If you’re here to look at (or join) all the people who want to tell you that they think heat pumps aren’t good, here’s the brass tacks: Heat pumps are the most efficient way to use *any source* of energy - including fossil fuels - for heating buildings in almost all cases; recent improvements in Air Source heat pumps have meant this remains the case in all but the most extreme temperatures. While energy costs to the end-user may be out of whack right now - sometimes more resource-intensive energy is cheaper, for better or worse - it is factually the case that modern heat pumps allow us to RIGHT NOW reduce the amount of fuel we need to consume (a good things for various reasons), and make electrification easier as we go on.
might be the best way but it's not the most effective. I froze with a heat pump and it was a brand new heat so I wasn't impressed at all and couldn't wait to get rid of it.
While I agree with everything you said there is something even more important especially in the USA. Insulation. Insulation earns back the investment easily (especially with the current rising prices) and will also reduce the need for heating meaning your heating pumps won't be on as often and that IF there is a failure your house will hold on to the heat inside of it.
Agreed, the first point of focus in any house should be minimizing heat energy leaks. Double glazing, foam insulation between drywall and roof insulation should be installed before installing sustainable heat/cooling systems...
@@Robert-cu9bm Every problem has problems. We have gotten really good at insulating whole houses here in Europe. Companies can do it within a day most of the time now. Surely if you want to do it perfectly you would have to design the house like that from scratch but perfect is the enemy of good enough and many people live in older buildings.
No, Robert is right. It's pretty difficult and expensive to add meaningful insulation to an existing home, and then you have to deal with the house not having been initially designed for that insulation, so insulating can lead to problems even worse than a little inefficiency. In contrast, heat pumps can basically be slotted into any existing home without problems beyond the basic cost. Altering insulation requirements is not going to make any meaningful difference any time soon. Also, the USA is kind of outside of the core motivator of this video anyways, since it produces it's own natural gas.
@@petecottham5385 We chose to get a central heatpump prior to major insulation work. In our case it was cheaper to install the heatpump now vs all the insulation work. We live in a 250 year old house that has insulation added to the walls, but had very open sheathing and no house wrap, meaning on windy days the insulation loses much of its value. Even the triple pane windows aren't all the valuable if you got cold air coming through your electric sockets. Now we just had the worst side of the house resided and had a tyvek wrap installed under it, but that one side cost more to do than our new heatpump did (once the $5k rebate comes in) So to us it made more sense to get the heatpump installed now, and help save money for the future residing and house wrap.
In the 1960s, my aunt and uncle lived near Colorado Springs and had two "cutting edge" (for the time) innovations: 1) Recursive air ducts under the foundations of their home to provide cool air for summer and 2) A solar chimney to draw the cool air from the ducts into the house during summer and provide heat in winter. I well recall my uncle boasting that he paid less than twenty-five cents per day for electricity. My nine year self was amazed by the blast of heated air I felt when my uncle demonstrated the way it all worked. Sadly, theirs was the only house I have ever seen in the USA with a solar chimney. I saw dozens of buildings with solar chimneys in Nepal and Bhutan, and it's a good bit colder there than most places in the continental USA.
@@boonstein9949 Recursive air ducts for cooling are basically pipes that start on the shady side of the house (the north side in the northern hemisphere), they drop down several feet into the earth, then run back and forth several times, go up a small distance, then repeat the back and forth. This go on in layers until emerging above ground and attaching to the house's duct work. There are usually vermin filters on both ends of the recursive duct to prevent snakes, rats, scorpions, etc, from gaining access to the house interior. How long and how deep the pipes need to be depends on your local situation, things like water table, soil type, etc. A solar chimney is situated on the sunny side of the house. It is kind of like a solar water heater in function and is sometimes does double-duty for that. Imagine a chimney that is more wedge shaped with the sun-facing side having a glass panel over a steel sheet that has been painted black. The sun heats up the steel and air between the steel and glass, which naturally rises, then by using different baffles, the air can be used to inject hot air into the house or diverted to the roof to work as a siphon drawing cool air from the recursive ducts through the house. There used to be a "e²" (PBS series) episode, "The Druk White Lotus School-Ladakh", on RU-vid that covered some of this in detail. I tried locating it, but only found exerpts, not the full episode.
As a Finn where we’ve been using mini splits for heating for 2 decades, the most important thing is R32. Nothing gets even close to it in performance for heating in cold climates. According to our national laboratory, the second most important component to performance is the name Mitsubishi on the front of it, for some reason.
Geothermal heat pumps are more efficient and they're all over Scandinavia and have been for many years now. Good thing too because it ain't fun to have an inefficient heat system when the electricity bill comes a knockin' these days. Last winter the energy prices in Sweden went absolutely ballistic and I read about people having to mortgage their house to pay the bill.
