Looking for advice

I'd recommend forgetting about the heat pump water heater. It does not sound like a good application at all. They have a fairly narrow "band" of optimal operating conditions and your situation does not appear to meet those.

For a single resident or small family situation it's hard to beat the low up front investment of a good electric water heater. You should be able to get one installed for $500-$700. (of course you are on the Cape so who knows.....) The water heater itself will be in the $300 range at a Lowe's, Home Despot or hardware store.
Then if you are heating solely with pellets you can turn off your boiler.
I do suspect however that given the 3 tanks of oil consumption, the boiler is providing some heat to the house along with the hot water production.

If you do the math on 700 gallons of oil, that works out to about 265,000 btu's per day/annually. It is nearly impossible to comprehend that your domestic hot water use would demand that much heat. For that reason I am questioning whether the boiler may also be providing some heat to the house.

maple1 said:

Not sure what you mean there?

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Sorry. I was using a tablet while downloading Windows updates and anti virus programs to stop the CPU meter from being pegged at 100%. I have to say, it worked great. I hadn't been updating automatically. I think I will now.

Anyway, I meant "loser" not "lower".

I had one of those electric water heaters for a while when I was heating with mostly wood and didn't want to run the oil boiler. The basement did get pretty cool. The Nyletherm added on pretty easily, and you still go into resistance mode if you want to, just like a Geospring. It does provide some dehumidification in summer, but I don't try to maximize its use, just use it as a regular water heater. I'd look into rebates on the Geospring. I think there were some big ones for Connecticut. Not sure about Mass. I wouldn't imagine installation for a Geospring would be more that a conventional water heater, but I don't know for sure.

heaterman said:

I'd recommend forgetting about the heat pump water heater. It does not sound like a good application at all. They have a fairly narrow "band" of optimal operating conditions and your situation does not appear to meet those.

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I would tend to agree - although if one was also running a dehumidifier a lot, I would also want to consider that into the decision making as well. At worst, the HPWH would run the same as a resistance heater if it got too cool in the room it was in - but only for the coldest of winter months.

Go for the ge. If it gets too cold for a month or two down there it will automatically switch to the elements.

A nice pellet boiler would be the best of both worlds!

capecod said:

on sale at Lowe's for $200 off ($799) and $750 in rebates

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Holy cow! What a deal! Nothing like that in NY.

capecod said:

Seems like the geospring.....on sale at Lowe's for $200 off ($799) and $750 in rebates would work...thanks for the help, everyone. Happy. Thanksgiving !

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That's part of the overall equation and pretty hard to go wrong with that deal. Another part is what to do with the oil stuff you have. Have you ever shut power off to it & let it cool right off to see what happens? Some boiler systems will start to leak or drip water a bit when they go cold. Mine used to, around the coil gaskets and some of the gate valve stems. I think you will want to be shutting it down completely to gain real savings. But I'm also still leery about your oil use and what that might mean - if my boiler was using that much oil for just DHW, the first thing I would be suspicious of is an unseen oil leak somewhere (which could have catastrophic implications). Is the tank outside or inside? Age? Line condition?