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Harnessing America's heat pump moment

heatpumped.org

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Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#421

Post by antongribok »

thelastgallon wrote: post #266
caminante wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jealous of the learning and hobby project. Though, the returns are (edit: "not great") if the figures above INCLUDE net metering revenues. Heatpump = Negative IRR until y8 Solar = Negative IRR until y16 Heatpump + Solar = 0 NPV through y25 | 8% discount rate

I'm jealous of your financial learnings. However, your model is not accurate as it doesn't factor in the 4 degree improvement in comfort and indoor pollution from propane furnaces: Propane furnaces can cause indoor pollution through the release of pollutants like carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (\(NO_{2}\)), and benzene, which are byproducts of combustion. It also doesn't include the negative externalities bec…

I've lived most of my adult life in houses with forced air furnaces (albeit powered via natural gas, not propane), and what you are saying is inaccurate regarding indoor air pollution unless your furnace is in need of immediate replacement.

A modern furnace works via a heat exchanger, where the combustion produced pollutants never mix with the indoor air being pushed through. All pollutants are expelled outside via a property functioning chimney. This is one reason why you should have the furnace (and chimney function) inspected annually. Aging heat exchangers will show hotspots before there is a possibility of air being mixed, giving plenty of time to plan for a replacement. Of course there is a possibility of failure, which is why you should have a carbon monoxide detector.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#422

Post by mothballed »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #366
yojo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s bonkers. I bought a pre-charged ductless mini split to DIY. Took my dad and I about four hours to do the install. So call it 8 hours of semi-skilled labor. The unit was $1350, I added a line set cover, pad and feet for another $200, and needed about $200 in electrical equipment - it was a long wire run and code requires installing a disconnect box. The only special tool was a hole saw bit for running the coolant…

Now that you've got some experience, maybe you should start a heat pump installation company :-)

Lol it's protected by the licensing mafia. You'll have to change $5 capacitors for $1000 a pop for 4 years first while being paid peanuts to do it.

Hardly anyone wants to do that so we're stuck with the status quo. You're basically stuck either paying through the nose or finding a family/friend with the equipment and expertise or doing it yourself.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#423

Post by ericd »

uhfraid wrote: post #247
ssuds wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wrote a big thread yesterday responding to someone with similar concerns to yours ( https://bsky.app/profile/shreyassudhakar.com/post/3m3w3nra2h... ). Copying it here if it's helpful to other folks. FWIW, the challenges you are facing seem to be grounded in bad design and application, which happens more than it should and really sucks. We need to move the bar much higher for the contractors installing heat pum…

> “Air doesn’t come out hot” is a common complaint. It’s by design! You don’t need scalding hot air to have a comfortable space. “It’s a feature, not a bug. Just put on a hoodie and get under the blanket!”

Heat pumps can make the room 90 degrees if I want. But the point is that you can make the room 72 degrees with 80 degree air running constantly rather than 20 minutes of 100 degree air per hour.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#424

Post by scottgg »

sholladay wrote: post #356

We had a heat pump installed last year. It’s advertised as a cold-climate heat pump and it’s “good enough” for us, but it’ll never again be toasty on a cold night, just relatively warm. When under heavy load, it also has some kind of loud vibration issue, I think in the lines that run from inside out to the condenser. The system is an Ecoer, which is a Chinese company that pretends to be a U.S. company. And it has a…

Sounds like it wasn’t sized well?

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#426

Post by mothballed »

scottgg wrote: post #425

Heat pumps are so _ordinary_ here (Central Europe), im always a bit surprised how skeptical folks in the US and UK seem to be about them

They're not skeptical, it's just that no one wants to pay $10k to have a $2k unit installed, and new entrants who want to offer anything other than what the entrenched services have to offer have to be abused and hazed for 4 years near minimum wage changing out $5 capacitors for $1000 (to their company, not them) before they can get a trade license, and after that they have to go through an onerous contracting paperwork to open up a business. So we don't get new businesses popping up offering mini split installation.

End result is most of the units that get installed in the US are probably DIYing off-paper and then shutting the fuck up. I live in a place with no inspections for owner-builder and that was the only way I was able to get away with it, and even then I had to pass an EPA 608 license to handle the refrigerants since I did not want to get fined a bazillion dollars if someone found out.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#427

Post by rainsford »

silisili wrote: post #267
mithr wrote: post #26

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo. Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my…

My personal anecdote? Don't. I have a house where the first floor is served by a gas/ac combo unit, and the second floor with a heat pump. I literally see no advantage to the heat pump and wish I didn't have it. It takes forever to heat and cool, comparitively, and likes to ice over when it gets too cold in the winter while running 24/7 doing nothing. The emergency heat eventually kicks in and fixes it, so I'm consid…

The fact that your heat pump setup is also taking longer to cool suggests there's something fundamentally different between the setup on your different floors, not that there is something bad with heat pumps in general.

A heat pump in cooling mode works exactly like an AC unit, because that's exactly what it is. So if your AC unit on the first floor cools more quickly than you AC unit (i.e. heat pump) on your second floor, it's because A) your floors are different sizes or insulated differently or something else is different about their construction, B) your units are sized differently, or C) your heat pump has some mechanical problem. But the fact that it's a heat pump should make no difference to its cooling performance.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#428

Post by mothballed »

orwin wrote: post #397
steveBK123 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In US the labor & markup is a huge component. I got HVAC drop-in replacement quotes ranging from $7k to $14k for what upon some quick research was about $3k in hardware.

Can you do the installation yourself? In my country i have to make a HVAC technician come to check the installation and sign a paper before i can start mine (200€ for a 15 minutes job, but it's less than the 2-4k it would cost to not do it myself) [edit] i say that because my hardware is 2.5k euros, so ~3k¯dollars, so we probably have the same high end stuff, and i guarantee you it's not hard to install, and it can b…

Depends on where you live. Someone that has the tools can do it themselves and then shut the fuck up, which is how I suspect most of them in America get installed. Code/planning enforcement commonly surveils residences via satellite or air images but they're not noticing a mini split installed.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#429

Post by mothballed »

steveBK123 wrote: post #405
orwin wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you do the installation yourself? In my country i have to make a HVAC technician come to check the installation and sign a paper before i can start mine (200€ for a 15 minutes job, but it's less than the 2-4k it would cost to not do it myself) [edit] i say that because my hardware is 2.5k euros, so ~3k¯dollars, so we probably have the same high end stuff, and i guarantee you it's not hard to install, and it can b…

Central air system with indoor blower & outdoor condenser generally don't come with pre-charged lines so self-install without certification isn't really an option in US.

I got my EPA 608 universal for free after 2 night of cramming and an online proctored test. Skillcat, I think they charge like $50 if you want a printed card, worth it to me because I wanted to be able to walk into supply houses and buy refrigerant.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#430

Post by JeremyPOsborne »

pfdietz wrote: post #189
prlambert wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is actually the worst – when open minded people get a heat pump for "the right reasons" and then have buyer's remorse. Completely backfires the transition. Do you have a ducted or ductless heat pump? Sounds like ducted, and if so that might be part of it too. The air cools down in the ductwork and if that's not accounted for - i.e. you reuse ductwork that was meant for a furnace – you run into issues like th…

When we had our ducted heat pump installed, we also had the ducts in the attic covered with extra insulation, as well as spray foam at the top of the foundation to seal that completely. This all really helped.

Cool!
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