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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

#111

Post by mdasen »

I guess I'm wondering what this offers over calling an HVAC company and having them install a heat pump system. The system seems expensive at $14,000 for a 48k BTU 18 SEER system. It looks like I can get that for $4,000. Is the sleek software and design of your units worth the extra $10,000, especially when I'm not really going to see my air handler frequently?

I do like that it monitors CO2 and offers humidification, but presumably that means that it needs a hookup to a water line for humidification (not that easy since my air handler is in my attic) and a source of fresh air (so presumably a hole in the roof or something to accommodate that).

I'm also curious if the mini-split system on your site would also handle fresh air and humidification. Wouldn't that require each air handler to have access to fresh air and water?

I'm also curious why 18 SEER? Are there diminishing returns above that? I'm in a pretty cold climate so I've been thinking it would be better to get a 20 SEER unit.

My suggestion for your company: Add stoves and hot water heaters to your offering. I'm not going to switch to a heat pump and continue to have natural gas for my stove and hot water heater. If I'm going to put in a heat pump, I'd want to get natural gas out of my place. I don't want to have to get a heat pump from you, then call someone else to deal with my water heater and another person to deal with my stove.

I'm certainly not an expert on this so maybe you'll just say that you're using more reliable equipment than the stuff I've seen, but it seems like something I'm more inclined to go with a local HVAC company than a startup.

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

#112

Post by londons_explore »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #101
londons_explore wrote: post #68

I'd like a furnace company that has a financial incentive to keep my house warm and efficient. Todays furnace/heat pump makers test their kit in a lab under perfect conditions, and then when it is installed it often costs double or more to run compared to what the datasheet says.[1] I would like the company to say "we will keep your house at 70F, year round, for $3000/yr. We will pay any electric/gas use to achieve t…

Would the company also have control of the doors and windows, or at least perfect knowledge of how long they are open? And number of bodies in the house, or amount of cooking being done?

No, just like a taxi doesn't charge extra if you're too fat, even though it costs him more in fuel.

Obviously they can send reminders to keep the doors closed... Or have sensors on the windows and have it not heat when a window is open...

Or they could just not renew the service for customers who leave the window open all year.

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

#113

Post by heatpumpfan »

turtlebits wrote: post #91
cmui wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, I should do a better job of communicating the unit sizes. Heat pump capacity varies as a function of outdoor temps. A standard unit is rated at 47F but the sizes I'm showing are at 5F (cold climate conditions). Also for this price you get the air quality module which does HEPA, fresh air intake and humidification and a smart thermostat that's designed to fully optimize this heat pump system.

If you want to control air quality, you do this with a separate fresh air intake, not with a ducted furnace. Many older homes have furnaces taking air from sub-optimal spaces such as garages or crawl spaces.

[dead]

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

#114

Post by harterrt »

gumptionary wrote: post #86

Love what you're trying to do. I recently moved most of the way off oil-based hydronic baseboard heating in my 1800's New England farmhouse through installing 3 ductless mini-splits with Mitsubishi Hyper Heat condensors. Just to help with your user research, my biggest decision points: 1. Cold weather operation. I get you're saying the units are good down to -15f, but there's nothing like the fact that I can talk to…

+1 to servicability. It's hard to get someone who knows how to clean my minisplits. This looks really cool, but I'd need to be confident that I could maintain my units myself.

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

#115

Post by JshWright »

cmui wrote: post #88
daredoes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's something we'd definitely consider. Is the desire to have thermostat control via any third party? edit - The current plan has been Matter/thread Homekit + Google Home integration. We can expose at least temperature control via this to everyone.

I think the desire would be a locally accessible API so that anyone could build an integration to it.

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

#116

Post by owlbite »

I'd love to upgrade to an electric heat pump, however being out in the urban-wild land interface of California, we're subject to occasionally multi-day power outages, for which having propane-based heating is a god-send in a winter storm. Offer an option to have propane-based backup heating element for such times would be a killer feature for us, as running electric-based heating probably kills our Tesla power walls in short order.

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

#117

Post by potatolicious »

londons_explore wrote: post #68

I'd like a furnace company that has a financial incentive to keep my house warm and efficient. Todays furnace/heat pump makers test their kit in a lab under perfect conditions, and then when it is installed it often costs double or more to run compared to what the datasheet says.[1] I would like the company to say "we will keep your house at 70F, year round, for $3000/yr. We will pay any electric/gas use to achieve t…

> "and pay for and install maintain and upgrade the hardware"

The problem is that the cost of running the kit has much less to do with the actual HVAC equipment itself and has to do with your house - which no sane HVAC company wants to make guarantees on.

- What kind of insulation is in the walls? What's the R-value? The vast majority of home owners do not know this, and many homes have old and deeply substandard insulation.

- What kind of windows do you have? Expecting an HVAC company to guarantee the thermal properties of your windows seems unrealistic.

- How many windows do you have? Do you keep them open a lot? How many doors? Are the doors well-sealed?

- What is the attic situation? What's the insulation in the attic like?

The list goes on. I can potentially see a company willing to entertain such a guarantee for a brand new home that they knew the specs of, but for an existing home it feels totally unrealistic.

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

#118

Post by cmui »

AYBABTME wrote: post #36

My gas furnace sits next to my gas water heater. I want a central air heat pump that dumps the heat into my water heater when I'm cooling the house.

There are some combined space heating + water heating heat pump options out there. A few points to watch out for (1) install of an extra hydronic loop for the air handler can be expensive (2) your air handler + heatpump combination will not run as efficiently because of the losses associated with a secondary loop (3) there's a bit of a trick to getting the heat pump properly sized for cold weather + domestic hot water operation (4) if the demand temperatures for domestic hot water and space heating are far apart, the whole system will run at the lowest efficiency dictated by the highest demand temperature.

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

#120

Post by efields »

All-electric house owner here. 2x Carrier heat pumps, ducted air handlers. One of the carrier units is 13 years old and going great. Electrostatic filters on the air handlers. The house was built in the 50s and renovated in 2010, doubling the square footage. That's when they put in the oldest unit.

Idk if it has to do with the mid-Atlantic temperature swings on the marginal seasons, but this time of year the house will get weirdly cold around 6/7pm, so we bump up the heat a couple degrees. It resets to schedule after two hours. The system has a hard time keeping up if it stays below 20 for an extended period of time, but that just means it holds somewhere around 65ºF instead of 68ºF.

We're not near seasonal wildfires so air quality is never an issue for us. In fact I notice when we leave the house for the day and come back several hours later, the air in the house has a reassuring "neutral" smell (sealed house cycling old air uninterrupted).

We also have a whole-house fan, a relic from the original build, which is incredible when you want to cycle in fresh air periodically. More homes should have these.

Anyway, high seer home-scale heat pumps are just pricy things, but they do work well and efficiently in their existing form. The thermostat we use is also by carrier and is _fine_. I don't see anything here that's a significant improvement from our own setup, but they do look nice.

We have a big house. If we wanted to be more energy efficient at this point, we'd need similar setup in a smaller house. I don't think nice looking residential mechanicals are going to help the transition to cleaner energy sources any faster. Sorry.

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