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Harnessing America's heat pump moment
- themafia 11mo ago[flagged]
- micromacrofoot 11mo agoThis is outdatated nonsense, I had my system installed 10 years ago and it works down to -15F... even the cheap $1k systems on Amazon work below freezing now Like any piece of equipment, just check the specs before you buy...
- happytoexplain 11mo agoIt's semi-true even with modern systems and shouldn't be outright dismissed as "nonsense". A normal person is scared of the prospect of losing heating when it's most needed. -15F accounts for many places in the US, but many others, not so much. Even New Jersey, which we don't think of as the frigid North, can theoretically drop below that number, and nobody wants "almost always" when it comes to life-giving heat in the coldest winter.
- micromacrofoot 11mo agoI live north of New Jersey by 300 miles and have only used a heat pump for winter heating for 10 years
- eldaisfish 11mo agono, this is complete nonsense and should be dismissed as such. People being "scared" is how north america ended up with vehicles the size of tanks. The vast majority of cold climate heat pumps work down to - 20 C in most cases and down to -30 with better models.
- quickthrowman 11mo agoWhat’s the COP at -15F? It’s probably close to 1, which means you’re paying for resistive heat which happens to be the most expensive possible way to heat something up.
- RealityVoid 11mo agoJust checked the spec of mine at -10degC. It's a bit over 3.
- quickthrowman 11mo agoThat’s +15F, what’s the COP at -26C?
- RealityVoid 11mo agoWhoops, my bad when doing the transformation. It won't work that low, only down to 20degC and at that point it probably approaches 1. Lucky me, the temps never dropped to under 19degC in the last 20 years in my area. So I'm probably going to be fine.
- SigmundA 11mo agoA Mitsubishi Hyper-heat MXZ-4C36NAHZ for instance has a COP of 2.12 at -13F outdoor temp and 70F indoor temp.
- quickthrowman 11mo agoThat’s actually a lot better than I expected, thanks!
- micromacrofoot 11mo agoYeah most places aren't consistently -15F, not going to be a dealbreaker for a week. If you live in Minnesota stick with gas, we'll be ok. The majority of the population will never hit -15F.
- Centigonal 11mo agoCold climate heat pumps have improved a lot, even in the last 10 years. Modern models can maintain comfortable temperatures down to -15F (-26C). Lots of happy customers in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/comments/146jg7k/cold_climate_heat_pump_owners_what_model_did_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/comments/146jg7k/cold_cli...
- themafia 11mo ago> I’ve tested it down to around -5 degrees (f), and it was 100% able to keep the house above 63 degree (f). Some customers will accept that. Most will not. Reddit is not a particularly representative sample of the entire market.
- hitarpetar 11mo agook, Reddit is not representative. what qualifies you to speak for what customers will accept?
- themafia 11mo agoI spent 5 years installing and maintaining A/C equipment for residences and a few small commercial locations.
- eldaisfish 11mo agoand if you believe that heat pumps do not work below freezing temperatures, you are part of the reason why misinformation keeps spreading. You should know better. You should be ashamed to be spreading straight up lies.
- christophilus 11mo ago63 when it’s -5 out seems totally fine. More than fine for much of the US.
- 11mo ago
- arrowleaf 11mo agoThe physics of heat pumps disagrees with you. The freezing point of water has no bearing on at what point they become less effective.
- themafia 11mo agoHeat pumps lose efficiency as it gets colder. There are no laws of physics which contradict this.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoThe relevant laws of physics operate in Kelvin. 60°F is 288 K. -20°F is 244 K. These are not that far apart.
- SigmundA 11mo agoNot exactly true, one of the main issues with heat pumps in cold weather is the outside coil freezing up with ice blocking airflow due to them being below the freezing point of water. This is actually why older heat pumps became less effective around 40F because the coils would start to hit 32F since they are attempting to pull heat from the warmer outside air and are therefore colder than the outside air. There are various solutions to this problem, the standard way is to run it in reverse as a air conditioner for a short period if it detects the situation to defrost the coils and if the system has resistive heat strips it uses those to warm the air that is being cooled. This obviously reduces the efficiency of the system the more it has to defrost and may not be very comfortable to the users. Cold weather heat pumps work better in drier climates due to this as well because the lower the outside humidity the slower frost will form on the outside coils. Some cool weather heat pumps will have two compressor units and fans and alternate between them with one defrosting the other, there are many other tricks they are using to prevent frost buildup and continue working above COP 1 far below freezing.
- stevemk14ebr 11mo agoEven at 0F most modern heat pumps produce heat at a COP greater than 2. This means you get twice the rate of heat generation than a typical electric space heater. You are out of date, and wrong.
- discoutdynamite 11mo agoYep, you get what you pay for. They've started fielding systems that will handle extremes much better, but you dont get that kind of performance without tradeoffs. cascade systems, 200psi r600, 450psi CO2, refrigeration systems are an engineering game irl. They require much more experience to design, setup, and charge correctly. The biggest issue I have with heat pumps for life support heating/cooling, is they have so many single points of failure its scary. Compressors can and will die if anything else in the system goes too far out of the intended cycle. Extreme weather moments or natural disasters can physically break condensors, evaporators, and lines. Electrical surges can and will fry computers, inverters, and controllers. And almost none of those can be serviced on your own. t. certified
- RealityVoid 11mo agoThat is true only for air heat source. And even those work in below freezing (the one I have works down to -20degC) but as you say... with diminishing returns. Still, checking the technical spec, it says that at -15 degC it heats up a tad under 3x as much energy it uses. Pretty good I would say!
- thinkcontext 11mo agoYou see this opinion a lot in the US, probably a result of Fox and its ilk. As the article mentions, somehow Nordic countries and Canada manage to use them. There's been good uptake in places like Maine which is good news. Its true retrofits are a tough sell and natural gas is really cheap here. It would help if the US took insulation more seriously. But for someone with oil or electric resistance its definitely a big win.
- joshvm 11mo agoBelow freezing is a concern that everyone has in Northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia which has very high per-capita adoption. The units might be harder to find in the US, but they definitely exist. If you can afford it, and have the land access, you could install a ground-source pump which should benefit from more stable temperatures. As with all heating/cooling, these systems work best if your house is well insulated. That's a much bigger problem in the UK, and I imagine the US too, especially in places where solar gain requires a huge amount of A/C usage. [1] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00351-3 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00351-3
- bluGill 11mo agoNorthern Europe tends to have a mild climate in the places where people live. The Northern US is significantly south, yet gets significantly colder winters. There are places in Europe that get worse than the Northern US - but they are places where few people live and so not normally what you are talking about when talking about Europe. Though good heat pumps are hard to find in the northern US. Most installers only know of gas furnace + A/C, and don't even try to install anything else. As you get farther south in the US heat pumps become common, but there it rarely gets much below freezing and so they don't need backup heating systems at all.
