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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

#391

Post by adventured »

dmarlow wrote: post #306
mdasen wrote: post #111

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…

Same thought as well. I recently self installed an 18k BTU unit. The lines came pre-charged, but I wanted it to be run exactly to length. For someone to come and do just that part (cut, flare and vacuum/charge the lines) cost me just $150. I got the unit (a pioneer) for under $900. The rest of the world has heat pumps figured out, no need for a tesla-ish version charging a premium. Cost will be the biggest factor for…

> The rest of the world has heat pumps figured out

A single digit percentage of homes globally are using heat pumps, most of the world does not have it figured out. That's specifically why Electric Air exists, they're chasing what is going to be a gigantic market (if it were already such a figured out market they couldn't get funding without a revolutionary 10x approach, YC would have little interest).

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

#392

Post by simonebrunozzi »

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.

Chris, I think there's a lot more here to uncover. Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no openness, about these aspects. I think this could become a really important part of your go-to market, but also a differentiator vs other products.

I'm a VC since recently, but have been a tech guy for a long time. Feel free to ping me if you'd like to discuss it further. $HN_username at gmail.

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

#393

Post by Arch-TK »

soheil wrote: post #89
cmui wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd be careful catering to everyone asking for everything but the kitchen sink. Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb. If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.

I mean, aside from the fact that you misunderstood the whole point, nobody ever paid 20% extra for a heating system which didn't have cloud connectivity. In fact, the whole idea that there's something wrong with a heating system which doesn't require an internet connection is so incredibly bizarre that I can only wonder if you're someone who came out of a time machine.

Lastly, a partial refund does fuck all to compensate for the fact that you have a multi-tonne brick in your house that has perfectly functioning hardware but broken software (because the server it used to talk to is gone). It also doesn't compensate for the wasted resources.

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

#394

Post by drusenko »

pridkett wrote: post #153
startupsfail wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Europe market is ready for this. Considering how unstable the residential electrical and internet grid is in the US (instead of being dug in, into the ground all the cables are hanging between the trees and there are constant failures), relying on that AND on the cloud for an essential service is a no-go.

I live in a rural part of New England with an electricity company that everyone dislikes because it's super expensive and sometimes things go bad. Since 2010 we've had the following major outages: * October 2011 Snow Storm - Lost power for 4 days, didn't end up being that cold * October 2019 Thunderstorms - Lost power for 3 days, thankfully generator kept the house going * August 2020 Tropical Storm Isaias - Caused w…

I would say it depends on where you live. The grid in CA has (in some parts) not been reliable for 5+ years. To Chris' point below though, it's not really relevant because gas furnaces need electricity to operate, too.

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

#395

Post by pkulak »

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.

For me, it's just peace of mind. I need to know that if cloud servers go down, or even my internet goes down, my house still works. My Nest thermostats are currently cloud-only (the only parts of my house left that are), and I had to write a script to never update them exactly on the hour. That's when their API is very likely to 500; I'm guessing because most people have automations trigger on the hour.

I guess I can sum it up like this: I only want to deal with my own problems in my free time in my own home.

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

#396

Post by sleton38234234 »

I already got a heat pump water heater and I love it! I'm totally in the market for a heat pump heater to replace our Heater/AC. the primary concern are three things: up front cost, and electricity costs for heating and 3) performance. the last quote I got was about 11K, so that's pretty steep. and on top of that heat pumps don't perform well for heating: it has to be on most of the time and will struggle to increase temps.

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

#397

Post by amluto »

cmui wrote: post #371
amluto wrote: post #315

Some questions: What is the HEPA for? Is it on the fresh air intake or are you actually HEPA-filtering the recirculated air? If the latter, why not MERV 16? HEPA media is probably more expensive, and it definitely has much higher pressure loss, and there is no actual need for it outside of healthcare. How are you humidifying? Can you control the coil temperature in cooling mode and thus control the sensible/latent co…

Good questions. We have a way of running HEPA with not unreasonable pressure loss, and then dialing back the amount of filtration when PM2.5 levels are reasonable. Separately a homeowner can request a high filtration mode. Humidifying is though a system similar to a whole home humidifier - a small bypass from the supply side of the furnace evaporates water off a media. Yes, through a combination of reheat and coil te…

Do you have a diagram of the system (with water connections, duct connections, fresh air connections, exhaust, etc)?

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

#398

Post by bythreads »

From a country where these are super normal: The air inside gets bone dry due to the hx and humidity of outdoors vs indoors.

Its super unhealthy, but a good design avoids this by using either an entalpic(moisture permeable) hx or a rotor hx (humidity is controllable)

If you really want to be different do this, not just a fancy cover and an api...

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

#400

Post by daviross »

This looks/sounds neat, I'll be happy to keep an ear out on how you're doing. The thing keeping me from anything more yet though: What's the ductless option like?

I don't have any ducts, just hydronic+baseboard heating currently (and a dual-hose portable AC unit for cooling). I'm looking at a mini-split setup, but that's a fairly daunting prospect for the issues you note with the existing market.

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