Heat Pump Pricing

[iadams]

A lot has been said about heat pumps vs propane / natural gas so I won't go there :-D

I bought a house with a pool last May, and it has a propane heater which had been disconnected from the pool. I can only assume it had been leaking, or I would guess they would have left it connected and just not used it. Anyway, I wanted to get a heat pump to be able to take the 'edge' off, especially for the wife and my daughter. I got a quote of $5400 here in Mt Airy, MD for the Pentair UltraTemp 125,000 BTU Heat pump installed, NOT including running power to my pumping station, which is at least 50' from the house (not enough amperage available in the pool equipment area for the heat pump and the pool pump). This seems high to me, given that it is quite a lot higher than the retail cost of the heater to do some basic plumbing and final electric hookup.

Am I missing something? Can anyone give me any benchmarks for price comparison? I feel at that cost plus costs of running electric, the payback would be pretty long over just getting another propane heater (propane heater cheaper, no electrical changes).

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[newbiepool]

That seems kind of high. We bought the Hayward Heatpro HP21104T, the builder charged us 3k installed since the electrician was not making a special trip. Given that you are doing it after the fact, you can still figure out the cost. Do some research and see how much the unit cost without install. I would then measure how far away the unit is from your power box. Once you know the distance you can figure out the cost of the electric cables, breakers etc. For 5400 it would seem you should get it as turn key without paying anything extra.

 

[ps0303]

How many quotes did you get? You should get two more from other companies and compare them. Maybe in your area that is the "going price" for this sort of unit/install. You can't just get one quote and assume it's high. Now if you got three quotes and lets say the other two are $500-1000 less, then maybe this company is higher in cost.

Another thing to consider is this, how long has this company been in business? There are lots of companies that are in business one day and not the next due to their poor pricing. So lets say company A only wants to get $200 per unit installed and they have been in business less than a year. They figure with the low price they will do a ton of work. Well it doesn't always work out that way. They end up not making as many sales as they thought do their rock bottom pricing and they decided to close up shop and become a roofer. Now company B comes along and their bid is high, say $1000 higher and they have been in business a while. They more than likely have been able to stay in business becasue they priced correctly and were able to do less work at a higher cost thus staying in business.

So there are lots of things to consider, the companies reputation, years in business, professionalism, licenses, insurance, etc etc. So get two more bids and compare all three.

BTW, internet pricing, which you really can't go by in my opinion, this unit ranges in cost from $3,299 to $3,499. Add in the unit that also cools, your price jumps to $4,299.

 

[AZHeat]

My new build price for the exact same heat pump (460933) was $3750 with another $680 to upgrade the 85' electrical run. We went further and upgraded the heat pump to add the cooling option (460935) for another $950. I've seen the 460933 selling for just under $3k but might get better price on internet.