- eldaisfish 11mo agothat's odd because Ontario and Quebec are colder than most of the US and just these two provinces account for about one million heat pump installs per year since 2020.
- bluGill 11mo agoHeat pumps can work great in the northern us. However the experience of europe mostly doesn't apply. You need backup heat of some sort to use a heat pump.
- eldaisfish 11mo ago
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoThe backup system can be resistive heaters which are inexpensive and low maintenance, and their lower efficiency isn't that big a deal when you're only using them 2% of the time.
- galoisscobi 11mo ago> we’re waiting on people Right on. I have a heat pump water heater and a heat pump heating system in my HVAC. Getting those installed felt like swimming upstream. Most contractors would try to dissuade me from them. Luckily, I found a contractor who was skilled and knowledgeable about heat pumps and rebates (back when govt thought climate change was real). Very happy with my heat pump tech.
- jbm 11mo agoI had a similar problem too. Was unable to find anyone who was willing to quote me on a heatpump when I was installing my air conditioner. I assume it will be better in 5-10 years when I have to replace them.
- Spooky23 11mo agoUnlikely. Private equity is swooping in, especially in places like New York that have taken bizarre regulatory stances against gas. In my area, about 75% of the HVAC companies have been swept up. Prices are up 75-150%. I got my gas furnace replaced to to beat the ban, and had a fireman who works a side gig do the job for $15k. The bids from the companies ranged from $25-85k
- bamboozled 11mo agoWe have the same setup , we love it.
- brendoelfrendo 11mo agoI guess I lucked out; our house had a (very old) whole-home (that is, ducted) heat pump system for heating and cooling when we moved in. When it was time to replace, our local contractor knew exactly what we needed. They even do mini-splits, had we wanted one.
- Glyptodon 11mo agoDo newer ones somehow not need ducts? Edit: (or so you mean mini splits?)
- micromacrofoot 11mo agoOur local installers seem to be taking advantage of the moment quite a bit, install costs are have skyrocketed over the past decade... double what I paid when the market started heating up. But at least the techs seem more knowledgeable, when I first had my system installed it seemed like they had no clue how they even worked.
- andrewvc 11mo agoOne other challenge is for existing homes a water heater may only have a gas line running to it. Want a heat pump hot water heater? Hiring the electrician alone, not to mention potentially ripping up walls will ruin any economic advantage.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- atrus 11mo agoA possible challenge, yes, but there exist 1500w, standard outlet hpwh, and it's a lot less common to not have any power near a water heater.
- quickthrowman 11mo agoA 1500W electric water heater would be painful to use in a home. A typical 30-60 gallon EWH is 6kW. And for the record, every single natural gas water heater is connected to 120V power for the ignition circuit.
- SigmundA 11mo agoa 1500W heat pump water heater with a COP around 3 will put 5500 watts of heat into the water. My Rheem hybrid 220v heat pump water heater only has a 500w compressor but puts 1500-2000 watts of heat into the water pulling it from the hot garage. I have the choice to run it in high demand mode which will run both the heat pump and electric 4500w element for around 6kw of heat into the water if I need fast recovery.
- harshreality 11mo agoI think this is right... kwatts_effective [kJ/s] * heating_time_minutes [min] * 60 [s/min] * COP = 4.184 [kJ/kg/K] * (T₁-T₀) [K] * gallon_capacity [gal] * 3.785 [L/gal] * 1 [kg/L] 6.6 kW, for... COP 4, T₁-T₀ = 30 [K] (lower value for warm climate), allowable 30 minute heating time, 50 gallon capacity. A cold climate could double that power requirement, or alternatively double the heating time.
- nsxwolf 11mo agoWhen I needed a new air conditioner I looked into heat pumps. 3x the price.
- wffurr 11mo agoThat's crazy. It's a reversing valve. But you might also be comparing multi-stage variable load DC heat pumps with single stage air conditioners and not an actually equivalent air conditioner.
- jjtheblunt 11mo agoor local sellers are incentivized profitably to push old technology air conditioners?
- prlambert 11mo agoThat seems really weird, the only real difference is a reversing valve that costs a couple bucks. A heat pump is an AC, it just can be run backwards to produce heating as well. In cooling it's literally the same thing.
- bluGill 11mo agoI know, but I don't make the price lists.
- thinkcontext 11mo agoI'm no expert but the difference in the real world is more than that (though am doubtful about 3x the price) . The delta-T between heating and cooling is significantly greater in most places so you need a bigger system. You also need things like the ability to de-ice.
- supportengineer 11mo agoThat's the upfront price. What about the total cost of ownership (TCO)?
- 11mo ago
- mithr 11mo agoElectricity costs are a big factor in this, imo. Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my existing gas heating in place and automatically switching to it when it gets cold enough). I was also told that the electrical grid in my area is having difficulty keeping up with the push towards heat pumps, which increase load exactly on the coldest nights of the year, when you need heating most.
- VWWHFSfQ 11mo agoA heat pump just makes no sense whatsoever for me in my northeast town. The electric bill alone would outpace the old propane bill, not to mention installation. And it won't even work during some of the coldest winter weeks when you _really_ need it to work. Maybe I would consider it if I was in, like, Nevada or somewhere.
- corbet 11mo agoMy heat pump, in Colorado, kept the house warm at -18°F last winter. Without firing up the backup resistance heating strip. I think it works. (It is more expensive to operate than the natural-gas furnace was, though).
- skywhopper 11mo agoInsulation matters as well and I’m guessing your Colorado house is far newer and better sealed than most New England homes.
- doctorhandshake 11mo agoThe notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.
- blahedo 11mo agoPeople are reluctant to install them because they don't work as well as the good old boilers we'd be replacing. I'm not saying they can't, and I'm not saying that there are zero models out there that work. But in practice, a lot of us that have interacted with heat pumps have the specific experience that they get anemic as the temperature goes down and eventually become unable to do much of anything. I live in the mid-Atlantic (US) climate zone, where it's certainly not as cold as the north but definitely goes well below freezing regularly for several months of the year. The place I've lived for 15 years had a heat pump and a (oil) boiler with radiators, and when it was below 40°F (~5°C) I had to switch to the radiators. It's because it's old, everybody told me, modern heat pumps are better! So last year when both systems needed repairs at the same time, I not-entirely-willingly switched to a brand-new 2024-model heat pump. It absolutely could not keep up when the temperature was freezing until they came back and installed resistive heat strips for low temperature---these seem to be a fancy version of the heating elements in a space heater or a toaster. They do not seem to be particularly efficient. And to the extent that my "heat pump system" does now more or less keep the house adequately warm, if not as comfortable as the radiators always could, it's not solely due to the heat pump, but the other stuff they had to put in because the heat pump couldn't keep up. My experience is far from unique. Maybe it's that they only install the good ones in farther-north locations! Maybe it's that the good ones are just way more expensive! I'm perfectly prepared to believe the factual statements about the physics and the tech. But if we're talking about perception and "why aren't more people looking to install heat pumps", it's because lots of people have experiences like the above, and that is what the industry needs to work on.