R32 units aren't sold in the U.S. yet (except in some window units). Our building codes don't offer any guidelines for R32 systems yet, which is probably important since R32 is flammable.
I own an HVAC company in Ottawa, Canada (MURPHY HVAC INC) and we specialize in air source heat pumps installations. Mostly Mitsubishi Hyperheat units that can produce heat down to -30°c or -22°f. The inverter technology is pretty awesome and we've helped clients save thousands in heating costs. Plus we have government rebate programs where people can get up to $5000 back, making this really expensive equipment more affordable.
Do you think the efficiency gained in a ground source system is worth it? If those air source pumps work at -30°c that covers pretty much all climates. I'm assuming the efficiency is much lower at those temperatures, and where a ground source heat pump would shine.
I also been in the heat pump biz for 30 years now and now seeing hpumps evolving in the wright direction mostly the Asian technology sadly American products are lagging badly in cold weather ...i tried them all and fix them all and of course instal them all....trane,lennox.york...oh nearly forgot Carrier greenspeed the best in this category BUT ? and the most impressive are mitsubishi ZUBA its worth every dime... some made in China & design are also to consider cause of pricing ( moovair) from Master dist. i dont recomend ground source hpumps cause of cost... ( wells) for home instals but for commercial yes...👍 Mtl Qc...
@@memeofthepeople9147 1 time excavation down 12 feet, or wells drilled using simple truck, and you get a line with year round temps. It's worth it. Even with a mitsu inverter
Canadian here, we installed a heat pump unit 2 years ago, and it give way enough heat output in the winter for most days. we do have a few days in a row that can be around -40, but we still have our resistive heating backup for those days. My parents were sceptical that it was really using less energy than the resistive heaters, and didn't know if it was really good to keep it working in winter, but I showed them the numbers, and they never asked again. Since more than 99% of the electricity where I am comes from renewables, I'm pretty happy about the negligeable carbone footprint we produce to keep warm.
Same here, installed our heatpump unit 10 years ago and it has never failed us. Our house is newer and was built with resistive heating only so it ended up paying for itself after a few years.
Reverse cycle air conditioning has been the standard in Australia for a while now, but there is also a growing trend to using heat pumps for hot water systems over traditional gas burners or resistive electric heaters. Heat engines are just too good to not use for any heating or cooling applications these days.
Yes it sits outside our houses here in the rain and sun. Usually they are about 200Litres so imagine a cylinder like your upright air compressors outside homes. Where i lived about 5 years ago it would get very cold almost snowing and the heat pump just works like a fridge, it has a refrigerant and uses heat from the atmosphere to help heat the water. Very good, never didnt have boiling hot water but i prefered gas for hot water, instant on systems made by Rheem Australia. Gas is very good at heating water super quick and. no storage just turn the tap on and 5 secs or so and. its steaming hot. We also have solar hot water here a tank that sits on the roof with what looks like a solar panel attached, the water trickles thru the panel internally and gets super hot. Free hot water, most systems have an electric booster element, but very rarely needed as the sun gets hot here. Been around for over 40 years. Had one on an old house growing up get so so it exploded, as the pressure release got stuck. sent steam and water everywhere with a huge bang, just dented the roof a little.
heat pumps to get hot water are often falsely advertised. When the cold side of the system is inside your house, it just takes your warm air from your house which cools down your house and your house warming system has to work against that. The costs of this are left out of the advertisements for heat pump hot water systems.
@@vinquinn these really should be one system. Anytime you're running AC, you could use the "waste" heat for your water. Anytime you're heating, just redirect some to the water. Having a separate system costs more to produce, and operate. You could even wrap in the refrigerator/freezers into the systems. This would limit placement, but I think it'd be amazing. Ovens... Probably more of an issue.. the temperature gradient there may be a bit much and reduce the efficiency to the point cost would be excessive for the tiny savings.
I've been watching you videos for a while now, and I really appreciate all of the effort and expertise you put into them. You have a very broad minded way of presenting information to make it understandable by a good majority of people. I can tell by this video in particular that you truly care about our planet and would like to see some changes, and regardless of what critical comments come about regarding your opinions, I think it's important to acknowledge the deeper meaning of this video. So thank you for doing what you do, I love the videos you create. Please keep it going. You're making a difference.
I've been a fan of this channel for a while and I'm almost certain it's at least part of the reason I work for an HVAC company today despite having gone to school for biochemistry. I'm just an air duct cleaner right now, but the company I work for is gonna pay for me to get my NADCA certification so I can work on a broader range of issues and I just wanted to say thank you for making these concepts easy for me to understand, if only on a rudimentary level.
