California swimming pool heat pump trash talking from gas heater sales people.

I have been sending swimming pool heat pumps to California for 20 years. California has a huge amount of pools. Traditionally they have been heated with gas. My job 20 years ago was to educate pool guys and pool owners of the advantages of heat pumps. It was hard at first. California had a history of cheap natural gas and most of the pool professionals had been putting gas in for 20 to 50 years. Things are changing though. So far in the last 20 years, I have never had a customer sorry that they put in one of my heat pumps. I never got that call or e-mail. Now it seems a no brainer that heat pumps with titanium heat exchangers, stainless steel fittings and polymer UV protected cabinets would be more durable than copper and steel gas heaters. (Note some gas manufacturers have now stepped up and made their heaters more weather and pool ph tough) Ask us who if you are going in that direction. Heat pumps also are less expensive to use. You are not burning or consuming gas like a gas heater or pure electricity like an element pool heater. (Similar to an electric stove element) or even an oil fired pool heater. A heat pump uses a little electricity to move solar heat that is in the air to the water. Even at 45F, there is enough heat in the air to heat most pools with a heat pump that has a defrosting model heat pump. We are just moving heat around instead of creating heat by burning a fuel. Plus a heat pump can cool the pool too. Tough to that with gas. One of the largest pool heating companies in the world required their gas engineers to watch my 30 heat pump videos that I had made in desert conditions to get up to speed when talking to customers calling in. The gas guys would say on the phone, “heat pumps don’t work here” while ignoring the fact that they work all across Canada, Norway, the midwest, New England, Texas, Arizona etc. Don’t say they don’t work in Canada to a Canadian heat pump manufacturer as they would just laugh. Lots of pool heater manufacturers in Canada. In about 2002 I took a call from a lady from Sacramento. She said that for one year she begged her pool service company to put in a heat pump for her. She had done her research and was convinced that it would be in her best interest to have a heat pump for her pool. She also didn’t want gas exhaust fumes near her pool that she used to health reasons. She also considered herself green and wanted to use the most efficient technology available to solve her cold pool needs. The pool guy refused to help her and she came to me to supply her with a heat pump. She hired her own licensed electrician, as that is 90% of most pool heat pump installation jobs require, and I believe she glued the two pipes herself. She called me the next year and told me how she loved her heat pump but that a strange thing happened after she started using it. She kept her pool service company who wouldn’t help her with the heat pump and they were still maintaining her chemicals and repairing her filter and water pump, etc. They were supposed to come every two weeks but she noticed that they were coming sometimes twice a week and they were bringing people she didn’t recognize on the property and spending a lot of time looking at her heat pump. She went out to see what was going on and discovered that the pool contractor who refused to help her get a heat pump was using her as an example of a successful heat pump installation to sell heat pumps to her neighbors. She was so mad she fired him on the spot and told him never to be on the property again. She kept in touch for I think the next ten years. That about sums up a common California issue. I thought that 20 years later those days might be behind me but last week I got a call from someone near LA who had bought a pool heat pump from me but who had not installed it yet. He was worried because his pool guy told him a story about a customer years ago who didn’t like his heat pump. This was a customer who had a 10 KW PV (photovoltaic) panel electricity generating system at his house. So really the heat pump was going to cost him almost nothing to use. I told him not to worry. I thought it was almost malpractice to suggest to a PV electric guy not to use a heat pump. That really is the best of both worlds. So come on California. It is a new century and we have electric cars and computers on our cell phones. Be green. And if you don’t want to be green then indulge yourself and family and get a swimming pool heat pump and save enough money on heating and cooling to take a Europen vacation with your energy savings.