- lbotos 11mo agoWhat brand and was it sized for winter load? Im in NY, 6 heads across 3 floors with 2 heads per outdoor unit. 2500sf covered. Mitsubishi h2i (i think im on my phone). Get plenty warm in the winter as my sole heat source. I could have gotten smaller outdoor units and had resistive backup but I didn’t want that.
- maxerickson 11mo agoHow is the insulation in the house? Poor insulation and an undersized system will be a bad experience regardless of the heat source.
- Glyptodon 11mo agoI live in a heat pump only house and the only thing I don't really love are mid summer electric bills, but I think that'd basically be the same with a dedicated AC. In my climate heat is more nice than complete necessity and usually only spikes bills if there are true hard freezes. I will say, they seem to have gotten more expensive. It took about $10k to replace ours (it was over 20 years old and replacing coolant+fixing was quoted at nearly half that). Even though research suggested it could be more like a $6.5 to $7.5k cost, it was hard to even get people quoting in a timely manner, let alone getting any kind of a deal.
- prlambert 11mo agoCool to see a Heat Pump article near the top of HN! I'm the founder/CEO of Quilt (https://www.quilt.com/ https://www.quilt.com/), which is mentioned in the article, and a decade+ daily reader of this fine site. At Quilt we've run the Nest playbook for ductless heat pumps as our first product. The plan is to do what Tesla did for automotive to the built environment infrastructure category (HVAC, plumbing, etc) and create the first major American manufacturer in a ~century. The article has bullet #1 in problems to solve as "Contractors who default to what they know." This was one of my founding hypotheses to and it turns out I was wrong, this was the hardest won learning yet at Quilt. We originally were fully vertically integrated and had our own installation force because of this reason – we wanted to solve all the big problems, thought contractors were one of them, and so had to become a contractor. But we quickly saw we were getting in the way of our own mission to accelerate the energy transition (because we had far far more demand than we could scale operations to reach it). So in March we (initially cautiously) switched partnering with existing contractors and I have been delighted by the industry reception. There are so so many existing contractors who want modern tech and see working with us as a breath of fresh air. I definitely sold them short and in retrospect it was naive and even a little elitist. Happy to answer anything more. Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we're growing super fast and just posted an Embedded Software Engineer role: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/quilt/jobs/4952684007 https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/quilt/jobs/4952684007 :)
- ssuds 11mo agoHey Paul! Good to see ya on here. I'm in a Facebook group of small HVAC contractors, and recently there was a conversation about who is installing heat pumps vs traditional ACs and furnaces. I was thrilled to see that most were saying that they are moving a lot of their business toward heat pumps. Of course, there were a few that were stuck in their ways and were "gas or die" type people, but it's exciting to see the ship slowly starting to turn. There are more and more heat pump forward contractors coming online every day, and it's great that we can team up with folks like you pushing the hardware forward. There is so much work to deploy these systems, and winning is going to look like all of us working together!
- commandersaki 11mo agoIs Heat Pump the same as what Australian's would call a Split System?
- ssuds 11mo agoYes! Also often referred to as "Reverse Cycle Air Conditioning" in Australia
- JeremyPOsborne 11mo ago:)
- estimator7292 11mo agoSplit system is a common term that covers both heat pumps and traditional AC systems. It has to do with the physical setup, not the theory of operation. A heat pump specifically is an AC system that can run in reverse: moving heat from outside to inside.
- bluGill 11mo agoWhen I replaced my furnace a couple years back I asked for a heat pump - a previous house had it and it worked great. Turns out my contractor didn't ask the right questions and so mine only works to 25F - it still outputs heat below that, but not enough to keep my house warm and so I use the backup furnace a lot more than I want to. A previous house the heat pump was sized to work to 14F. They make them that will work down to -25F, but since it gets to -30f where I live (about once every 10 years, but that is enough) we need a backup system so is probably isn't worth getting a system sized to as cold as possible. Ground source heat pumps are a common option in rural areas - they cost a lot to install ($50k - and this is the cheapest version that needs a lot of land thus rural areas). They are likely to pay off if you live in the same house for 50 years, but the initial upfront costs are high (you do get a house worth $10k more than other heat option). Worth looking into if you are young and have reason to think you will live in the same house for 50 years.
- switchbak 11mo agoIt's really amazing how often I hear that same story: poor choices by the installer left the home owner in a bind with a poorly functioning system. The industry (certainly the residential side) really does need better educated installers/planners. Even as a homeowner who's a bit of an energy geek, it's entirely too challenging to understand the entire space and what options fit one's needs. LLM's help a lot here (if you can trust them!), but it's a funny situation where there's silos of knowledge that are hard to connect.
- bluGill 11mo agoThe system works well - just not how I want it. I was expecting to need the gas heat 1-2 weeks per year not 2-3 months.
- glxxyz 11mo agoI'm amazed at these prices, I replaced a propane tank + furnace with horizontal loop ground source for $40k Canadian (+ tax, but government rebate matched that). It's almost paid for itself in about 6 years, I gave more detailed numbers in another reply.
- quickthrowman 11mo agoIt’s very hard to say whether heat pumps are cheaper than NG for heating. I pay about $0.25 per 100k BTUs which is about 3kWh. 3kWh costs about 50 cents. As long as the COP is above 2, it’s cheaper to run the heat pump. Once you factor in an electrician and pipefitter for installing a heat pump, plus the cost of the heat pump, refrigerant, and furnace coil, I’d imagine you lose money in the long run. If you then additionally include the strain on the grid from all these new data centers without enough generation capacity, I’ll stick with natural gas for heating air and water.
- SigmundA 11mo agoIts not hard to say at all, the math can be done pretty easily based on your local electric and gas rates, and most people who go for a heat pump already need an air conditioner for summer. The math actually works out in many places unless you have cheap gas and expensive electricity. Its also better then to burn the gas at a power plant at 60% efficiency then 300-400% efficiency at the heat pump than pipe and burn the NG at 80% efficiency in your furnace.
