I’ve had a heat pump with backup gas in Seattle area since 2016. Great to have AC and heat; the gas comes on when house needs to be warmed quickly. I like constant air circulation and have it set so fan runs even when it doesn’t need to heat or cool so it works really well for me; no complaints at all.
Harnessing America's heat pump moment
131–140 of 571 posts
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most homeowners in california actually see operating cost parity or a slight decrease, even with super expensive electricity But you’re missing my first point though, installing a heat pump system comes with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not doing that if my operating cost is at parity or a slight decrease. It’s the same reason people are no longer incentivized to install solar. And to add to tha…
> installing a heat pump system comes with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. Mine cost US$250 for the machine, refrigerant included, and another US$80 for the installation. We've had to have it fixed twice due to factory defects. Its heat output is 3400W, nominally consuming 941 watts of electrical power. It's not a great machine, but you're smoking crack.
I presume you're not in the US - the numbers you quoted here align with the costs I observed for heat pumps in India (https://www.heatpumped.org/p/you-can-have-it-in-any-color-as...)
Skilled labor in the US is expensive! Most of the install costs come from labor, not equipment. Tens of thousands of dollars is pretty typical for a heat pump installation.
(For what it's worth, the person you're quoting is referencing a whole home system, either ducted or multi-zone ductless. I think you're referencing a single-zone ductless. Those are cheaper, but still are typically $5-10k installed from a licensed contractor in the states)
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#133Did ChatGPT write this?
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> installing a heat pump system comes with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. Mine cost US$250 for the machine, refrigerant included, and another US$80 for the installation. We've had to have it fixed twice due to factory defects. Its heat output is 3400W, nominally consuming 941 watts of electrical power. It's not a great machine, but you're smoking crack.
I presume you're not in the US - the numbers you quoted here align with the costs I observed for heat pumps in India ( https://www.heatpumped.org/p/you-can-have-it-in-any-color-as... ) Skilled labor in the US is expensive! Most of the install costs come from labor, not equipment. Tens of thousands of dollars is pretty typical for a heat pump installation. (For what it's worth, the person you're quoting is referencing…
Yes, it's just a mini split. Two guys (skilled, but AFAIK not licensed) installed it in about 6 hours. I'm in Argentina, but I don't think US$1000 an hour is a common labor rate even in the US? Maybe for a famous lawyer or surgeon?
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our heat pump for HVAC is awesome. Until it gets under 30. Then you can watch the power meter crank when auxiliary heat kicks on. And we only keep it 65 in the house in the winter. Luckily I live in the upper Midwest, so it's only that cold for like 4 months. . . Pretty cool. P.r.e.t.t.y. cool
Some heat pumps are rated for much lower temps.
They can work at lower temperatures, but they do need the auxiliary heat to deice the outside coils.
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.
That’s true, but still doesn’t always make heat pumps the most cost effective choice to operate. For example, last winter I paid an average of $0.24/kWh for electricity vs $0.05/kWh for natural gas. Even if a heat pump had a perfect 4.0 COP all winter, gas would be ~15% cheaper. Electricity prices really need to come down before it will be viable for everyone.
Get solar.
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
A possible challenge, yes, but there exist 1500w, standard outlet hpwh, and it's a lot less common to not have any power near a water heater.
A 1500W electric water heater would be painful to use in a home. A typical 30-60 gallon EWH is 6kW. And for the record, every single natural gas water heater is connected to 120V power for the ignition circuit.
> every single natural gas water heater is connected to 120V power for the ignition circuit
Mine isn't. During a long power outage, I still had hot water.
I was a bit surprised the water heater was working since I was pretty sure it had an electronic control system. So I went and looked, and sure enough, it was electronic, and somehow the LED was flashing blue like normal!
It turns out the electronics are powered by a thermopile which is heated by the pilot light.
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.
That’s true, but still doesn’t always make heat pumps the most cost effective choice to operate. For example, last winter I paid an average of $0.24/kWh for electricity vs $0.05/kWh for natural gas. Even if a heat pump had a perfect 4.0 COP all winter, gas would be ~15% cheaper. Electricity prices really need to come down before it will be viable for everyone.
Not to mention, lots of places have time of use electricity pricing which makes it even worse. This is the problem with running my heatpump when its cold, some of the coldest times (right before dawn) coincide with peak time-of-use prices
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#139People are reluctant to install them because they don't work as well as the good old boilers we'd be replacing. I'm not saying they can't, and I'm not saying that there are zero models out there that work. But in practice, a lot of us that have interacted with heat pumps have the specific experience that they get anemic as the temperature goes down and eventually become unable to do much of anything. I live in the mi…
The radiators might make you feel warmer despite not actually making the air in the room warmer: the black body radiation from the big warm radiators affects your perception of warmth in a not insignificant way.
Seems to me that making people feel warmer is the objective, and making the air warmer is not.
Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment
#140> what it’s going to take, from the human side of the equation, to make heat pumps the obvious, accessible, and default choice for millions of American homes. Well, this has already happened; living in a third-world American country, I've been heating my houses in winter with heat pumps every winter for many years (even though they iced up occasionally) and most air conditioners here are already heat pumps. Frio/calo…
Remember: The season that you need heat is the season with the least sunshine. Solar is only cheap as you claim due to net metering; without pairing it with batteries or some other form of storage, you're pushing your heating cost on others by flooding the grid with electricity when it isn't needed.
Now, I will gladly point out that I have a roof of solar panels, and benefit from subsidies: It's important to understand that solar currently is unsustainable economically and will only be sustainable with more R&D on storage.