quote" Got mine for free. "quote I'm BEYOND jealous!!! I have a H155R by Aquacal heater/chiller and a Jandy AE3000 heater/chiller and had to pay half price for each. But on the bright side I got my 2 400k btu heaters for free so I guess I really can't complain. However with a pool at 120,000 gallons, even though I can heat my pool from the low 50's to the mid 80's very very quickly in the dead of winter, I cry like a baby when I see the bill on the extra electricity and propane added together, LOL!!! Their my 2 favorite units, and I also have never had any problems with them. What I really LOVE about them is the cool water in the summer when everybody else's is HOT. quote" You buy price you get price... invest in a quality unit "quote I'll second this statement. See ya, Kelly

OK option 2 is the choice here but now I am finding it difficult to find the right parts locally. Accordling to the mfg installation instructions it says: "Where possible a good quality ground fault interruption (GFI) breaker is strongly recommended at the main power supply for all single phase electrical equipment in the pool system." The manual also explicitly states "Although Heat Siphons heat exchanger is electrically isolated from the rest of the unit, it simply prevents the flow of electricity to or from the pool water." I need a 30 amp GFI 2 pole breaker to meet the recommended installation. Problem is I cannot find one for a Siemens main panel. Do I need the GFI protection? Or is that extra safe? Its physically impossible to be in the pool and touching the heat pump unless I was 30 ft tall.

Thank you to everyone that replied in this thread. I got a lot of good information from you guys and it made me get a few more estimates from other companies. Unfortunately I don't think I'm any closer to making a decision. With new information from another company, it seems that simply widening the plenum in the "length" direction won't necessarily help the "bottlenecking" of the plenum. He said the only way to truly get better airflow would be to widen the "width" part of the plenum, which is between trusses 10 inches apart. He said that they could cut the restrictive trusses (reinforce them of course) and build a larger plenum box, but told me that this is technically illegal (in the sense that it goes against builder code). Because of this he gave three options: a) leave the plenum as-is, keeping the bottleneck; b) cut the trusses and build out a proper sized plenum for the new air-handler; or c) completely move the air handler from an inside closet to the attic or garage. So at first I was leaning towards the "cut the trusses" option, but I am a little hesitant even though the guy says it would be verified by their engineer first. And since I'm in Florida I don't really want the air handler in the attic for heat reasons. From what I have been reading the garage isn't exactly ideal either, making the system work harder in the hot months. It seems the ideal setup is to put an air handler in conditioned space, but in my small-plenum scenario would I be better off moving it to the garage? Thanks again for all the help everyone.

I'm leaning towards just heat pump with heat strips. That should be fine for your area. If you plan on keeping it that warm in the house as you say in your OP, I would get the Bosch Inverter heat pump as it produces heat clear down to about 5-6 degrees ambient and very efficient at what it does. Then use the strip heat as you need it. I don't know that you'll find a contractor though for this for a new construction job as Bosch just recently came to the Houston market a few months ago. The distributor network for Bosch is in it's infancy... so there are pros and cons for choosing this brand. For what it does / how it does it --- it's a game changer for my market. (Katy, Texas area) As a comparison --- an average run of the mill single speed heat pump will probably struggle once temps drop into the 20's for any significant amount of time. They are efficient when compared to strip heat (utility bill cost wise) but there are higher limitations with those. I've gotten email notifications from my electric provider that they are estimating my next electric bill at less than $50 for November. This may wind up being my lowest electric bill ever for my power rate of 12 cents per KWH. With that said, I keep it quite chilly during the winter and my house is all electric (no gas at all). I shut it off at night and really just use it to take the chill out of the house in the morning. If it gets really cold here, I will probably just heat the main part of the house over night --- as I have it attached to a 4 zone duct system. (This is to explain the how and why my electric bill is so low -- design of the HVAC system is a big part of it.)