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Electricity 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
by mithr 11mo ago
Electricity 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.
- Loughla 11mo agoDefine low temperatures. Mine struggles if it gets below 30, and might as well not exist below 10. They're not great at low temps.
- doctorhandshake 11mo agoI’m not sure what yours is but it doesn’t sound appropriate to your application. Mitsubishi hyper heat is indicative of a contemporary inverter design - 100% efficiency to -5f: https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/mythbusters-heat-pumps-for-extreme-cold-climates https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/mythbusters-heat-...
- sokoloff 11mo ago100% efficiency is terrible for a heat pump. Electric resistance heat is 100% efficient.
- doctorhandshake 11mo agoI should have said 100% performance. COP is typically 3-4:1 with mitsu
- sokoloff 11mo agoTypical seasonal average? Sure. At -5°F? Hell no! At +5°F, they rate their own equipment to have a 2.0 CoP. https://mylinkdrive.com/viewPdf?srcUrl=http://s3.amazonaws.com/enter.mehvac.com/DAMRoot/Original/10007%5CM_SUBMITTAL_MXZ-4C36NAHZ2-en.pdf https://mylinkdrive.com/viewPdf?srcUrl=http://s3.amazonaws.c...
- throw0101a 11mo agoHere's a Trane/Mitsubishi unit that has a COP of (at least) 3 at -13F/-25C: * https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/156605/7/25000/95/7500/0///0 https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/156605/7/25000/95/7500/0///... An LG unit with 2.4 at -4F/-20C: * https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/29688/7/25000/95/7500/0///0 https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/29688/7/25000/95/7500/0///0 Searchable database of cold climate air source heat pumps (ccASHPs): * https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product_list/ https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product_list/
- cycomanic 11mo agoI don't know what sort of heat pump systems are common in the US, but Sweden (and AFAIK Norway and Finland as well), are probably >%80 heat pump for single family homes (most apartments are community heating at least in the larger cities). So it's absolutely now problem to run a heat pump even if it is very cold outside, but if you want to improve efficiency in areas that are super cold you can drill into the ground for a heat sink (those are called Bergvärme in Sweden). Regarding cost, in most of the countries I've lived in a large fraction of the cost in the gas bill was the distribution cost. So once you switch to a heat pump, you also switch to electric cooking and even if heating with electricity would be significantly more expensive you would still win. Is that different in the US?
- DavidPeiffer 11mo agoIt varies significantly by locale. I've seen people post online about how it made little sense to keep just one gas appliance because of significant savings. I'm in Iowa, which typically heats on natural gas in urban areas. I have a natural gas central furnace and water heater. My clothes dryer is electric, and I have a 3 head heat pump which I use for comfort in a couple rooms. The house is an early 2000's standard builder-grade home. For September, $12.31 of my $27.01 gas bill was variable based on my consumption. In December, $84.82 out of my $99.65 total was consumption driven. I've run numbers on whether it'd make financial sense to go electric for heating, and the break even point is in the 30-40 degree vicinity. With temperatures 20 and under a healthy chunk of the year, unfortunately the added expense doesn't make financial sense.
- yxhuvud 11mo agoIt works just fine during winters if you do it properly and couple them with ducts that are a couple of hundred meters deep.
- Loughla 11mo agoOur heat pump for HVAC is awesome. Until it gets under 30. Then you can watch the power meter crank when auxiliary heat kicks on. And we only keep it 65 in the house in the winter. Luckily I live in the upper Midwest, so it's only that cold for like 4 months. . . Pretty cool. P.r.e.t.t.y. cool
- notyourwork 11mo agoSome heat pumps are rated for much lower temps.
- kragen 11mo agoThey can work at lower temperatures, but they do need the auxiliary heat to deice the outside coils.
- srjek 11mo agoIt's my understanding that nowadays most heat pumps have a defrost cycle where they automatically run in reverse for a bit with some or all fans off
- kragen 11mo agoI think that may be how it works, yeah.
- sgerenser 11mo agoWhen it’s running in reverse then it’s acting as an air conditioner blowing cold air into the house. So usually the heat strips are used then to reheat the air and prevent it from blowing cold air in the middle of winter. Not strictly necessary but most people demand it.
- eldaisfish 11mo agoauxiliary heat is a separate heat source for the indoors. Most cold climate heat pumps run a defrost cycle to melt ice off the outdoor unit. that's different from auxiliary heat.