I have to say, the RU-vid algorithm (and the release timing) on this video is impeccable. I just got an HVAC inspection on a house I am in the process of buying, and they are telling me that there are leaking coils and that the whole system will need to be replaced in the next year or two. They are giving me quotes for a like sized gas based furnace, but because of this video I am going to have to see if I can afford a heat pump instead. Great video!
In late December 2021 I was quoted three traditional central ac and gas furnace systems to replace my 30 year old system. A low price, mid price with variable speed, and high price with variable speed. The middle option also had heat pump written next to it for an additional $700. After mulling it over I went with the heat pump option and I'm glad I did. I do have a nat gas furnace for cold days below 40 or 30 or even 20 depending on the crossover point.
I diy installed a Mr Cool 4-5 ton heat pump last year. It was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. The thing works awesome (and looks cool lol) and only cost me $4000 for the whole system. It's so quiet I can't even tell when it's on unless I'm right in front of a vent! Don't know what professional installation would cost but I'm sure it would still be less than a traditional system.
You have to be careful who is performing those inspections. A service technician told my friend that the coils on both HVAC systems were leaking. When I looked at it, one system was working normally and the other was only .5 lb low on refrigerant.
This is only tangentially related to the topic, but please learn how to use alternate sources of heat before there's a winter calamity of some sort. My old subdivision had a week long power outage during an unusual winter event, and although everyone had a gas fireplace, they were electrically operated so nobody used them. It turned out almost nobody knew there was a battery harness in the service panel below the fireplaces where you could install a pair of D batteries and get pretty good heat (at least in one room). Nobody read the instructions that came with the stove / oven, either, where it details how to override the electronics and light the thing with a match.
@@andymerrett A battery-powered ignitor would need battery replacement and a physical or piezo ignitor is is much more annoying. As almost every stove has an electric (or electronic) clock built in there's no reason _not_ to use the same electricity for lighting the stove.
@@startedtech As the gas valves on these stoves are electronically controlled, it requires knowing where you stick the tiny Allen wrench to manually open the valve. Not rocket science, yet not something the average person who microwaves their dinner is going to figure out, either.
When my mom's kitchen stopped having functional electricity on one wall, she just started using a lighter to start the stove. I'm surprised more people don't know how to do that, it's very easy!
Can confirm. I live in Georgia (USA) and my parents' house has 3 heat pump units with a backup electric resistive heating element (that to my knowledge has only been used once - when the installers tested the system). My apartment also has a heat pump. It's smaller in size and on the older side, but it keeps me nice and toasty when the temps dip below 40 here. While I don't often get to air condition the outside (since my downstairs neighbor keeps their place hot year-round and the heat seeps up into my unit), I'm glad that the few times I do are more efficient than using other space heating techniques :) One of my coworkers was renovating his house and asked the HVAC installers for air conditioners. The installer refused and gave a few reasons to install a heat pump instead. He's been happier with it than he was with his old HVAC system with separate heating and cooling.
When I first heard this thing in your video called a “heat pump”, I was so _pumped_! I immediately started to search this hidden gem that can heat my home more efficiently, and I realized…that’s what I have always been using. I was born in a eastern country and now living in another one and “heat pump” is almost the only form of “air conditioner” I know, and it’s definitely the most common one I see in every place I’ve lived in.
Yeah, in Australia we call them reverse cycle or split system air conditioners. I suppose it's a case of different names for different climates depending on what it will be used for the most.
@@tintinaus split system refers to the noisy condenser unit is physically separate (or split) from the blow-y part that you enjoy inside the house. AFAIK we only use reverse-cycle to talk about heating with an aircon
There's been some changes in legislation in Finland so you can build geothermal heatpump wells in a lot of places. With permission you can even drill the geothermal wells on city property instead of your own if it's not in the way of other infrastructure
Interesting solution would be a municpal form of geothermal heatpumps. The city installs a massive heat exchanger underground and individual homes and buildings then tap off from that.
When it was time for us to replace our old HVAC system, a gas/AC combo unit, I chose a heat pump in large part due to the information provided in your older videos. I thought you might want to know that your calls to action actually effect change.
@@ranger178 I can say anecdotally that this is not the case (for me) the offset of electricity vs gas is pretty much a wash. And again, I can add alternative electrical sources to my house further reducing the cost of operation.
@@ranger178 According to what? Heat pumps are available in all the same SEER ratings as any standard air conditioner. There's no need at all to take an efficiency hit unless you intentionally go for a worse than equivalant unit.