- quickthrowman 11mo ago> Its not hard to say at all, the math can be done pretty easily based on your local electric and gas rates, and most people who go for a heat pump already need an air conditioner for summer. I went on to do the math for operating costs for myself in the very next sentence. Excluding labor and material to replace a furnace with a heat pump, operating costs are lower as long as the heat pump has a COP of 2 or higher. Predicting future electricity and gas prices is virtually impossible but it is possible to quantify how much it costs to convert a natural gas furnace to a heat pump system at present. I’m saying it’s difficult to know at the present time if the TCO of the heat pump beats out natural gas. Where I live in Minnesota, I’m skeptical you’d come out ahead. In a state like Arkansas or Tennessee, the heat pump is likely to come out ahead due to lower heating needs.
- SigmundA 11mo agoRecently went with heat pump water heater and cloths dryer, very significant energy savings and they both work great using around 1/3 the energy. Most of my energy is for HVAC cooling in the south and that is already a heat pump. The house is well insulated and also have solar so along with the water heater and dryer I am around net zero in mid summer and and now that temperature is more mild I am producing much more than using even with one EV as well. It really nice to have an all electric house along with at least one car and a large solar backup system I am pretty self contained and don't really have to change anything if grid goes down.
- TimTheTinker 11mo agoNearly 2 years ago, we had a small tornado come through, taking out our electricity for a week. During that time, it was snowy and the outdoor temperature was well below freezing (it reached about -10°C (12°F) at night). Keeping my family warm was a real struggle that week. The next spring, I went to Costco and bought a big tri-power generator and wired up a generator interlock on the electric panel. Now if we lose power, we can run the natural gas furnace & blower with no problems. I can also power the generator from my home's natural gas supply instead of making frequent trips for gasoline. So I'd say heck no to swapping the natural gas furnace for a heat pump. I'd much rather use natural gas to power both the generator and the furnace/blower than risk needing more electricity to keep my family warm than my setup can handle.
- switchbak 11mo agoDon't you still need a generator to run the blower and the logic on the furnace? I mean, obviously a much lower power load, but wouldn't a generator still be necessary?
- TimTheTinker 11mo agoOf course. My point was that unlike my natural gas furnace + blower, a heat pump would be more than what my portable generator could handle.
- Marsymars 11mo agoThe math on natural gas generators gets weird in places with cheap gas and expensive electricity, to the point where it can sometimes be cheaper to generate your own electricity from natural gas than to purchase from the grid.
- TimTheTinker 11mo agoAll this push to electrify everything makes me nervous, as it effectively centralizes a lever that someone evil enough could use to coerce the general public in unsavory ways. I'm doubly suspicious of areas that combine mass-electrification with reducing availability of the most reliable alternate source of electricity (i.e. generators). California in particular is pushing to make generators increasingly hard to obtain.
- supportengineer 11mo ago>> someone evil enough There's so much evil being demonstrated today, in real time, that we can't dismiss this any more, it must be seriously considered.
- crote 11mo agoWhat makes you believe the same doesn't already apply to natural gas, or petrol? Besides, coercing the general public like that generally doesn't end well: people tend to get annoyed when their basic needs of survival aren't being met - especially if it is a deliberate choice. The people in power will be gone within days.
- TimTheTinker 11mo agoModern coercion happens far more subtly and less overtly than it did in 20th century totalitarian regimes. The proletariat isn't the only group that learned lessons from that period of time.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- bethekidyouwant 11mo agoI moved from gas boiler to electric years ago and would like to move to an electric heat pump hybrid, but it doesn’t exist. Moment lost.
- LgWoodenBadger 11mo agoWhat do you mean when you say “heat pump hybrid?”
- bethekidyouwant 11mo agoWell, they have electric boilers, gas boilers, and gas/heat pump hybrid boilers. but not restive/heat pump hybrids. (for houses heated with hot water) I suppose this is because the return temperature to the boiler is already 50 Celsius so the heat pump can’t help you at all Edit: Oh actually, I was wrong.(and I guess it makes sense. It would suffer the same problems as an electric hybrid) There is no hybrid gas heat pump for hydronic heating. Basically my entire city is hydronic heating so heat pumps are not an option. However a bunch of my neighbours have heat pumps and I suppose it’s just heating one room in their house and it’s not even connected to the thermostat of their hydronic heater in any way.. Seems pretty silly to me. At least you get an air conditioner out of the deal so that you can use more electricity in the summer.
- sokoloff 11mo agoThere are air-to-water heat pumps that can run hydronic heating (even radiators, though underfloor is a better match due to the lower return temps). You can then make your own hybrid with a resistive electric boiler or a gas boiler wired to second-stage or emergency heat. My 1920s house with radiators and terrible insulation outside of Boston runs with return water temps in the low 90s in shoulder season and 120°F when it’s 12°F outside, using outdoor-reset/weather-compensation. Those return temps are entirely compatible with air-to-water heat pumps. (And result in 22-24 hour run times per day, which makes for extremely comfortable heat, despite the generally lacking insulation.) I don’t have one because HVAC contractors are living in the 1990s and want to do a 3-hour, 2-person combi boiler install for $10K in profit rather than think through how to do anything unusual.
- supportengineer 11mo agoI'm thankful to live in the Bay Area. One time we took a trip in the dead of winter. We turned off our heat completely. We were gone for a week. The coldest it got inside the house was 55 degrees.
- kridsdale3 11mo agoCongratulations?
- DazWilkin 11mo agoI live in a community in the Pacific Northwest that was built in 2018 and (almost) every home (22/23) has (Carrier) heat pumps; for some unknown reason, the other has heated floors. Many of us are proponents of heat pumps thanks to reduced costs and emissions *but* we've not had a generally good experience possibly (!) as a result of bad installation and definitely due to limited numbers of indoor heads (if I close my main bedroom door, the rest of my upper floor has no heating/cooling). There's always someone in the community frustrated that their house is too cold/hot, that the condensation drains are blocked and water is running down an interior wall, that an indoor head or the condenser is having problems, or that there's unexplained coolant leak. People moving into the community are inheriting issues with at least 2 homes having to augment/replace the system. To save breaking into the walls, this often necessitates putting the power, coolant and drainage lines on the outside of the house and then boxing the result. We're saving money on monthly bills (probably; we don't have a comp) but many of us have spent quite some $$$ on maintenance and replacement equipment.
- nine_k 11mo agoLooks like poor installation. I've spent 1.5 years in a brand-new building with Mitsubishi heat pumps. It had some initial trouble with a faulty electronic component, but afterwards it worked quite fine, needing little if any attention.
