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Harnessing America's heat pump moment

heatpumped.org

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Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#321

Post by willis936 »

CalRobert wrote: post #295
danielsju6 wrote: post #148

Maybe I have scar tissue from COVID prices but $20k to install a ductless heat pump vs. a $200 to throw a window A/C in or $700 for a portable heat pump. While I get that these heat pumps are better for the environment and much more efficient it's a last mile issue. The installers charge an arm and a leg and I'm not hurting enough to self install. I'm hoping the window heat pumps that just run off mains will be avail…

Why not pick up a few mini splits from Home Depot and slap them in yourself?

It's a good idea. I'll do that in the Spring. Any recommendations on makes / series that do well in the cold and support some form of home assistant offline control (no cloud integration, zigbee or matter or similar)?

Edit: it seems that the market has decided that every manufacturer will ship the same cloud garbage and that the community has decided it actually isn't that hard to bypass and replace their wifi modules with ESPHome devices.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#322

Post by ZeroGravitas »

adrianN wrote: post #306
flakeoil wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water temperature which you deliver to radiators are not defined by capacity of the heatpump, but how hot the radiators can be for safety/comfort reasons. If the radiators are too hot people could burn by touching them or stuff like platsic chairs would melt. Also the piping in the walls and floors cannot support too hot temperatures. The temp for water used in radiators 60-70C is easily achievable by an air-top-…

The heat pump runs with much better efficiency at <50 degrees.

Condensing gas boilers similarly run more efficiently at lower temps.

If the water returning to the boiler isn't below 54C then there will be no condensing at all, and the advertised 90%+ efficiency won't happen till the return value is more like 46C.

That translates roughly to max winter temp of 65C leaving the boiler and lower when lesss heating is required.

This can be tweaked by the end user and save 10-20% on heating bills.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#323

Post by empiricus »

Hm, these are just called AC in Europe. To my knowledge, AC has always worked both ways here. In Europe we call heap pumps when they heat the water. So they are are Air-Water (the outdoor unit looks like a bigger AC outdoor unit) or Water-Water (the outdoor unit is a long underground water pipe loop). The warm water is used for underfloor heating or for shower, kitchen, etc.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#324

Post by danimal88 »

Regarding the crazy prices - it’s structural.

In Asia, manufacturers sell direct or through highly competitive retail channels and the installers really only have to know minisplits.

Minisplits in the US get sold by the brand -> distributor -> dealer (contractor) -> homeowner with each step being a 20% market up. Sometimes there is even a master distributor in there AND usually there is a “rep group” taking points too.

That is fundamentally what drives up costs. That and the fact that the US housing marketing is very heterogeneous so contractors have to know boilers, ducted heatpumps, furnaces, packaged units, ductless, etc.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#325

Post by tibbon »

danielsju6 wrote: post #148

Maybe I have scar tissue from COVID prices but $20k to install a ductless heat pump vs. a $200 to throw a window A/C in or $700 for a portable heat pump. While I get that these heat pumps are better for the environment and much more efficient it's a last mile issue. The installers charge an arm and a leg and I'm not hurting enough to self install. I'm hoping the window heat pumps that just run off mains will be avail…

Agreed. They feel massively overpriced. Covid and government rebates had everyone using them as cash cows.

I installed a 24k btu one for my recording studio myself. Took me 3 hours. It’s a cheap Mr Cool one, but seems good enough for me and has been problem free. $1300 from Costco.

The quotes I got were $10-30k for one to five head units around my house. Nope!

If I’m going to spend that much I’m going to be looking into geothermal for heating

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#326

Post by owenthejumper »

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…

Sounds like you have one of two problems: 1) you are changing the temperature too often. Set it and forget it. 2) you have a refrigerant leak

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#327

Post by alexnewman »

I’m super psyched about heat pump washer/dryers. I live in puerto rico and humidity and electricity are issues that it seems to address. Plus I am going to try installing it in a closet where it wasn’t designed for it all. I think it could change the way houses here are made.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#328

Post by zbentley »

caminante wrote: post #278
thelastgallon wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agree it's important to watch for these things. For externalities or immediate health benefits, heatpumps are pretty defensible. However, solar isn't a saint. Rare earth/mineral mining is hazardous plus only a fraction of solar panels are getting recycled properly. > this is doable in harsh Canadian winters with negligible solar and it breaks even It's doable alright. OP got subsidies (See comment re: risk free loa…

I hope we can agree that fossil fuel consumption is something to be avoided. Subsidies are an effective means of incentivizing people to avoid fossil fuels.

If you believe the externalities of solar are a problem, what do you propose to do instead? Should we subsidize some other alternative? Redirect resources from oil to nuclear? Other?

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#329

Post by bluGill »

eldaisfish wrote: post #205
bluGill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Northern Europe tends to have a mild climate in the places where people live. The Northern US is significantly south, yet gets significantly colder winters. There are places in Europe that get worse than the Northern US - but they are places where few people live and so not normally what you are talking about when talking about Europe. Though good heat pumps are hard to find in the northern US. Most installers only k…

that's odd because Ontario and Quebec are colder than most of the US and just these two provinces account for about one million heat pump installs per year since 2020.

Heat pumps can work great in the northern us. However the experience of europe mostly doesn't apply. You need backup heat of some sort to use a heat pump.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#330

Post by bluGill »

ip26 wrote: post #284
bluGill wrote: post #50

When I replaced my furnace a couple years back I asked for a heat pump - a previous house had it and it worked great. Turns out my contractor didn't ask the right questions and so mine only works to 25F - it still outputs heat below that, but not enough to keep my house warm and so I use the backup furnace a lot more than I want to. A previous house the heat pump was sized to work to 14F. They make them that will wor…

gets to -30f where I live (about once every 10 years) For this specific problem, I'm always inclined to just keep a 1800W space heater or two in the closet.

It takes a lot more watts than that to keep the house warm.
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