@@striker6967 when i bought an ac unit the company i was getting it from said the same unit with heat pump capability would go down 2 seer over a unit that just did air conditioning and it cost a couple hundred more in price i already had separate gas hot water heating system which is dirt cheap and hot water is more comfortable than forced air here so it made no sense to get a heat pump and cost more for air conditioning which is what i primarily wanted it for
My dad is the business development director at one of the largest industrial heat pump companies in the world (remaining nameless for anonymity). He is working with multiple cities and companies, mainly in Europe, right now as they ever increasingly realize this fact. Especially Germany.
Since I'm getting quotes for heat pumps right now, this video was incredibly helpful in dealing with picking the right vendor, the right specs, and disproving the opinions of the installers, most of whom are telling me to keep my natural gas heat here in New England. Thank you!
Earlier this winter I discovered that the central air conditioner in the house I moved into 2 years ago can be run in reverse as a heat pump. I literally would have had no idea were it not for your videos.
@@justinwong3521 No, my home has electrically resistive baseboard heaters with individual thermostats in each bedroom, as well as one that controls all the heaters on the first floor and another that controls the basement. It's really convenient because i can use the heat pump to set a baseline temperature for the whole house, but can (for example) turn up the heat in just my bedroom if there is a particularly cold night.
@@justinwong3521 Unfortunately it's not perfect. The heat pump is the type that produces a lot of vibration when it defrosts, so i actually had to program the thermostat that controls it to turn it off during the 8 or 9 hours that i am actually asleep in order for it to not wake me up at night.
@@alanhilder1883 Well technically yes, but there really isn't a specific term for a heat pump that is pumping heat into a home in the same way that "air conditioner" refers to one that pumps heat out of a home.
At 1.8 k comments if you ever actually see this, we installed a mini split last year as our bedroom was at the end of the line for the central air and summers were toasty. Found ourselves using the heat function quite a bit this winter and barely firing up the furnace. Mind you we rarely see below freezing temperatures around here, so it worked out great. Your videos helped me understand what the mini-split heat pump is, and helped me decide to go ahead with it.
heatpumps come with an emergency heat strip to offset what they cant do lol. Ive had heatpumps and them alone are absolutely garbage in winter. dont be a liar
Thank you for your informative heat pump video series. They have been most helpful as we were deciding to install mini split unit heat pumps in our Pacific Northwest home this past fall. While ours is not a high end unit good for colder temps, rather just standard base model, we have used the heat pump most of this winter. Supplemented with our older gas furnace only coldest days/nights, below freezing. We installed them for air conditioning but found the dual use most helpful as the natural gas market was changing during our installation.
It would be cool if you could do a segment on the current refrigerants. CFCs are banned, HCFCs mostly phased out, would be cool to see a good dive into why those are banned/phased out and what currently available ones have taken their place and how they compare.
It's so crazy to watch this, I live in the southernmost state in Brazil and it gets quite cold (below 0ºC) in here and most of my life I thought that was how air conditioning worked, you can set it to cold or hot, it took me a while to discover that there are air conditioners that just cool, but the most shocking discovery to me when watching this series was to find out that it is actually more efficient to heat the air like this, I always thought it was an "undeveloped country" thing to heat spaces like this because it wasn't done like this in Europe and the US. BTW, our electrical system is mostly based on hydroelectric plants, but in months that don't rain too much we turn the thermoelectric plants on and get a "yellow" or "red" flag on our bill depending on how much non clean power we are getting (not only because it is more expensive to use coal but to discourage waste).
@@martinschroederglst I wish, it's probably because we were late to the "heating party", prior to that we only had fireplaces and space heaters. Central gas is pretty rare in houses over here.
Electric grid nerd here. There's still an unresolved issue with heat pumps in cold climates when it comes to backup resistance heat. The record low for Chicago is -25F, which would mean that everyone would need to use a ton of resistive heat in those very cold, albeit unusual, circumstances. The grid today unfortunately cannot support that level of usage by everyone without a major curtailment (read rolling blackouts). Folks who design, build, and operate the grid are in the exact business of "but sometimes" in order to try and get as close to 100% reliability as possible within the financial constraints set out by regulators. That's not to say heat pumps are bad or don't work or whatever. They do work and they *are* a good idea, even in Chicago. But to say that it won't require grid investments in terms of new generation or transmission or demand response is not quite accurate. The good news is that everyone *won't* be switching to heat pumps tomorrow, so it should be possible to do upgrades over an extended time period. I'm all in on heat pumps; currently have a heat pump water heater and headed towards HP heating in the next few years. I just know you're a stickler for accuracy and nuance, so I think this is an important point to discuss.
