I really appreciate the transparent pricing. There is so much secrecy in the industry where I live (non-US) it seems, I get the feeling I'm supposed to be lured in before someone will actually tell me what it costs, even just the price of differently sized heat pumps, I'm not even talking about the variable cost of installation.
Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
161–170 of 809 posts
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#162I keep reading lots of horror stories about heat pumps. People are complaining about all of the following: - Enormous energy bills because under some conditions (cold weather?) heat pumps use a lot more energy than expected. - Heat pump equipment and radiators taking too much space in small homes. - Cold homes and/or a requirement to keep windows shut because heat pumps just don't generate enough heat. - Only suitabl…
I replaced my electric furnace with a heat pump. It takes up the same space as the old furnace, so you're not wasting any space inside the house. There is an outside unit, but we just put it on the side of the house where we don't see or hear it. They are noisy outside, that's one thing they don't always tell you. When the temps are too cold out, there are still electric elements inside the unit in the house. Sure, t…
>It takes up the same space as the old furnace
Is that a size similar to a gas boiler?
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#163I didn’t read everything you posted, but I’ve always also wanted “central humidity”… is that possible/feasible/does it already exist?
I would like a fully electric central HVAC(H) system that keeps my house at 72F AND 50% humidity.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#164Doing 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.
Thanks for the support! Vapor injection is cool - if that's interesting look at some other novel architectures like cascade cycles, hot gas bypass, and internal heat exchangers.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#165Earlier 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.
HA user here as well, having a non-locked down API at minimum (i.e. not actively trying to stop folks using it), through to an open and documented api (would be great), through to open firmware (would be best) and or releasing your own integration for HA would likely get you those kinda customers.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#166Have you considered doing double-vapor injection?
Ie. have a 2nd injection port on the compressor, and another valve and heat exchanger after the first?
Software could then decide to use none, one, or two, depending on the desired heat output vs efficiency.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#167Does 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?
In the process of building out a tool that allows you to do just that on the website. You need some basic info about the home + a recent energy bill to do this. You can also go more bottoms up where you have all the geometric/thermal + air leakage properties of the home and the local weather, this is more involved.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#168Chris, 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…
The software is certainly a concern, but I would also heavily emphasize the ability to get spare parts and service quickly. If your heat goes out in the middle of winter you don't want to wait weeks for spare parts, or be unable to get them at all if the company goes out of business.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#169I tried like hell to install an air-to-water heat pump instead of a replacement gas boiler and it didn't make anything close to economic sense to do so. What do I want from a heat-pump: I want it to work with a contact-closure (TT/XX) input to call for heat/cooling. Sure, if you have a fancy thermostat that works better, I'm going to read the brochure, but I'm not buying it if I find out it won't work with just a dry…
Nobody will build a heat-pump system with an on/off control system like that because the performance will be awful. Certainly not an air-to-water system.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Normal wiring is terrible, though, since it only supports turning the equipment on & off. If you have a variable-speed fan and variable-speed pumps, it would be nice for the thermostat to throttle those based on the load, but it can't. If this company has a solution for variable-speed equipment, the best thing they can do is publish an open standard. Suppose the thermostat talks to the equipment over CAN bus, for ins…
Huh? My Lennox basic middle America furnace already does this if I am understanding your comment correctly.