- delfugal 11mo agoInstalled a Minisplit to heat/cool a 1,000 sqft large work area. My average monthly electricity cost is maybe $30 to heat or cool. The tech in these are amazing.
- danielodievich 11mo agoRight as COVID lockdowns were starting in early 2020, our gas furnace reached the state of nearly broken and would have been unfixable if it finally broke. We called local HVAC for a quote and they convinced that instead of simply replacing the furnace, we should get full-house air conditioning with electric heat pump with gas furnace backup. We agreed and what was amazing was that they wanted to install it the NEXT DAY. Unprecedented speed. This was because it was COVID and everyone was stopping construction projects etc. Their technicians were ready to go and needed all the work. Next day wasn't good so we installed it the next next day. 4 burly guys, all masked and gloved, did it all in just a few hours. Our friends trying to do the same couple of years ago had to wait months for installation. We've been enjoying AC since then, a lot. I think it cost about $13k for heat pump and furnace and labor, maybe a bit more with tax, and I got ~1.7k rebate/refund of some sorts? Or 1.3k? I don't fully recall why but it must have been government sponsored. My ongoing energy costs are about the same, but the mix completely switched from gas to electricity. I cook with gas so there is just a bit every month, but virtually no heating with it, the gas hardly ever starts except in the height of winter. If I only had solar to feed it with sun, but the house location with shade, hill and trees isn't suited for it. Instead I pay a little extra to energy company to presumably source my electricity from solar. Works.
- kragen 11mo ago> what it’s going to take, from the human side of the equation, to make heat pumps the obvious, accessible, and default choice for millions of American homes. Well, this has already happened; living in a third-world American country, I've been heating my houses in winter with heat pumps every winter for many years (even though they iced up occasionally) and most air conditioners here are already heat pumps. Frio/calor, they're called. But, installations strictly for heating are probably never going to happen en masse. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698730 I analyze the costs. It turns out that heat pumps cost around 39¢ per peak watt they save, while low-cost solar panels cost 6.5¢ per peak watt they produce, so it's almost always cheaper to install enough solar panels to heat your house resistively. And that gap is going to continue widening for the foreseeable future. Our heat pump, a cheap-shit Electrolux mini split assembled in Tierra del Fuego, broke down last winter; somehow the refrigerant escaped. The repairman did a pressure test with nitrogen but couldn't find a link. He pre-emptively soldered shut a pipe that had been crimped shut at the factory, and pointed out that, probably, if we hadn't been using it as a heat pump, it would have been fine. Certainly it would have had many fewer hours of operation. We ended up spending about US$100 on the repair, which is the price of 1500 peak watts of solar panels. I think that brings us to about US$500 total spent on the thing—insignificant to people in the US, but a significant chunk of change in most of the rest of America. Heat pumps are an energy-crisis-era efficiency measure to conserve energy. But energy is no longer scarce. After 50 years, the energy crisis is, if not ended, at least ending. If your house's solar panels are producing more energy than you can use or sell back to the grid at a decent price, the energy to run a resistive heater is free.
- gwbas1c 11mo agoRemember: The season that you need heat is the season with the least sunshine. Solar is only cheap as you claim due to net metering; without pairing it with batteries or some other form of storage, you're pushing your heating cost on others by flooding the grid with electricity when it isn't needed. Now, I will gladly point out that I have a roof of solar panels, and benefit from subsidies: It's important to understand that solar currently is unsustainable economically and will only be sustainable with more R&D on storage.
- jasonthorsness 11mo agoI’ve had a heat pump with backup gas in Seattle area since 2016. Great to have AC and heat; the gas comes on when house needs to be warmed quickly. I like constant air circulation and have it set so fan runs even when it doesn’t need to heat or cool so it works really well for me; no complaints at all.
- jdkee 11mo agoDid ChatGPT write this?
- gwbas1c 11mo agoMy mini-split was installed sometime between fall 2017 or spring 2018 when my house was built. It failed when it was 6 years old, and the lineset had to be replaced because there was too much acid in the insulation and it corroded the copper. The problem was that the lineset was in my walls, so replacing it would require ugly lineset in a highly-visible place on my house. All the quotes to fix / replace it were absurdly expensive. Because the mini-split was for a room that I use occasionally, I just use a portable air conditioner and a space heater.
- ssuds 11mo agoQuality control by the contractor is soooo important. Formicary corrosion like you described can happen if a contractor doesn't pull a proper vacuum on the system to evacuate moisture before releasing refrigerant. I saw an anecdote where Bill Spohn, who literally owns an HVAC tools company, had this happen with the contractor installing a system in his own house! (https://www.heatpumped.org/p/are-heat-pumps-a-commodity https://www.heatpumped.org/p/are-heat-pumps-a-commodity) I suspect it's especially bad with new builds, as new builds are a race to the bottom and every subcontractor is fighting to get the lowest bid. The best way to make it cheaper is skip steps, and that hurts in the long run. Sorry you ended up in that situation, crummy experiences like this set the industry back. For what it's worth, the same corrosion could happen with a traditional AC system too (it's not just heat pumps). But the difference is, often those refrigerant lines don't get as hidden on interior walls as the ones for ductless mini-splits do.
- the_cat_kittles 11mo agopretty sure the white insulation on the lineset, when exposed to moisture and UV, can create an acid that eats the copper. thats probably what happened
- gwbas1c 11mo agoIt was a manufacturing problem with the lineset: https://minisplit-services.com/blog/f/why-is-white-line-set-failing-so-commonly https://minisplit-services.com/blog/f/why-is-white-line-set-... > The white insulation material, typically made of polyethylene or similar compounds, was found to degrade prematurely when exposed to UV radiation. According to my contractor, this was a problem with lineset manufactured in 2016 and a little after. All of the HVAC companies that I called understood the "white lineset" problem.
- danielsju6 11mo agoMaybe I have scar tissue from COVID prices but $20k to install a ductless heat pump vs. a $200 to throw a window A/C in or $700 for a portable heat pump. While I get that these heat pumps are better for the environment and much more efficient it's a last mile issue. The installers charge an arm and a leg and I'm not hurting enough to self install. I'm hoping the window heat pumps that just run off mains will be available to more markets soon, I could buy one of those for every room in my house for less than the install on a single mini split. Where it did make sense was when I was getting solar. It was only a few thousand since I already had the trades out and reducing the load was important for the ROI on the panels.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- chongli 11mo agoThis is talking about cold-climate heat pumps. A $200 window AC isn't going to heat your house when it's way below freezing outside. $20k USD is insane though. I live in Ontario and we paid $12k CAD (pre-government subsidy) for a modern heat pump with a backup high efficiency furnace for when temperatures dip down to -40 or lower.