It is because of the good news in your second paragraph that I didn't explicitly mention it here as an issue in need of solving. I did allude to it by mentioning that we can't switch everyone over to resistive heat, but also made clear that we could build the grid to do that if we wanted. Regardless, before this issue comes to a head we are probably going to find out that there are heat pumps available which will perform well at -25° f. Already Fujitsu can attain a COP over 2.5 at -15°F, and I'll be discussing that model in the next video. Also, as I said, while it would be ideal if people could maintain their home at 70° during conditions like that, I personally don't think it's unreasonable if that's not longer possible. A couple days in a chilly home every few years seems OK to me. But another option which I intend to discuss is that, for backup heat, I actually don't think propane is that bad of an option. If everybody had a couple of propane bottles like for a grill and had some way to safely use that for home heating, perhaps we can get the best of both worlds when things get exceptionally cold yet without the need for methane piped all over the place. I'm not opposed to fossil fuels being used in cases like that, especially since with such little need it could potentially be synthetically produced. There's a lot we can be doing, but bottom line is more pumping more now
I live in Canada. It gets a hell of a lot colder here than Chicago. Cold weather heat pumps stay efficient to -10 to -15 degrees Celsius. After that it will augment with a heating grid. There is not actually as many days and time below -10 in a winter as you think. My house also has a lot of insulation, which is CRITICAL. Insulation trumps heat or cooling any day of the week. Largest issue in most US homes is you guys have no freaking clue when it comes to insulation, most homes in the Bay area have basically paper thin exterior insulation. We have lived here with heat pump as our primary source for 6 years now in a 2000 square foot home. Our last home was only 1000 square feet... Yet my energy bill has gone down by half. That is what insulation and efficiency gets you.
You're forgetting about the 200 million electric cars and trucks everyone is suppose to buy tomorrow too lol. And all of it is magically going to be run from wind and solar and it'll be 100% reliable hahaha
If I understood the video correctly, heat pumps can still heat your home at -25F and below, even without resistive heating. It just takes longer duty cycles, and thus more energy than it would take a furnace to provide the same heat output. No space heaters needed.
I want to add heat storage to the backup solutions. A big water tank can store enough energy to get you through those cold days and doesn't really cost anything. It also means that the heat pump can run indepentently from the heat demand. That way it can get around peak demand times with high prices and high grid load.
Such systems are regularly used in central europe and it is not considered as posh solution. Even poorer families or cabin owners are using that. You can buy nice furnace or fireplace with nice flames visible but with heat exchanger connected to your heatwater accumulation tank and circulation for rest of the heating system. Not even with heat pumps but with wood heating as well. You will burn wood and then slowly release excessive heat you've accumulated previously.
Your enthusiasm for heat pumps warms my heart with a COP of at least 1.75 at 5 degrees F! That is one unofficial industry standard for what qualifies as a “Cold Climate ASHP”. I work for an electric utility in northern MN and part of my job involves trying to get customers to adopt ASHPs, particularly for customers with electric resistance heat. With over a million subscribers, you are literally doing my job better than I could ever hope to, haha. In addition to our own efforts, we help fund and work closely with the "Minnesota ASHP Collaborative" which is an organization that works to accelerate market adoption of Cold Climate ASHPs through research studies, contractor training, and homeowner education. In short, there are teams of people working to achieve the goals of this video, and on their behalf I say “thank you” for your support! Living in a region that usually occupies a few slots on most "Top 10 Coldest Cities in the US" lists, I can safely say that if it works here it will work anywhere. Most winters the Weather Channel sends someone to do a live report so the rest of the country can gawk at how unfathomably cold it is. We have made huge investments in testing and proving this technology because we do not want to promote something to our customers if there is a chance that it will fail them, and I can tell you that it works and works well. As you know, there is always a giant asterisk next to any claim involving homes, energy, and the personal preferences of these silly creatures we call “humans”, but assuming you have a competent HVAC contractor there is an ASHP solution for every home, even in northern MN where we expect nights below -20F and daytime highs under 0F for multiple days every winter. But of course, those days are the exception, and even here it is easy to meet 80% or more of a home’s annual heating load with an ASHP. Some additional resources you might find interesting: (Just search for these so I don't have to put in links) -Cold Climate Air Source Heat Pump Field Assessment (a CEE research study from 2017 with performance graphs at low temperatures and cost comparisons) -NEEP Product Listing - ASHP (NEEP provides a database of cold climate ASHP equipment with ratings at 5F and below.) -Minnesota ASHP Collaborative (some general info and case studies)
HAD A HEAT PUMP for 40 years. Never been cold in my house. Yes it has a “backup” called resistance heat but it doesn’t turn-on very often. The modern pump can generate heat even below freezing.
I'm about to buy a place in the Twin Cities and was looking into options to cool my house, funny you mentioned the ASHP collaborative. Was just looking at their site.
