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Harnessing America's heat pump moment

heatpumped.org

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Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#351

Post by maxerickson »

twothamendment wrote: post #121
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…

I'm in Northwest Montana. My ground source heat pump doesn't struggle until the highs outside are -20F (actual, not wind-chill). I have the backup heat strip, but the breaker is off. I don't know when it would turn on, I just wanted to know it wouldn't without me knowing it.

Ground source is largely going to maintain capacity independent of the outside temps, so the resistive would turn on when the heat pump isn't keeping up with the heat loss.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#352

Post by gardenhedge »

orev wrote: post #142
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…

Heat pumps are just air conditioners in reverse. They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling. While many people have air conditioners, and grids seem to be able to handle them in the summer, an assertion that the grid can’t handle them in the winter is doubtful. Plus there are fewer people using them in the winter (just because fewer are installed). Most people in the NE heat with oil, gas, or…

I have a heat pump, along with hvac. It only produces heat. Is it possible to get it to produce cooling too or is that an entirely different system?

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#353

Post by glxxyz »

adrianN wrote: post #288
Ekaros wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which to me is funny, when the electricity prices will clearly not rise when there is solar energy production from said panels. But might in other times.

Batteries for load shifting a few hours mitigate that quite a bit and are getting cheaper fast.

The issue for me with batteries is that in the summer I can produce in a day much more than I can use, and in winter I consume a lot and barely produce anything. This is where net metering steps in- I can ‘store’ all of my excess summer consumption in the grid in summer and get credit for it in winter.

A cheaper smaller system right sized for summer consumption with a battery would have my second best option, but for me never showed any potential payback due to the fixed costs of installation and the extra battery costs.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#354

Post by dan-robertson »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #313
adrianN wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that?

This is referred to as "Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES)" and seems to have been pioneered in the UK and adopted by Netherlands and France and then the EU generally.

IME the people estimating energy efficiency in the UK do not recognise heat pumps and often misclassify them as less efficient systems.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#355

Post by potato3732842 »

jofla_net wrote: post #239
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…

Its most simply summed up as what I call the tradesman's protection racket. On one side of the coin you have any moron, calling himself a repair man which can and does end in disastrous jobs which can be unsafe. This though has much lower pricing. The flip side is, basically a protection racket where suppliers only sell to you if you have a 'loicense' and the hurdles required to become said VIP are so high, giving yo…

You think HVAC is bad, plumbers and electricians have their protectionism written into law in many states. You must pay for their stamp. "Here is what I have and it is demonstrably within code" is not sufficient.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#356

Post by sholladay »

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 really suspicious 4G cellular IoT modem that, of course, feeds all the data to their cloud, with no end-user access.

I will say, it keeps the temperature very stable, which is nice. And it saves money, paying for itself within 10 years. But there’s actually quite a bit that can go wrong during installation and it’s not easy to get them to fix everything, maybe because U.S. installers aren’t used to all of the nuances of heat pumps yet. Our aux heat strips still aren’t working properly, after multiple service visits.

If I could do it over again, I would still get a heat pump. But I would go with a Mitsubishi system and a more experienced installer. The extra cost is worth it.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#357

Post by potato3732842 »

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…

>Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year.

Don't forget that those costs are going up in large part because heat pump subsidies are being rolled into electricity prices.

Imagine being a ~$100k HHI household and paying $300+/mo for electricity so that $200+k HHI doctor/lawyer/HN households can have subsidized heat pumps and our sleazy contractors, and the dealers, and everyone else upstream) can over-charge us for the privilege (thereby getting their cut of the subsidy).

It's a miracle we haven't all caught hot lead yet.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#358

Post by jcalvinowens »

card_zero wrote: post #139
jcalvinowens wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#359

Post by potato3732842 »

Animats wrote: post #192

Everybody seems to agree that installation costs way too much. There's a few parts to this. Everything has to be carefully sized - power, pipe sizes, unit locations. You need to put a house's thermal profile (how much heat loss, how much air leak, how much thermal mass) along with the regional thermal profile into an engineering calculation which computes what you need. Thermographic inspections are a thing.[1] Usual…

>There's a few parts to this. Everything has to be carefully sized - power, pipe sizes, unit locations.

No. Not even in the slightest. A two bit could make conservative guesses or work off a conservatively spec'd sizing table and then deal with the resulting excess capacity with controls/distribution.

Whether it's a sewer line or a hvac system or retaining wall it's the same stupid situation. The only reason that we do calculated minimum-ish sizing for all this stuff is because if you're being screwed by law into paying to make work for a credentialed professional you might as well make them save you money on the rest of it so that you're only getting screwed out of $0.95 on the dollar instead of $1 on the dollar instead.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#360

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

yojo wrote: post #162
sitharus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shocked when I saw the price of heat pump installation in the US, even with an existing ducted system. There’s no reason a reversible heat pump system should be significantly more expensive than a cooling only one.

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…

It's not that different for other contractors either. That's part of the reason housing prices are so high. As unbelievable as it is, someone must be willing to pay the high prices. Economic inequality is the basic reason for the housing shortage.
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