- dzhiurgis 11mo agoActually its probably most efficient way because you have best control. That said having whole house ducted you also get benefit of fresh air via ERV (arguably more important than heating).
- danielsju6 11mo agoTrue. We have natural gas and an existing steam radiator setup though, for the two months a year window heat pumps can't keep up. The upfront investment alone would heat my house for 10-20 years. Honestly, just piling more insulation in the attic and doing an energy audit will probably put the ROI out another 10+ years... I'm hoping the newer window units that are being rolled out to the NYC market will be good enough to put downward pressure on the outrageous prices in the installation market. Or maybe I'll just dedicate a weekend to DIYing :P
- vagab0nd 11mo ago> The barrier isn’t the tech. It’s people. Maybe? Or maybe the tech is not superior enough (considering the overhead) so nobody cares.
- coopr 11mo agoWe love helping folks save on heat pumps with our free, expert analysis and live advice service https://www.QuitCarbon.com https://www.QuitCarbon.com - check it out?
- cwillu 11mo agoOnly if you write a haiku about the site guidelines first.
- Animats 11mo agoEverybody seems to agree that installation costs way too much. There's a few parts to this. Everything has to be carefully sized - power, pipe sizes, unit locations. You need to put a house's thermal profile (how much heat loss, how much air leak, how much thermal mass) along with the regional thermal profile into an engineering calculation which computes what you need. Thermographic inspections are a thing.[1] Usual price is around $400. They're not very standardized. You get IR images of a house, which is good for finding leaks but not quantitative enough to size a heating and cooling plant. This would be a great drone application. Fly over and around the house. Build a 3D model of the house and paint heat loss on top of it. Crunch on data to get the engineering info needed to correctly size HVAC. Also discover big heat leak points. Turn this from experienced guessing into measurement. Then submit that data sheet to multiple sites that offer heat pumps. Startup opportunity here. [1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/thermographic-inspections https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/thermographic-inspections
- mastax 11mo agoIsn’t it important to right-size non-heat-pump installs anyway? Too large a system causes short cycling, humidity problems, temperature swings. I have read installers habitually guesstimate over size to over charge (rather than do the proper calculations).
- EngCanMan 11mo agoThe reality is that this is all solving a problem that people don’t have. Forced air is a terrible way to heat a building yet thats how most homes are heated, and it is good enough for most people. If you perfectly size a furnace for the coldest days of the year, it is now oversized for the other 90% of days. The cheapest way is to install a multi stage heating/cooling system that works on first stage most of the time, and second when it needs to, like having 2 small furnaces. This passes the ‘good enough’ test for the vast majority of homeowners.
- vecter 11mo agoAre you just referring to a two-stage AC/furnace?
- code4life 11mo agoI don’t believe they last as long as a natural gas boiler, so the total cost of ownership needs to take that into account. They now make really efficient refrigerators for your kitchen that you get to throw out every 2-5 years.
- OneOffAsk 11mo agoI recently installed a mini split heat pump in a detached accessory building. The installer upsold me on a more expensive unit because I’d get federal refunds due to its higher SEER rating. Ok, sure: higher efficiency, same price. In fact, efficiency was the main reason I wanted a mini split in the first place. It just bugged me to _not_ pump the heat entirely outside the structure. And I paid a bit more for that versus just using a window unit or “portable” AC. All we’re talking here is the location of the condenser coil: inside versus outside. It just makes sense to put it outside, with just a small penetration in the building. Well, during electrical inspection apparently I paid too much. After paying more than a certain threshold for converting an unconditioned space to a conditioned space, I now need to insulate the accessory structure to a certain degree in order to pass code. The kicker is, the only way I can insulate the space to meet code is to insulate with polyiso (aka styrofoam) because the structure is so small. So, I guess in an effort to be “green” according to local government, I need to rip out the mineral wool insulation, dump it and replace it with styrofoam. Or put the mini split in the dump and buy a cheaper less efficient unit like a window unit. I’d save approximately $0.30 a year on energy costs to insulate to code versus what I have now with the mini split. This whole industry is stupid and that’s because it’s regulated by idiots. Name and shame: this is Chapel Hill, NC.
- abakker 11mo agoI’ll just say that most of the core issues with heat pumps seems to resolved with monoblock designs. Specifically, by moving the refrigerant cycle outdoors, install can be cheaper, and capacity can be more variable than when you are relying on sizing to the phase change occurring in each indoor unit.
- neltnerb 11mo agoI've got to throw out an obvious explanation. A third of the country rents. Renters pay the utility bills. Landlords pay for appliance upgrades. Why would the landlord put any effort into upgrading appliances when the cost of not upgrading them is borne by the renters? I've never rented at a place where they didn't want to fix broken equipment with the cheapest possible replacement. And no renter would ever consider purchasing a major appliance like this since they'll end up priced out before they recover the cost in utility bills. They're a nice technology, but our incentives are all wrong for a lot of housing stock.
- kortilla 11mo agoThen why aren’t they in 2/3 of houses
- edg5000 11mo agoThey are efficient but do not have as high of an energy output as a smaller and cheaper gas furnaice. Apart from that, the water temperature is lower, so you need much larger radiators. Due to the lower energy output, you also need better insulation or a relatively massive heat pump. And the tech was not around 20 years ago (for reasons unknown to me).
- CalRobert 11mo agoIs there a reason to use radiators and not just go straight to air to air pumps, which also have aircon?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- neltnerb 11mo agoFrom context I can't tell if they mean the heated coils in a heat pump head, or somehow connecting to a traditional radiator. In older homes there isn't necessarily HVAC at all and instead there are actual radiators. I've lived in two like that, there is just no forced air to rooms.
- fulafel 11mo agoInteresting to view this from the POV of the fossil fuel usage rampdown needed because to mitigate the climate catastrophe. It seems that the fact that a lot of people have utility gas over there, and low price of gas due to regulation (no externalities taxed in) is the big one.
- taneq 11mo agoTrying to translate this terminology into normal Aussie speak here. :P So a “heat pump” is reverse cycle aircon, I’m guessing it’s usually a central unit ducted to each room? Am I right in thinking that “mini split” is what we’d call a “split system” (ie. wall unit inside, heat exchanger outside, refrigerant pipes running between)? Is there a power cutoff above which it’s no longer mini, or is anything non-ducted a mini split?
- tefkah 11mo ago> This piece isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about understanding why we’re not using the wheel we already have— common man please just write the text yourself
- monssooon 11mo agoQuestion: I have just bought house and deciding heatpump vs oil. We have an autistic person in the house hold that is very sensitive to high frequency noises and perpetual sounds in general. He is used to an oil furnace turning on and of. I fear for sound pollution from a heat pump. Will anyone share their experiences with this? Even just a shuttle humming would be a disaster for our spectrum case. Can we get a completely silent setup ?