Great video, I'm from the Netherlands where there's a big push for so-called hybrid heat pumps at the moment. They're installed as an add-on to a gas furnace, and are designed to take care of heating 90-98% of the time. Only when it gets really cold (which to be honest, is nothing like Chicago) the gas furnace adds the extra heating power required. I think it makes a lot of sense to widely adopt these, since the electric grid will not be pushed to its limit or needs to be updated for just a couple of hours each winter
Central air conditioning US homes with gas heat is installed in exactly the same way. For plenty of people with this setup a conversion to hybrid heat pump should be fairly cheap with only a few valves and a new controller.
@@paulhaynes8045 The systems being discussed here heat air directly instead of using water and radiators. However, there are similar systems which work for water-based heating systems. They would be installed in the same loop as the existing boiler. Danish RU-vidr Morten Hjorth has such a system and has some videos discussing it on his channel My Playhouse.
Hi there. I think a "hybrid"-solution is not the perfect way. Because you still have to have the infrastructure for gas. And you have to maintain the burning-devices. Just go the electric way. I got a house from 1995 which has an Air/Air-Heatpump since 2014 and we installed Solarpanels in 2019. What should i say...We just need to buy electricity from Mid-November to End of February. But we have to heat from Mid-September to usually End of May. Thats the way it should be on houses: Well isolated, Solarpanels on the roof and a heatpump. And in the summer we could even save more gas, because the powerplants dont need to burn gas for electricity then (or less) or you use it for A/C. And if you own an electriccar... I know, that all costs money. Lots of. But once you electrify EVERYTHING, and use your roof as a generator, you will benefit the most: No more fuel to pay, no more gas. And only a third or less for electricity. We do not have an electric car for now, but we do not pay anymore for electricity and heating. Selling gives us 11eurocent/kwh and costs 30eurocent/kwh here in Germany. We sell 3times more energy to the grid than we buy. Our energybill for the whole house is zero. ZERO! We arent emitting stuff to the atmosphere anymore. And selling electricity to the grid even decreases the emissions from other persons energy use. And i think, thats the way. Even when you have an oil-heating system, or a gasburning-one. You do not have to replace it! Just buy and install a small heatpump and a few solarpanels. And whenever there is enough energy from the roof: run the heatpump. And save oil/gas. 👍🏻 Over the years it will pay itself and it will then safe you money. Damn, its so effective that you could buy it with a credit and pay nothing at all! (depends on country etc pp) But here in Germany, i dont get it, why sooo many people dont do it! I really dont understand.
I’m glad you mentioned the issue with gas leaks that arise because we’re piping it all over the place. I’d never thought of how heat pumps might be able to reduce that problem.
Yes! This is a huge problem with NG that is not being addressed and 15% of NG emissions. If we don't have to transport NG, then there is less chance to leak. Put the powerplants right at the wells and put the energy into the grid. No pipes, no leaks.
I have just install 3 mini splits in my home. They are working great in my living area which is Oklahoma City. We dont have too many days temperature goes down below zero, but whenever it comes to that extreme weather we have our old furnace system to be kicked in while I let those mini splits remain off until the normal temperature weather comes back. And that plan works flawlessly, I have no complaint at all. Even though my mini splits heat pump are not top tier quality units. Electric and Natural gas bills are the same with those years before I installed the mini splits system, but I save ton of money instead of install or repair the old HAVC system which come with expensive ductwork. The cost to install 3 mini splits system was about $2500, and I can install them myself without hiring a professional team which cost a lot more money. For the estimate to repair or replace my old HAVC system would be around 10 grands plus 2 grands of ductwork.
I found this channel through The Create Unknown and I’m highkey obsessed. This is content is scratching my exact itch as a pro-technology efficiency-conscious new homeowner. The first upgrade I made after moving in was a hybrid water heater and I LOVE the thing. It’s in the boiler room in the basement, so it performs just fine in the winter. But speaking of that boiler… yeesh, it’s an old oil boiler on its last legs and we’re gambling on it even making it through this winter, although so far so good. My family thinks I’m insane for wanting to switch to electric (for cost reasons in our area) but for environmental reasons I’d love to make it financially feasible for myself. I’d already been planning to talk to some HVAC profs about heat pump options in our area, but this video series is super helpful so I have a better picture of my options and how to talk about them.
I’m in Georgia. And I had multiple HVAC techs tell me “Heat pumps don’t work below 40F”. Just made it through this winter with an inexpensive 14 SEER unit and a single 700w space heater without the house getting below 64 including a couple nights around 15F outside. A 19 SEER variable speed unit with 25% more capacity and we never would have noticed it was cold outside.
