Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 406 posts

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#281

Post by bombcar »

MivLives wrote: post #274
ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

The worst is when you rent. I live in an area that doesn't really expect much cold or heat. All the windows are single paned. The sun beating on the roof raises the top floor to the outside temperature plus 5 degrees. I can't fix any of it because I'm only here for a few years.

Some jurisdictions will actually basically pay the landlord to improve those things, worth checking community block grants and other similar search terms for your location.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#282

Post by bombcar »

spiderice wrote: post #249
ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

You’re describing my situation. How do you de-leakify a house?

The easiest is honestly to remove the siding and roof, and wrap the entire building in insulation.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#283

Post by NiloCK »

ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

I have new heat pumps in a very old, under insulated, and leaky house. I didn't use my oil furnace last winter (the first since two additional pumps). My costs were about half of the previous year, and I'm sure my carbon footprint was much better as well.

Can you say more about what your comment is supposed to mean?

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#284

Post by notyourwork »

jghn wrote: post #230
SECProto wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of a system were you installing? We had a heat pump installed three years ago for less than $5k Canadian. Can't remember if we got a rebate on top of that or not.

Had mitsubishi units installed in the northeast USA a couple of years ago, for a 1.5k sqft house all of our quotes were ~15K.

$49k for a Mitsubishi heat pump, variable speed air handler and two ducted head units for upstairs rooms. Supports 3000 sqft with multiple zones.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#285

Post by gs17 »

MivLives wrote: post #274
ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

The worst is when you rent. I live in an area that doesn't really expect much cold or heat. All the windows are single paned. The sun beating on the roof raises the top floor to the outside temperature plus 5 degrees. I can't fix any of it because I'm only here for a few years.

Renting is a pain for heat pumps too, why would a landlord spend extra on one when they can pass the cost of utilities on to the tenant?

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#286

Post by notyourwork »

hedgehog wrote: post #168
cwkoss wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a very similar quote ($27k for ~2000sqft home) in seattle a few months ago. Salesperson said there is excess demand for both labor and machinery for heat pump installations in the past few months. I wondered at the time to what extent this is a regional phenomenon (seattlites are nerds who like energy efficiency) vs. supply chain issues vs. a sales technique. Interestingly, I learned that it will be too cold fo…

Getting anything at all done in the Seattle area is super expensive. Not sure why. The rep is wrong about the too cold bit though, even just what's in stock at Lowe's is rated to well below record lows for the region.

Price gouging. I've gotten quotes for fence replacements, heat pumps, roofs, window restoration. There is nothing that isn't ridiculous price in my experience. Every company has the same, supply/demand and reference to pandemic statements to substantiate their costs.

It's also the case that demand is huge.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#287

Post by cogman10 »

NiloCK wrote: post #283
ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

I have new heat pumps in a very old, under insulated, and leaky house. I didn't use my oil furnace last winter (the first since two additional pumps). My costs were about half of the previous year, and I'm sure my carbon footprint was much better as well. Can you say more about what your comment is supposed to mean?

Not OP, but my assumption is that better insulation means you need less heating and cooling.

I've lived in a home with a literal hole to the outside. During the winter we had to run the radiators non-stop and it was still freezing.

If you are trying to save energy, then sealing up and improving insulation will generally have the largest bang for the buck.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#288

Post by pnw »

nsxwolf wrote: post #193

When I needed a new air conditioner a couple years ago I was quoted $17,000 for a heat pump. I can only guess at that point whatever energy cost savings it would bring would never be realized within the service life of the system. I went with a $6000 standard replacement AC unit.

$17k is about right for a top of the line 5 ton Trane XV19 with gas furnace option. The high efficiency/low noise units are expensive.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#289

Post by XorNot »

ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

And it's irrelevant. Everyone is like "but if you have better insulation..." well golly gee, guess I'll get right on that. Tearing out all my drywall? Re-sarking my roof? Cost-free! Definitely not hugely disruptive, invasive and expensive activities which stand a good chance of forcing me to move out of my house while the work is complete...

People love throwing in about how effective insulation is, completely ignoring the vast difference in difficulty and cost it actually represents.

Re: Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs

#290

Post by smeej »

XorNot wrote: post #289
ashayh wrote: post #232

The article mentions the most important point towards the end: “The better you insulate, the less heat you need in the first place,” No heat pump will help if your house is leaky or under insulated.

And it's irrelevant. Everyone is like "but if you have better insulation..." well golly gee, guess I'll get right on that. Tearing out all my drywall? Re-sarking my roof? Cost-free! Definitely not hugely disruptive, invasive and expensive activities which stand a good chance of forcing me to move out of my house while the work is complete... People love throwing in about how effective insulation is, completely ignori…

Never mind that you really, really can't do anything about that if you're renting.
Post reply on HN