- orev 11mo agoHeat pumps are just air conditioners in reverse. They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling. While many people have air conditioners, and grids seem to be able to handle them in the summer, an assertion that the grid can’t handle them in the winter is doubtful. Plus there are fewer people using them in the winter (just because fewer are installed). Most people in the NE heat with oil, gas, or wood, so that would reduce the electric load (compared to summer) even further. There would be an increase only if people were supplementing the heat pump with electric heat, which to be fair is a possibility. There’s a lot of misinformation about heat pumps, especially by HVAC people who don’t have a lot of experience with them, so they tend to recommend what they’re more familiar with. But yes, understanding the electricity cost is essential when considering one.
- goalieca 11mo agoI would be curious to know the difference. In summer you might find 30c outside and inside 20c so a difference of 10c. In winter it can reach -30c and inside is 20c. This is 5x more!
- eldaisfish 11mo ago> They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling This is completely wrong. The amount of power depends on the temperature delta. When cooling, you are typically not cooling your home to 30 degrees Celsius below the outdoor temperature. However, when heating, you are typically heating your home to around 20 degrees above outdoor temperature. Heating consumes more power than cooling.
- ssl-3 11mo agoIt is approximately correct as long as the temperature deltas are approximately the same for heating vs cooling. (And as long as we're dispelling generalizations: Those deltas do vary wildly based on local climate, such that they're impossible to generalize and typify. For instance: The city of Saint Paul, Minnesota [USA] has a very different climate compared to the city of São Paulo in Brazil, with accordingly-different heating/cooling deltas. https://weatherspark.com/h/y/10422/2025/Historical-Weather-during-2025-in-Saint-Paul-Minnesota-United-States#Figures-Temperature https://weatherspark.com/h/y/10422/2025/Historical-Weather-d... https://weatherspark.com/h/y/30268/2024/Historical-Weather-during-2024-in-S%C3%A3o-Paulo-Brazil#Figures-Temperature https://weatherspark.com/h/y/30268/2024/Historical-Weather-d... )
- simmonmt 11mo agoCosts are a big thing, sure, but for me it's electrical reliability. For better or worse our heating oil and natural gas supply are both more reliable than our electricity supply. I don't need the heat going out in the dead of winter when some wind storm drops a bunch of branches on power lines. I'm aware that both my boiler and a natural gas furnace have electric blower motors. It's a lot easier to power them from a generator than it is to have a generator than can power a house worth of heat pumps.
- ssl-3 11mo agoYou can have both, though. A person doesn't have to make a binary decision of heatpump OR natural gas. Please remember that traditional aircon is also literally a heat pump. It's perfectly acceptable to have a ducted heat pump and a ducted natural gas furnace both sharing the same ductwork. In this use, the heat pump and the furnace are just installed series with eachother, with one singular blower motor that is used for both roles. This arrangement is very similar (identical, really) to the layout that combined (heat+aircon) systems have used for many decades. Power out, or simply very cold outside? Your house still has a natural gas furnace (which can be made work with a fairly small generator), and your rig doesn't require expensive-to-use heat strips for the coldest days either.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- silisili 11mo agoMy personal anecdote? Don't. I have a house where the first floor is served by a gas/ac combo unit, and the second floor with a heat pump. I literally see no advantage to the heat pump and wish I didn't have it. It takes forever to heat and cool, comparitively, and likes to ice over when it gets too cold in the winter while running 24/7 doing nothing. The emergency heat eventually kicks in and fixes it, so I'm considering just running emergency heat all winter.
- owenthejumper 11mo agoSounds like you have one of two problems: 1) you are changing the temperature too often. Set it and forget it. 2) you have a refrigerant leak
- rainsford 11mo agoThe fact that your heat pump setup is also taking longer to cool suggests there's something fundamentally different between the setup on your different floors, not that there is something bad with heat pumps in general. A heat pump in cooling mode works exactly like an AC unit, because that's exactly what it is. So if your AC unit on the first floor cools more quickly than you AC unit (i.e. heat pump) on your second floor, it's because A) your floors are different sizes or insulated differently or something else is different about their construction, B) your units are sized differently, or C) your heat pump has some mechanical problem. But the fact that it's a heat pump should make no difference to its cooling performance.
- potato3732842 11mo ago>Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. Don't forget that those costs are going up in large part because heat pump subsidies are being rolled into electricity prices. Imagine being a ~$100k HHI household and paying $300+/mo for electricity so that $200+k HHI doctor/lawyer/HN households can have subsidized heat pumps and our sleazy contractors, and the dealers, and everyone else upstream) can over-charge us for the privilege (thereby getting their cut of the subsidy). It's a miracle we haven't all caught hot lead yet.