I think the main reason America is not using heat pump/mini split is because the HVAC techs. Like most labor works, they refuse to change or learn new stuff. Installating mini split in Asia is free or very cheap. But here in America they either refuse to use it or give astronomical quote. Because so much work to run electrical lineset blah blah. Well I've installed 3 3-zone systems and one ducted traditional AC myself. Mini split for the win
@@ShenghongZhang As one of those HVAC techs in a colder climate, the reputation of poorly engineered and implemented systems is working against the adoption of these systems now. I can also say the VRF side of the industry is becoming more popular in new construction, however a single leaking flare connection can bring an entire school or nursing home to -10 degrees. You can play the redundant heating argument as many times as you want but its a cost game. I'm factory trained on LG equipment and can attest that not very many techs want to learn to troubleshoot or service these systems.
how many times did your auxiliary heat coils kick in though? ...most of the time, you will never know...your electric bill will tell you however. Your heat pump is not heating your home if the auxiliary heat is picking up the slack
@@audvidgeek I'm in Canada, had a heat pump since 2003. never once failed even at below -30c until the compressor went in 2020. No aux resistive coils. As long as you get one that is correct for your climate and building, it should be fine. Resistive backup is probably smart, but I never needed it.
Having now installed nearly 125 heat pumps, can say honestly they bring a new comfort level that my customers never imagined, with a lower monthly bill. (properly and optimally installed of course)
(TLDR: optimally set up properly is super important. ) Just had a heat pump installed at the end of last winter. I'm in PA so it gets pretty cold here, but only rarely. I don't have any pricing to compare it to as it was an install in a new house purchase where the old heating system had died. But that said, now that I've gone through a winter, I think it was not optimally installed. I have a number of systems to monitor power usage in the house, and woke up one morning in january to ~35,000watts of power usage in the house, and that seemed to be the norm for ~1 hour every morning (and dropping down to still around 10,000 watts during the day). I've been digging into it more recently and think it's being way overly aggressive at switching to coil heat (I assume for that warm air feel) when it's below ~40f outside. I intend to do some experiments the next time it's sufficiently cold out.
Yes! More heat pumps America. Have you ever looked into the "Earthship" houses? They are amazing half buried passive solar heated, but they can also passively cool themselves via underground air passages. Would be interesting to see a Technology Connections point of view on them.
PASSIVE HOUSE. It’s a term for a standard house, but so well insulated it doesn’t need a heating system. You don’t need fancy buried homes; just very good insulation. (heating is still included for backup.).
I would be interested to know how much overconsumption is due to the fact that people with heat pumps can now access to A/C in summer while previously they didn't. It's a confort increase for sure but also an energy consumption increase compared to furnace. Nice video for engineers as always!
I don´t think that´s a large issue. If it´s hot, there is often the possibility to produce power with the sun. And thats even cheaper than Gas Power Plants.
BC coast: Home A/C is rare so we have a culture and architecture of summer night open windows. But when your neighbour's heat pump loudly cycles off and on the bedroom window must be shut.
@@pong9000 Mine almost never runs at night. I'll run it in the evening to cool off the house and by that point outside is usually cooled off enough that it won't cycle on again during the night.
Not every heat pump can do cooling. And if they do cooling if you not have air ducted heat transfer(very uncommon in europe residental buildings) but radiators, it might not have sufficient effectivity due very low temperatures required. Floor heating is a bit better and would be used but it induces lot of cokd on feet - not healthy. We rarely use A/C unless necessary due a very expensive energy and better architectural solution of buildings. We use shades in front of windows and have well insulated houses which works for incomming heat as well. In case of old houses you often not have case of too much hot temperature at all. They are cold whole year as walls are around 1 meter thick and stones might be used.
I put in one of these Mitsubishi units last month and thought I was reading something wrong in the manual concerning its heating effeciency at -15f. It really is quiet, efficient and most importantly effective at what it does.
I have a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat unit in my Chicago studio. The thing is a beast even on the coldest days, I love it. Not having a gas bill saves me a lot of money. The only downside is that it defrosts every few hours when it’s below freezing which puts it out of commission for ~2 minutes. On the coldest days you can feel a slight temperature drop during that time.
I've got an extremely efficient Australian-made (ActronAir) heat pump ("reverse cycle" ducted refrigerated HVAC) AND rooftop solar at my place. It's absolutely fantastic.
If your an aussie as well.... ugh dirrr not like its new mate, In ww2 my grandfather was working in a remote site with a heat pump airconditoner. Theyve been around for a lonnnng time.
I doubt it will work well in -15C/5F temperatures. You coukd recognize efficiency in low temperatures too + less noise. Australia is bad comparison. You could boil egg on roof in the night during the Christmas night there.
This is such a great informative video! We are fully decommissioning oil heat in our New York house and installing two hyper heat ducted Mitsubishi heat pumps. I'm a little anxious to see them perform next winter, but I am pretty excited overall!
