How many square feet does the addition comprise of the total of 2000 s.f. The point being does your present boiler have the additional capacity to handle the addition. Is your boiler natural gas or oil?. If oil I can understand where you might be coming from considering a heat pump.

Quite frankly having grown up in Worcester (Newton Square area) I question how pleased you will be with a heat pump unless it's set up to switch over to the boiler provided heat when temperatures fall below 35- 40 or so.

Regarding the sizing of the heat pump I'm guessing that neither quote included a detailed analysis of the heating and cooling needs of the home. Probably a "based on my experience" I recommend...

two entirely different approaches.

A hydro coil using boiler hot water fueled by oil?

And then a Greenspeed heat pump. What size heat strip? Why a 4 ton vs 3 ton Legacy?

What is cost of electric and cost of oil?

Furnace and boiler terms are not interchangeable. Which is it?

You have radiator or baseboard hot water heat now that serves main floor? This will remain in place?

What are you attempting to accomplish? Lots of confusion.

Post back.

IMO

Thanks all,

I have a lot to learn about this I guess.

The heat is provided by oil. We have a Peerless WBV series oil boiler (6 years old) with a beckett oil burner and a peerless partner PP-40 indirect fired water heater (40 gallons) operating off a zone on the boiler.

I am a member of an oil cooperative, and I spent $1500 on oil last year, and $1800 this year. (between September and May)

THe Addition is about 700 square feet. No detailed analysis has been done of the space, I only provided blueprints of the house. I am hoping for an efficient enough heat pump as to not have to rely on oil or other heat for all but the coldest days of the winter (at or lower than 20 degree temps) If none of these heat pump systems are capable of providing satisfactory heat at 35-40 degrees, maybe this isn't the solution for me. Can anyone speak to me on that?

The current baseboard would remain in place for the majority of the main floor with the exception of the kitchen where the wall the radiator (we have 2 radiators along with the baseboard) is on will be removed.

I was told the current heating system could handle the extra space and we were going to put in baseboards in the addition. If we go with the heat pump we would skip those baseboards to save money. Oil would continue to provide heat to our existing finished basement space regardless and we do not intend to cool the basement addition with the new system. -

To clarify, the addition includes a full basement. The current basement is finished but are not finishing the 'new' basement yet. So all of my focus in on the main floor for now. The existing finished basement has baseboard, but we rarely heat that space. It has stayed fairly cool on it's own with a dehumidifier, so we don't intend to actively cool it either.

I guess what I am attempting to accomplish is

1. AC like cooling of the main floor
2. Heating of the main floor
a. preferably without relying on oil as much as possible, as long as that is cost effective
3. Providing affordable backup heat to the main floor for extremely cold days should we choose the heat pump as a solution.

One way or another, I became convinced a heat pump system could fulfill these requirements, which is why these quotes are oriented toward that.

Thank you both for your help. Let me know if I can clarify more. I really appreciate it.