There’s some fake news out there!  We have been getting calls from customers in California who have been told that pool heat pumps will not work because of the lack of humidity.

Here’s the truth – pool heat pumps work just fine in California.  

California is the 9th most popular destination for our heat pumps in the United States and moving up in rank as more Californians get the word.  Our customers have some campgrounds, motels, and resorts who have even chosen to remove their working gas heaters and installed pool heat pumps instead.  It’s also quite common for new construction homes to start out with a pool heat pump installations.  Some of our customers even use our pool heat pumps in combination with the hot gas defrost to heat in temperatures below 50 degrees.

Ambient Air Temperature

As long as the ambient air temperature is 50 degrees or above, a pool heat pump has heat to extract from the air and transfer to your pool water.  A pool heat pump produces more energy than it consumes by capturing sensible heat (air temperature) and latent heat (latent heat inside humidity) from the air and transferring it to your swimming pool.  It’s the latent heat in humidity that makes you feel so hot and sticky.

What does this mean for dry climates?

We can adjust for the lack of humidity by making sure to adjust the size of pool heat pump.  When recommending a pool heat pump, the experts at poolheatpumps.com take into consideration your climate, size of your swimming pool, and how you like to use your pool.

We ship to California every week with incredible feedback.  In over 28 years in this business and 11 years on the internet, we have not had one customer from California who regretted his or her decision to use a heat pump to heat their pool.  In fact, we find that our California customers convert their friends and neighbors away from natural gas and propane to the most efficient technology available to heat swimming pools, a pool heat pump.

Below is a heat pump installation located in Elk Grove, California.  Bob has an 11,000 gallon pool.