- otsegony 11mo agoI don’t know whether you can get a completley silent unit, but I can say that our Mitsubishi heat pump does make a high pitched sound while running. Although I am used to it now, I found it annoying until I got used to it. It is very different than the intermittent low pitched rumble of my oil boiler.
- monssooon 11mo agoThanks. Yeah I heard others say the same. And that the sound can increase as the system gets older...
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoMissed opportunity to discuss GSHPs and instead pushes electric HPs because it's a business blog masquerading as a .org to push product. And also, contractors and maintenance shops push products that minimize their costs and maximize their profits. It's also why private equity owns effectively every high voltage motor capacitor manufacturer in the US and why those capacitors have such short lives now. It's not about minimizing TCO, it's about maximizing customer dependency upon service and parts without seeming there is any other choice balanced with the stochastic equilibrium of potentially more reliable alternatives threatening this "cottage" industry. PS: clean your coils, change your air filters (without excessive MERV flow restriction), surge protect ECMs, and check your caps.
- ddxv 11mo agoI installed diy ductless heat pumps for around 3k at my parents. They love it and burn less wood now.
- empiricus 11mo agoHm, these are just called AC in Europe. To my knowledge, AC has always worked both ways here. In Europe we call heap pumps when they heat the water. So they are are Air-Water (the outdoor unit looks like a bigger AC outdoor unit) or Water-Water (the outdoor unit is a long underground water pipe loop). The warm water is used for underfloor heating or for shower, kitchen, etc.
- danimal88 11mo agoRegarding the crazy prices - it’s structural. In Asia, manufacturers sell direct or through highly competitive retail channels and the installers really only have to know minisplits. Minisplits in the US get sold by the brand -> distributor -> dealer (contractor) -> homeowner with each step being a 20% market up. Sometimes there is even a master distributor in there AND usually there is a “rep group” taking points too. That is fundamentally what drives up costs. That and the fact that the US housing marketing is very heterogeneous so contractors have to know boilers, ducted heatpumps, furnaces, packaged units, ductless, etc.
- pants2 11mo agoI recently got a Mr. Cool DIY minisplit at Costco for $1600. I called an independent electrician to run the wiring for $200 and he helped me install the thing for another $200. So I got a fully installed minisplit for $2k and it works great.
- brianwawok 11mo agoDid the same thing except saved the $400 and did it in an afternoon.
- alexnewman 11mo agoI’m super psyched about heat pump washer/dryers. I live in puerto rico and humidity and electricity are issues that it seems to address. Plus I am going to try installing it in a closet where it wasn’t designed for it all. I think it could change the way houses here are made.
- jgalt212 11mo agoWe should add more tax credits because one Elon Musk is not enough.
- paulbernard 11mo agoThe real question is what the total cost of ownership and what is the payback period? Also there are regional climate differences that have to deal with very large temperature swings as well as very old poorly insulated houses. investing hundreds of thousands to re-insulate one's house, replace all the windows, excavate the heat sink and dispose of a furnace that is already working, so that one can buy a heat pump at greater costs than a furnace to achieve efficiency improvements that barely pay for themselves over thirty years when the same amount of money can be spent elsewhere. if it were such a great idea it would have already been done.
- sholladay 11mo agoWe had a heat pump installed last year. It’s advertised as a cold-climate heat pump and it’s “good enough” for us, but it’ll never again be toasty on a cold night, just relatively warm. When under heavy load, it also has some kind of loud vibration issue, I think in the lines that run from inside out to the condenser. The system is an Ecoer, which is a Chinese company that pretends to be a U.S. company. And it has a really suspicious 4G cellular IoT modem that, of course, feeds all the data to their cloud, with no end-user access. I will say, it keeps the temperature very stable, which is nice. And it saves money, paying for itself within 10 years. But there’s actually quite a bit that can go wrong during installation and it’s not easy to get them to fix everything, maybe because U.S. installers aren’t used to all of the nuances of heat pumps yet. Our aux heat strips still aren’t working properly, after multiple service visits. If I could do it over again, I would still get a heat pump. But I would go with a Mitsubishi system and a more experienced installer. The extra cost is worth it.
- scottgg 11mo agoSounds like it wasn’t sized well?
- sholladay 11mo agoIt’s the largest residential model that Ecoer makes. The home is a 3-bedroom, large but nothing crazy. The installers said they erred on the side of too big, rather than too small, and that’s corroborated by my back-of-the-napkin math and Google searches indicating that “too big” is standard practice in the HVAC industry. So in theory, it shouldn’t be a lack of power. I think it’s poorly optimized. From what I’ve been reading, the pressure in the lines is very important. I have no idea if they are pressurized properly. The unit apparently has sophisticated monitoring of the line pressure, but the IoT gateway has no end-user access which is a huge red flag for me that I wasn’t aware of before it was installed.
- matwood 11mo agoI love heat pumps. Had one in my house in the southern US and am about to put one in my house in the EU. I also recently bought a heat pump dryer, also great. Very gentle on clothes, doesn’t need a vent, or the high power plug - just a drain like a washer.
- Nifty3929 11mo agoWe live in a temperate climate and installed a heat pump / mini-split system to replace our central AC and furnace and get rid of all the ductwork. It's awesome in many respects and I don't regret it, but it's also MUCH more expensive in the winter vs our gas furnace. Electricity is just so much more expensive than the gas equivalent for heating. Overall this is costing us a lot more money per year. But the upside is that it maintains the temperature in each room much more effectively, and it's a LOT quieter, both inside from the air handlers and outside from the ... loud outside fan thing (compressor?).
- tim333 11mo agoOne thing I haven't been able to figure - I have a flat in Spain with a combined aircon heat system costing ~$3k which functions from the physics point of view as a heat pump but was not marketed as a "heat pump" which I think are supposed to be more expensive. Is there any difference between heat/cool aircon and heat pumps?
- xeromal 11mo agoA heat pump is a reversable air conditioner so every heat / cool air conditioner is a heat pump regardless of name. Interesting that they cost more over yonder though if you use the name. We can get a heat pump here in the US for about 700$. I installed one in the basement 2 years ago and it has been a gamechanger.
- giardini 11mo agoWhere do I put the wood-burning stove/heater?
