Heating, Cooling & Comfort - Choose a Products

Storage Tank Water Heaters
Tankless Water Heaters
Integrated Space/Water Heating Systems
Heat Pump Water Heaters
Solar Water Heaters
Heat Recovery Water Pre-Heaters

Heat pump water heaters use electricity to move heat from the air to the tank instead of generating heat directly. Residential heat pump water heaters use the same technology as your refrigerator, but it operates in a reverse order. The inside of the tank captures heat instead of rejecting it. You can save even more energy if the cold air the heat pump produces is used to supplement your air conditioning needs. A heat pump water heater can easily cut the lifetime operating cost in half compared to conventional electric water heaters. Despite their high initial cost, heat pump water heaters can be more cost-effective than conventional electric storage tank heaters, especially in warm to moderate-cold climates. Their potential drawback is that heat pump water heaters loose efficiency below -8° Celsius. Whether this makes them cost-comparable to an efficient fuel-fired heater depends on your local cost of electricity versus natural gas or oil.

There are several different designs of air-source heat pump water heaters available on the market. All use heat from the house as the basis for the heat "pumping" and thus can actually increase the heating load for the house, even though they may reduce the specific cost of heating the hot water. The add-on heat pump consists of a heat pump that is attached to an existing electric storage tank water heater. A small pump circulates water from the tank through to the heat pump. The integral heat pump is built into the water storage tank and eliminates the need for a pump to circulate the water. A special class of the add-on heat pump that works best in fairly airtight houses is the return-air or exhaust-air heat pump. This type of heat pump water heater is located in the return air duct of the home's heating and cooling system.

A ground-source heat pump uses the earth or ground water or both as sources of heat in the winter, and as the "sink" for heat removed from the home in the summer. For this reason, ground-source heat pump systems have come to be known as earth-energy systems. The ground-source heat pump with a hot water desuperheater has proven effective as a minimum, water pre-heater in colder Canadian climates. It is often not practical for an existing house because it requires that the yard be excavated, but it is more practical and may be of interest when building a new home.