ᐅ Is a hot water tank with an integrated heat pump a practical choice?

My heating engineer recommended a domestic hot water heat pump (DHW HP) from Stiebel Eltron for hot water production. Does anyone have experience with these types of in-house heat pumps?

There is a district heating connection with decentralized hot water production using a flow heater and a small storage tank. This is supposed to be replaced by a central solution, primarily producing hot water through the district heating system.

That means I also don’t have a boiler in the basement whose waste heat the heat pump could efficiently use. The heating engineer also emphasized the moisture-reducing effect. (The house was built in 1960 with a corresponding basement.)

If I use such a DHW HP, I would probably need to choose the SOL version to also utilize district heating as an additional energy source. Otherwise, I am concerned that I would only generate high electricity consumption.

Are there any experiences with this system – especially regarding its practicality and cost-effectiveness?

What I can say is that the “hot water storage heat pump” in our house works reliably – we gave the installer free rein and ended up with a Vaillant model, which is practically a local product, so we were fine with that. I haven’t installed an energy meter yet, so I can’t give an exact statement about its cost-effectiveness. With the installation of the new photovoltaic system’s smart controls, we will direct surplus energy from the roof into the hot water storage tank.

Connecting to district heating is, of course, a sensible option.

Tankless water heaters (instantaneous water heaters) are inexpensive to purchase but more costly to operate. We have these in the “children’s apartments.” However, these will not be permanently occupied and later, in case of holiday rental, will be billed separately and clearly.