- scottgg 11mo agoHeat pumps are so _ordinary_ here (Central Europe), im always a bit surprised how skeptical folks in the US and UK seem to be about them
- mothballed 11mo agoThey're not skeptical, it's just that no one wants to pay $10k to have a $2k unit installed, and new entrants who want to offer anything other than what the entrenched services have to offer have to be abused and hazed for 4 years near minimum wage changing out $5 capacitors for $1000 (to their company, not them) before they can get a trade license, and after that they have to go through an onerous contracting paperwork to open up a business. So we don't get new businesses popping up offering mini split installation. End result is most of the units that get installed in the US are probably DIYing off-paper and then shutting the fuck up. I live in a place with no inspections for owner-builder and that was the only way I was able to get away with it, and even then I had to pass an EPA 608 license to handle the refrigerants since I did not want to get fined a bazillion dollars if someone found out.
- hexbin010 11mo agoMost UK housing stock is poor quality, old and draughty. Pre-req of switching is fixing that. Then, when you've got a nice hermetically sealed house, you need to solve fresh air, which is another cost. Labour is extremely expensive in the UK and tradespeople are poor quality and swindlers (sorry, it's true 95% of the time). And most people don't have £10k+ to drop on upgrades We're not used to needing aircon, so the whole concept is a bit foreign Electricity is expensive (0.31 EUR/kWh) Plus, we've been burned by governments pushing "green" things: - They scammed us with cavity wall insulation, which has caused some serious structural and expensive issues. It was inappropriate for many houses and a ton of conmen popped-up to take government money with no fucks given - Diesel was sold as 'green' - They had a scheme pushing loft insulation but the installers often just threw rolls of insulation into the loft and ran way (not even kidding) Basically, multiple governments have created just about the /worst/ possible history and conditions to get people on board with heat pumps I have a very small, draughty house and spend ~800 EUR a year on gas (heating + hot water + hob). Not ideal but I'm still running on the gas boiler that came with the house 10 years ago that's only had ~300 EUR of maintenance spent on it. The house gets hot, I can have boiling hot showers whenever I want. If anything goes, wrong, I can all any of 30 people to come fix it
- wigster 11mo agowith mr drill baby drill in the gold house this all seems obsolete
- the_cat_kittles 11mo agoi bought a mitsubishi minisplit, as well as a lineset, and installation tools (vaccuum pump, valve core removal tool, flaring tool, micron guage, nitrogen, pressure regulator, manifold) and installed it myself after watching several hours of ac service tech youtube videos. it was a little stressful but i saved 8,000 usd and i honestly feel pride every time i turn it on. its worked absolutely flawlessly. i recommend this route if you have the time!
- JeremyPOsborne 11mo agoExecute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute. It's working, keep going. Don't stop. Make them easy to buy and install leading to lower costs, and more getting into homes.
- radu_floricica 11mo agoIt's... a bad article? It takes as given that the tech is here, and it's economically feasible, but it's not giving any arguments. Just blames the people. It's also not exactly defining the problem space. Is it talking about air-air AC with heating? Those are common and very cheap. Is it talking about large HVAC systems that include hot water? Those are indeed a hellof a lot more expensive, but also a hellof a lot more complex. And no matter what the author is saying, technology isn't to the point of giving us hot water from heat pumps. The math just isn't mathing - to take cold water and heat it up to "hot" by cooling off freezing air, you'd simply have to cool huge amounts of air. Yeah, probably, if you put a room-sized HVAC system and spend a ton on electricity - but that's where it stops being competitive. Is it talking about geothermal heat exchangers? Because those are indeed a lot more efficient - but also more expensive for obvious reasons. You need to drill.
- Krispy805 11mo agoI am a HERS Rater and Title 24 Consultant in California. Our State Government hyped the idea of replacing every unit in California with Heat Pumpsnover 2p years. Unfortunately the big cookie cutter new home developers did not really like the idea. Sonthey installed 80% efficient old fashioned gas firwd furnaces like usual in 90% of new homes since 2015. Heat pumps are flashy, but most models do not handle cold weather. Units that use R410A will not ever peoduce heat in the true sense of the word. They are much more efficient at cooling however they simply cannot produce meaningful amounts of heat. HP Units that run on CO2 (R-0) as a refrigerant have been used in Alaska winters to provide emergency heat. The extreme performance difference between R410A and R0 is so staggering that one might wonder why R22, R134, R500 or R410A were ever used in thebfirst place. That has to donwith patent law and stubborn, lead poisoned engineers. Ya I said it, anone born before 1980 is a retard with Lead Poisoning. Get over it boomer, nobody respects you cause you lead in your soft tissue! Anyways, if you feel like running the AC, then go outside. It is much hotter in Mexico, think about that.
- etchasketch 11mo agoIt’s because it isn’t cheaper than running gas in large parts of the county. EFFICIENT doesn’t mean CHEAPER. I did the math this past year with excel and chat GPT. Go to the side of your heat pump, look at the model number, go to the manufacturer website and pull the COP specs at every given temperature. Where I live in Chattanooga, TN, it can get down to 5-10 degrees for weeks at a time during December and January. If you look up the cost of gas per therm, convert it to BTUs, and then the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour, and then compare the cost of running a heat pump vs the cost of gas at any given temperature based on the coefficient of performance of the heat pump, you will very quickly realize that depending on your local utility, there is no break even point. As in, for me, even if it was 68 degrees outside it is cheaper for me to run my gas furnace than it would be to run my heat pump, even if the COP was 4. I did the math for Seattle (I don’t live there, I just looked at the local utility prices and went on their website and pulled some numbers) and based on current natural gas prices and electric prices in Seattle, it’s cheaper to use gas below 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature, based on the gradually increasing COP with temperature, then the heat pump is cheaper. But only cheaper by about 10 dollars per month. The 30-40 bucks a year you save running your heat pump during the winter months you will NEVER make back if you are shelling out an extra 10k for an install versus a gas furnace. And that gas furnace produces hot toasty air instead of lukewarm air. The price of electricity weighs heavily on if a heat pump is CHEAPER (cheaper, not EFFICIENT) to run than gas. For all but the most advanced heat pumps, if you run the numbers, in most areas of the United States, with the exception of some parts of California, under an average temperature of 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit it is cheaper to use gas to heat. And in many, many parts of the east coast, Midwest, and south, gas is always cheaper to use to heat no matter what temperature, even if you have the most ridiculously advanced heat pumps with a high COP, and even if it’s damn near 70 degrees outside. Gas is that cheap, and packs in that energy. I want everyone to note how this article only notes that heat pumps are more EFFICIENT. Not CHEAPER. Just because something is efficient doesn’t mean it’s CHEAPER. I want to stress that point. I also want to note that as someone who has a heat pump, I would pay an extra 10-20 dollars a month for some warm dry heat, instead of lukewarm air. And I would pay that very willingly.