keep a boiler warm 24/7 just to heat water.

No nat gas in your area?

I was looking at the AO Smith heat pump unit last week. It's got backup electric elements also. To me it basically looks like a small room air conditioner sitting on top of an electric water heater. I don't know how much 'extra' maintenance that would be really. Probably just changing filters and keeping the evaporator fins clean I would think.

 

No, there's no natural gas, and we also have baseboard heating for the basement. We just put the heatpump in for the a/c so I don't have a very good baseline considering at 1st it was switching over at 40 degrees outside, I changed it to 25 and since then we've saved a lot on oil. We also had a problem with a new line in one of the bathrooms which basically ran hot water constantly, big mess. Fixed those problems but kind of messed up the baseline.

Normally we can run almost the whole year on around $500 of oil. But we just added another bath and kid so. Things are changing, I just know that we'll need more water and a tank either way would be more efficient.

 

Well we need it whenever it's below 25 and when it Needs the defrost cycle which I'm guessing isnt much. But if I can't get gas I'd like to keep the oil. I'd love to have a heat pump water system with oil backup instead of the electric backup. This way if the heat pump failed it'd be like an indirect system.