371–380 of 571 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not uncommon for a gas heater to have an always on pilot.
Thanks for catching that :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. The quotes I got for a single 2 ton heat pump with a oil backup ranged from $15K to $45K. It's insane and really made me look into the DIY installs. Even if I broke 2 of those it would still be cheaper than one professional one. Solar install is another scam. All those companies want to steer you into a PPA rather than let you buy panels.
Yup, got similar quotes. I'm really not going to pay that for a day's work (2 people). The price difference over installing A/C is staggering and don't know where it comes from.
It’s very hard to say whether heat pumps are cheaper than NG for heating. I pay about $0.25 per 100k BTUs which is about 3kWh. 3kWh costs about 50 cents. As long as the COP is above 2, it’s cheaper to run the heat pump. Once you factor in an electrician and pipefitter for installing a heat pump, plus the cost of the heat pump, refrigerant, and furnace coil, I’d imagine you lose money in the long run. If you then addi…
Its not hard to say at all, the math can be done pretty easily based on your local electric and gas rates, and most people who go for a heat pump already need an air conditioner for summer. The math actually works out in many places unless you have cheap gas and expensive electricity. Its also better then to burn the gas at a power plant at 60% efficiency then 300-400% efficiency at the heat pump than pipe and burn t…
I went on to do the math for operating costs for myself in the very next sentence. Excluding labor and material to replace a furnace with a heat pump, operating costs are lower as long as the heat pump has a COP of 2 or higher.
Predicting future electricity and gas prices is virtually impossible but it is possible to quantify how much it costs to convert a natural gas furnace to a heat pump system at present. I’m saying it’s difficult to know at the present time if the TCO of the heat pump beats out natural gas. Where I live in Minnesota, I’m skeptical you’d come out ahead. In a state like Arkansas or Tennessee, the heat pump is likely to come out ahead due to lower heating needs.
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…
That’s wild. Is it something that plugs into a central air so not the usual consumer heat pump? I just got a nice heat pump in Finland for two floors with two indoor units for about $3000 with install. It should handle 99% of our heating needs. The most expensive units on the market are about $3000-4000 and for install I got quoted $1k fixed without shopping around. That includes drilling through two brick outside wa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the better question here is "why can't I pay a fair price for an expert to do this for me?". What has happened to the market?
One question I would have is how distorted is your area, economically? I live in the Appalachian mountains, so one would think it should be reasonable labor rates for an area with a middle-low cost of living. Except that we have a lake the next town over which is entirely covered in millionaire lake houses, so anyone working a trade here can and will charge obscene rates to local, normal people because they can comma…
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…
For comparison, I just bought a house here in Japan. Installed 6 minisplit heat pumps across various rooms in the house. All together it cost me 750,000 yen ($5,000) for the hardware and 90,000 yen ($600) for the install.
I got HVAC drop-in replacement quotes ranging from $7k to $14k for what upon some quick research was about $3k in hardware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Residential electricity rates have risen fast across the US—more than 30 percent on average since 2020 and almost double the rate of inflation: https://www.wired.com/story/power-bills-in-the-us-are-soarin...
It will be interesting to see if this will make natural gas a more attractive source of residential heating as the price has remained relatively stable over the past 20 years. The push for electrification seems like it relies on us metaphorically drowning in excess cheap electricity and want somewhere for it to go but right now the opposite it happening.
Not really, natural gas has immense exposure to geopolitics and the commodity markets: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/what-drives-natural-gas-pri...
There’s also the argument to be made (this has manifested in other countries) that as gas usage wanes and more homes electrify, nat gas costs will increase as the infrastructure costs are spread among fewer and fewer people
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that the second path you outlined, "giving your body to a master tradesman to get a piece of paper over many years" (in the figurative sense), is in general a necessary prerequisite to avoid the first path of any moron being allowed to "[call] himself a repair man which can and does end in disastrous jobs" ? > I wish I could live in a world somewhere in the middle […] This world would just be a mi…
I've done a lot of that type of work myself. It isn't hard to learn how to do it right from books - and I have passed inspection reports to prove it. I've also seen those professionals do a terrible job - to the point inspectors admitted to hurrying my job because they knew the next would be a mess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
or you could, you know, wing-it, like they do overseas, and I tell you, the world does not end.
You're better off guesstimating yourself than trusting contractors. The contractors are incentivized to severely oversize any AC units they install or else people leave bad reviews on their pages/listings when the installed unit can't keep up the one day every two years that the temperature gets abnormally hot. I did this myself and insisted on a unit half the capacity that the contractors wanted. Several flat-out re…
With the new system, electricity consumption on a hot summer day is about a third of the prior system, it’s virtually silent and the comfort of the house (due to more granular temperature control and near-constant dehumidification) is substantially better.