161–170 of 494 posts
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> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Agree, ducts are wonderful! If you don't have ducts, go ductless for sure.
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Pretty sure mini splits are significantly more efficient today, with SCOP of above 5, so that seems unlikely?
I recently replaced my [central, ducted] heat pump, and the new one is rated with a 4.981 SCOP. It's fairly efficient, but not the most efficient on the market.
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> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Not being snarky but why don't you just open the window for that? I have a CO2 detector that I believe is a reasonable proxy for stale air. When it goes above 1000 I simply open the windows. By the time I remember to close the windows the reading is almost always below 500.
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> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Not being snarky but why don't you just open the window for that? I have a CO2 detector that I believe is a reasonable proxy for stale air. When it goes above 1000 I simply open the windows. By the time I remember to close the windows the reading is almost always below 500.
Why can’t my whole home participate in this technology? It would seem an ok fit for things like freezers, refrigerators, hot water heaters, etc. When it’s freezing cold outside, it seems crazy that I warm the air of my house and then use electricity to keep the fridge cooler than the air I just heated. Someone needs to make a standard for moving heat/cool through all appliances in a house…
However unless the house was built, and / or the pool installed in a coincidentally fortunate configuration where the AC compressor and the pool filter pump are within a meter or two of each other, these devices cannot be used effectively due to impractical tolerances and insulation needed to mitigate losses from contact with the highly variable outdoor environment.
> owners of drafty homes may need to take on the added cost of insulation when installing a heat pump Installing good insulation is also really important even if you're not using heat pumps! With bad insulation, you're wasting energy no matter what technology you're using.
Also insulating an old home (pre-WW2) could begin to introduce moisture issues in the walls that weren’t there the last 100+ years since the leakiness of the home would dry the structure. Last thing you want is for condensation and water vapor to build up in the insulation and then begin to rot the wood. Modern build have vapor barriers and airtight seals.
I guess my point is to be careful with old structures without considering things. They were built the way they were because those were the materials we had (old growth wood!) and they were designed to function a certain way.
In a house I own in Melbourne, Australia, I just replaced an old gas central heating system with 3 new top of the line Daikin mini split heat pumps. The new units can heat the entire house for the same amount of electrical energy that was used to run the FAN in the old gas unit. They are crazy efficient. Ducts are dead. The Daikin Alira X is the gold-plated option and cost $8k AUD for 2x2.5kw and 1x7.1kw units includ…
> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
In 2017 we installed a very efficient air-source heat pump and solar panels. My electrical utility offers 1:1 buyback of electricity so I am able to build up a credit in the summer and run the heat pump well into the fall and winter on that surplus. The system is sized for cooling the house which means that it is undersized for heating, but during cool fall and spring temperatures it operates satisfactorily as a heat…
Living in the PNW, I'm building a new house and I've chosen a dual fuel hybrid heat pump system as per https://www.bryantbing.com/products/hybrid-heat/ I'll also have solar + battery. Should be able to run the furnace & fan but not the heat pump (too many kW/h) during a power outage and thus heating with gas. It'll run off the heat pump for 90-95% of the year, only using gas on the coldest days, or during an outage.…
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No, because the light can escape through windows.
So can heat. That's not the appliance's fault.
Even if we consider incandescent light bulbs, which waste most of the energy they use as "heat", that heat is actually being transferred primarily through radiation, so it can escape through windows more easily than the heat that a furnace transfers to your indoor air.