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Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

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Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#531

Post by rnk »

abakker wrote: post #319
sokoloff wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a potential customer for DTC/DIY installation, but I think that's a pretty small slice of the market. Many of my friends are entirely willing to drop $4-5K for a single zone mini-split install (that's $1-1.5K of equipment and 2 hours of labor) and wouldn't dream of drilling a hole in the side of their house to save $3K.

I recently got quoted $17k for 2 zone mini split. I bought the tools, instructions, and watched youtube and spent $4500 total. At that savings, I don't need a warranty. I can just buy and install another system if it fails.

Can you explain a little more what you did? Just a little bit, like what brand, did you replace an existing home system. Who did the electrical, did you need duct work? I already have a forced gas system, you can just connect it up? If I only had say 4-5 rooms on one story it would be a lot easier.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#532

Post by whstl »

walterbell wrote: post #103
stevenpetryk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the company could at least leave it easy to hack :)

Implement with a swappable compute module?

My dream is something equivalent to a Dumb TV + Chromecast.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#533

Post by cmui »

elif wrote: post #526

For comparison on pricing, their lowest tier unit is 24kbtu and costs $10k. I bought an LG split with 4 ceiling-mounted heat exchangers, one of them 18K BTU, and 3 of them 9K BTU, all of the plumbing and distribution box to connect them, and the outside 48K BTU exchanger, and the total shipped price including sales tax was $7,200. The advantage of having 4 independent indoor units is the key, as you don't have to hea…

Definitely hearing the feedback that we need better communication on pricing and sizing! A 24kbtu at 5F heat pump is much bigger than a 24kbtu heat pump at 47F so its not an apples to apples comparison. You're right about ductless offering more opportunity for zoning, but I think most homeowners with ducts would like a drop-in replacement for their furnace, not a bunch of extra hardware in each room.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#534

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

robomartin wrote: post #360
dang wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason! 200-year old heat pump technology is back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846762 - Feb 2023 (205 comments) How a heat pump works - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34739375 - Feb 2023 (324 comments) Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34708161 - Feb 2023 (174 comments) Heat pumps of t…

> Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason! Because they are throwing money at it. Billions. All policy driven, not science-driven. If every home in the US switched to electric powered HVAC heat-pump systems we'd have huge blackouts in every city. Our power grid and power generation systems are not ready for this at all. Add electric cars to the mix and the scenario gets much darker (no pun intended, ligh…

Let's suppose that you want to switch over, say, Chicago, to be fully electric heat pump driven. Let's further suppose you want to do this over 25 years.

There are just over 1M households in Chicago. If we assume (wrongly) that nobody has heat pumps today, that conversion needs to take place in 123 households every day of every year for the next 25 years. If the contractors don't work weekends, it's 153 households a day.

And all this while the same thing has to take place in Houston, NYC, LA and cities and towns of every size at the same time.

That's a huge task even spread out over 25 years. It seems very unlikely we will meet that goal, so your hand wringing over heat-pump induced blackouts seems misplaced.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#535

Post by danans »

It's great to see more heat pump options being developed, free from the assumptions of traditional manufacturers.

Combining air quality and ventilation with the same appliance is great (most houses lack systems for either of those). I don't see it addressed whether or not their fresh air systems will do heat-recovery. This is also a big energy saver when fresh air is being introduced, and would eliminate the need for a separate HRV/ERV system. So it's better to think of this as 3 systems in one: Heating, Ventilation and A/C (hence HVAC). Most houses have at best H and AC.

It will be very interesting to see how their heat pump sizing tools work. Right now, there is an epidemic of HVAC contractors installing massively over-sized heat pumps in a house by naively using the same rules of thumb they use for gas furnaces.

This often results in short cycling, higher-than-necessary electricity use, and ultimately discomfort. This is even worse when the heat pump air handlers and duct-work are installed in unconditioned spaces (common in temperate climates). In places with high energy prices (i.e. California) this results in huge energy bills.

The elephant in the room is of course the poor quality and leaky building envelopes that are commonplace across the country. This equipment can't solve that problem.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#536

Post by toss1 »

fourseventy wrote: post #277
oceanplexian wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I wish these companies would “get it” but they never do. Provide an open API with the option to use a cloud service. Some cloud services are great, and have way better UIs than the self hosted stuff which I would gladly pay for. But take away the option to go self hosted and I lose all interest. If a device can’t be controlled locally you don’t really “own” it, you’re just renting it from someone else.

98% of consumers who would buy a heat pump have no idea what an API is.

That's quite generous to estimate that 2% of the population knows what is an API !

My first guess would be more like 99.98% don't know about APIs

But yes, that 2% or whatever is an important set of leaders

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#537

Post by elif »

ttul wrote: post #455
Max-q wrote: post #448

In Norway most homes have one or more heat pumps. We are living in a cold climate and the pumps are being used like 9-10 months a year. The most common brands are Japanese: Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Panasonic. I will not agree that the user experience is bad at all. They are very good products. Stand alone they work well and with integration they work together with the power company to optimize the energy consumption v…

They are UGLY though...

this is why I went with LG ceiling mounted cassettes. IMO it's even better than floor vents (they stay cleaner, floors are easier to clean) or ducted ceiling vents (each cassette can target the air movement direction actively toward humans).

and all the electronic bits are in the attic so the noise is a little better.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#540

Post by mox1 »

tedivm wrote: post #496
cmui wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something we'd definitely consider. Is the desire to have thermostat control via any third party? edit - The current plan has been Matter/thread Homekit + Google Home integration. We can expose at least temperature control via this to everyone.

If you support home assistant then I am far, far more likely to purchase this. My wife and I are buying a house sometime over the next year and one of my higher priorities is getting a heat pump. At the same time though I also refuse to use cloud based services and instead prefer to run my own home assistant installation. You should consider this a huge marketing opportunity- the home assistant people are obsessed wi…

I just preordered and I will echo this.

On track to replace my gas furnace in the next few years, this sounds awesome, but HA integration would be very highly desired.

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