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Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

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Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#71

Post by mtrpcic »

londons_explore wrote: post #54
z3ugma wrote: post #12

Chris, one of my biggest worries is that your startup will get acquired or go out of business and then the firmware will leave me with a $14,000 brick. What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited? This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want…

I'd want to see a guarantee of "We will either keep running the servers forever, maintaining all current features, or we will opensource all the server side code, so you or someone else can keep running it". I'd want the code handed over to a third party to guarantee this (so the company can't walk back on their promise).

If the server code is too complex, at least give me an OpenAPI spec (or equivalent) that the server must adhere to, so I can spin something simple up on a Raspberry PI to solve the problem myself.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#72

Post by steviedotboston »

> For homeowners switching from natural gas, the savings are usually 0-30%, varying based on the local cost of electricity and natural gas.

Yeah, that's gonna be a hard sell for lots of people. The majority of people with forced air (which is the target market) have natural gas. So the savings are potentially nothing, with a huge upfront cost for a new, untested startup product.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#73

Post by immy »

Doing some good work. Hope you find some investment or partnership with some trusted appliance names. Sounds like you'll be subbing out installation, I wish you luck building and protecting your brand reputation.

I'm an edge case in Bay Area, don't have ducts, so looking at ceiling cassettes. I'll go learn about vapor injection compressors now.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#74

Post by foobarian »

fintechjock wrote: post #21

Really cool and interesting. I definitely think the market is there for this. I'm betting that your biggest hurdle will be post-purchase. If I remember correctly, Tony Fadell talks about how hard it was to disrupt the contractor model when building Nest. People often just bought whatever thermostat their contractor recommended, and those contractors were incentivized to push them towards specific brands. They beat th…

> They beat this by just making the product super easy to install by the consumer

I think it was more than that, I cannot possibly overstate how stupidly better the design/UX was compared to alternatives. In my home I spent years looking for a replacement for the ancient, round thermostat with a mercury switch. That thermostat is a marvel: you spin the dial with instant visual feedback, and there is an off/heat/ac switch. That's it! The Nest just added networking.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#75

Post by roamerz »

How do you compete with the likes of Mr Cool? Me and my father replaced his 15yr old heat pump/air handler in his house a few months ago. Took us a weekend and about $4500. That was a 3 ton unit.

Similarly we installed a 1.8 ton split unit in a new house. About $2500 for that one.

Both were complete kits including thermostat and required no refrigerant install as everything was pre charged. The 3 ton was even 21 seer if I remember correctly.

These Mr Cool units sell locally at Home Depot and other places.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#76

Post by daredoes »

cmui wrote: post #45
z3ugma wrote: post #12

Chris, one of my biggest worries is that your startup will get acquired or go out of business and then the firmware will leave me with a $14,000 brick. What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited? This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want…

I totally get this concern. Any good piece of critical home infrastructure should be able to operate without the cloud or an internet connection. Following this logic the thermostat + heat pump combination can operate fine without the cloud. You leave some optimized behavior on the table like demand response and weather response, but everything else will work (you'd have to manually enter your TOU rate plan to get th…

Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone?

If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#77

Post by toss1 »

dawnerd wrote: post #22
z3ugma wrote: post #12

Chris, one of my biggest worries is that your startup will get acquired or go out of business and then the firmware will leave me with a $14,000 brick. What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited? This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want…

My thoughts too. Local heating/cooling should not be tied to the cloud period. If it doesn't use the normal wiring people already have it's a hard pass from me.

Exactly. I will not even buy a $100 remote-internet-controlled thermostat that relies on a cloud service [0], and I've looked for both my home and my shop.

I would not even consider buying the hardware that keeps my pipes from freezing if it depends on an internet connection.

I'm happy if there are non-critical OPTIONS available that use the internet (e.g., as another poster mentioned, available optimizations based on real-time elec rates, etc.), but if there is any key function that'll fail without an internet connection, that's immediate disqualification, hard nope, not looking anymore. Period, full stop, even if it is "free" as in beer.

OTOH, if OP can deliver a true stand-alone system and guarantees that it will never require a connection for any core function (as above, optional ok), then he'll have a large market.

[0] any remote-via-internet control function should be able to directly access my IP, static or transient. Not only are non-static home IPs actually quite durable in my experience, there are a variety of easy solutions to keep track of the home IP. Yes, some of those are cloud services, but they are not tied to any hardware.

Edit: That said, I'm ok with requiring wiring beyond the normal thermostat-HVAC wiring.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#78

Post by obituary_latte »

Does it explain somewhere that I missed how the different size units translate to sq. ft.? I would think that would be a great way to convey which size might work for people, but I might be missing some other factor that doesn't allow for that conversion?

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#80

Post by cmui »

turtlebits wrote: post #15

Existing established companies offer centrally ducted heat pumps. You can purchase them direct, and are even sold by your big box home improvement stores. (search for "ducted heat pump) They are generally contractor only as homeowners generally can't DIY the 240v electrical and lineset hookup. What exactly is being improved upon by your startup?

A few major improvements - (1) Purchasing experience, we'll connect you with a local contractor, arrange financing and help with rebates. (2) HEPA filtration, fresh air intake and humidity control fully integrated into the system, actuated off PM2.5 and CO2 sensors in the thermostat. (3) A smart thermostat that is optimized for operation with a variable speed heat pump, and reduces your monthly bills. (4) Help for the contractors in the form of a web app to do load disaggregation for heat pump sizing and figure out if the existing ducts can be used for the install. This is something a lot of contractors need an effective tool for.
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