71–80 of 113 posts
Those will let you get the most out of an efficient heat pump.
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Can you link a drop-in heat pump replacement for my Vaillant gas boiler mounted in tiny apartment bathroom, which heats the radiators in the winter but also provides hot water year-round?
Yes. For example Daikin Altherma, but I'm sure that every brand has a compatible system
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> There are some studies here from Germany that suggest that heat pump systems can lead to higher total CO2 emissions than using alternative systems. Were these studies, or "studies" that were effectively marketing for Russian supplied gas, which until two years ago was a state level foreign policy goal, complete subsidies that advantaged fossil fuel heating and local politicians getting kickbacks from "interested pa…
> Were these studies, or "studies" that were effectively marketing for Russian supplied gas I guess your next comment will be that the Fraunhofer Institut has been infiltrated by Russians? https://www.ibp.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ibp/ibp-neu/de/dok... And here's a video with all the information on different studies, universities and companies involved. This is basically a guy helping german real estate companies to…
With that said you need to say more, we have been using heat pumps for decades and it is a great thing. The Nordics has cheaper electricity though. My point is it all depends.
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> Were these studies, or "studies" that were effectively marketing for Russian supplied gas I guess your next comment will be that the Fraunhofer Institut has been infiltrated by Russians? https://www.ibp.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ibp/ibp-neu/de/dok... And here's a video with all the information on different studies, universities and companies involved. This is basically a guy helping german real estate companies to…
I do not read German, but the literature is from 2008-2016 which does coincide with the peak of natural gas hysteria. Money might seem neutral but a big part of oil money has gone to lobbying, as was recently highlighted by Saudi oil fund leaks. With that said you need to say more, we have been using heat pumps for decades and it is a great thing. The Nordics has cheaper electricity though. My point is it all depends…
That may be true (as it probably is for most big industries), but what does it have to do with what I have been saying? I have been talking about a comparison between two electric systems. The Fraunhofer paper just provides evidence that the COP of air heat pumps is much worse than advertised on average. If you are talking about the parent comment that said that they installed a gas system after looking into the heat pump: even there it is not clear if a heat pump system is better in terms of total emissions. It heavily depends on what kind of home you are equipping, because you also have to account for emissions caused by upgrading and maintaining insulation and other facilities, and for emissions caused by conventional power plants to supply the electricity for the pump (and the flow heater for hot water). The german energy mix, for instance, does still depend heavily on conventional plants in winter, even if the wind is blowing: https://www.smard.de/home/marktdaten?marketDataAttributes=%7... and during summer your expensive heat pump will just sit idle.
> we have been using heat pumps for decades and it is a great thing.
Great for your finances, the environment or what exactly?
> My point is it all depends.
It does. So we better look into the details instead of making decisions based on who has been accused of lobbying most prominently. But most people are not interested in looking into the details. They just want to appear "good" based on what's currently being seen as "good". Marketing departments know that.
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Aren't they also inappropriate for showers, as in they can't heat the water fast enough for a hot shower? Feels like a poorly thought out panic solution here in the Netherlands, where they're saying they're going to shut off gas in n years (number keeps changing, because it's more of a scare tactic to get people moving).
Heat pumps for domestic hot water are basically always storage systems (I have a heat pump storage system and it's excellent). For heating radiators or underfloor it does work (and can be incredibly efficient) to do constant flow but it wouldn't work well to do for showers etc.
This gets into drain water heat recovery
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/drain-water-heat-recovery
https://www.kitchenandbathclassics.com/eco-friendly/advanced...
Then I started working at a co-working space that has a heat pump system and the HVAC techs are in here working on it a couple times a year as we wear parkas and hats because it's 10C in the building. Or it's summer time and I'm trying not to sweat on my keyboard.
This led me to look more closely into reliability and longevity of these systems and the math just didn't add up, even with very optimistic values for MTBF and expected lifetime.
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This (at least the headline) reads like an advertisement for heat pump systems. I doubt that anyone has calculated the total cost of owning and operating such a system. It might pay off in a super modern highly insulated home. Otherwise, good luck with these systems. The high upfront and maintenance cost and the expected lifetime of about 15 years make this look like a very questionable proposition to me.
Wouldn't it take longer to pay off on a well-insulated home? That's the sort of home that doesn't use much gas to begin with.
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I'm not sure whether your question is some kind of flippant accusation, but in case you're being genuine: I think the poster you quoted is saying something like: if I could afford to do the right thing for the planet, I would - but I cannot afford to and am forced to do something which I know is detrimental.
> kind of flippant accusation No. I rather meant to indicate that it might have been a good decision. There are some studies here from Germany that suggest that heat pump systems can lead to higher total CO2 emissions than using alternative systems. (I think it was compared to an infrared heating system with solar installed.) A high price of the hardware itself and the associated costs of installing and maintaining s…
Is solar + infrared the most common form of heating in Germany apart from heat pumps? Otherwise it's a dishonest conclusion to say heat pumps can lead to higher CO2 emissions. It's possible that another system is even better. Anything driven entirely by solar probably has no operational emissions. But what if the heatpump is also driven by solar?
The honest way to compare is to compare these various alternatives to the most common form of heating, which is probably still gas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure whether your question is some kind of flippant accusation, but in case you're being genuine: I think the poster you quoted is saying something like: if I could afford to do the right thing for the planet, I would - but I cannot afford to and am forced to do something which I know is detrimental.
> kind of flippant accusation No. I rather meant to indicate that it might have been a good decision. There are some studies here from Germany that suggest that heat pump systems can lead to higher total CO2 emissions than using alternative systems. (I think it was compared to an infrared heating system with solar installed.) A high price of the hardware itself and the associated costs of installing and maintaining s…
So if you're spending significantly more money overall on something in order to reduce your own carbon emissions, there's a pretty reasonable chance (barring any detailed analysis to prove otherwise) that the cascading effects of that spending are actually resulting in more carbon emissions in total than if you'd simply gone with the cheaper solution.
Obviously this can't be universally true. It's a bit of a hand wavy argument, and the reductio ad absurdum conclusion would be that reducing global carbon emissions is impossible (which obviously isn't true). But I still think its something worth considering before making individual purchasing decisions based on perceived "greenness" to the demerit of price.
(I'll also note that if hypothetically a carbon tax or carbon credits were instituted globally then this price-based way of estimating carbon emissions would suddenly become not just a rough approximation, but a highly accurate measurement.)