@@trendmassacre8423 oil heat is filthy and disgusting. The oil tank in the basement smells. It's terrible. I'd agree with you if there were natural gas but oil is crap.
HAD A HEAT PUMP for 40 years. Never been cold in my house. Yes it has a “backup” called resistance heat but it doesn’t turn-on very often. The modern pump can generate heat even below freezing.
Thank you for the very informative video. I live in the Seattle are. Bought a house in 2014 that was built in 1987. Replaced the original gas furnace with a heat pump and high efficiency backup gas furnace. Replaced old gas hot water tank with gas on demand hot water. Replaced all incandescent lights with LED. Installed an 8 kilowatt PV grid tied system on the roof. Replaced two gasoline powered cars with two Tesla BEV’s that charge 95% at home. Added extra insulation in the attic. Even with gray, rainy Seattle weather our PV system generates over 60% of our annual electricity usage. Our natural gas company has sent status report emails stating that our gas usage is only 20% of their average customer. It seems like our experience aligns with your video’s content.
@@Gunnberg85 More than he'll ever save with those pos teslas. His climate is mild nearly year round. It doesn't require much heating or cooling. This guy is smoking crack. Instead of abandoning that hell hole and making out like a bandit with property values, he doubled down investing in something that will never pay off.
Considering I've watched your videos for years, it's insane to me that I haven't seen one of your plethora of heat pump videos until this week. I moved into a home with a heat pump about a year ago, and I had to research to figure out what the hell a heat pump even was. It's crazy to me I hadn't seen even one of these to know what it was beforehand, and crazy still I didn't see it while researching. A year in, now I've learned much more.
I've already commented on this video, I hope you see this one! If building new, the way forward is air to liquid SLAB HEATING! it's becoming really common here in NZ and allows you to take advantage of both when your solar is running and when power prices are lower and or when the outside temp is the highest in very cold situations... win win win
While watching I was just thinking why can't we just store the heat in basically a big water heater tank at the warmest part of the day and then cycle that through the house at night.
@@bearfriend_ Years ago, a project was made for a whole neighbourhood to be heated essentially like that... and not just from the warm part of the day, but the entire year. The heat is stored underground and then used during the winter. Look up the Drake Landing Solar Community--which is not solar electricity at all, but solar heat storage.
Anyway that was the 1980s. The power company disabled the tank around year 2010, saying it didn’t really save energy. They claimed it was more efficient to get heat direct from the upgraded, modern heat pump
I found this video very interesting because all of the places that I've lived in for the past 22 years have always been heated with a heat pump. Literally all of my life. From my experience they just work all of the time without fail and that makes the lack of use of heat pumps in the US very intriguing to me.
EXPERT HERE! I'm a factory technical representative for these and other HVAC items. Your video was exceptionally good and I'm sending the link to coworkers. There are some details missing, however, and they are important. That centers around sizing the system and defrosting. Without getting lengthy, the COP and HPSF ratings are for a condition that is very dynamic. I will simplify it that defrosting will occur in outdoor temperatures approximately 47 degrees, plus or minus. The need for how long the defrost and the frequency of it depends on both outdoor temperature AND the humidity. During defrost, the heat pump is now in cooling mode except the condenser fan is turned off. So, it is now removing heat from the conditioned space to melt the frost on the condensing unit coil! So, best efficiency is obtained in climates where the outdoor temperature is seldom below 47 degrees or so and defrosts don't occur. We have huge VRF systems where to not have defrost losses, the condensing unit is indoors, and gas heaters are used to keep the ambient warm enough to do so. In some cases, water source VRF systems are used and condensing gas boilers supply heat for the heat pump. In the summer, the cooling water is cooled through cooling towers on the roof. As to sizing the system. In Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and the like, the cooling capacity needs are plenty for winter heating. However, in the north, heating needs can be two or more times the needs for cooling. So, while the heat pump may operate, it will require auxiliary heat. The rule for sizing a system is to size it for cooling needs. If sized for heating and that is larger than cooling needs, cooling performance WILL BE DISAPPOINTING! Mainly, temperature swings and very poor dehumidification control. Finally, Honda had an experimental home natural gas-powered fuel cell that was intended to provide the electrical needs of the home and charging an electric car. That seems to be a fascinating idea. I've not heard more about it. Have you?
Here's a question I want to throw back at you; how do variable-capacity systems change this? From my research, US manufacturers are largely not embracing the advances that the Asian manufacturers have. While it is typically the case that oversizing an AC system can lead to poor cooling performance, my 1.5 ton mini-split can simply run the compressor more slowly and act like a .5 ton, or even less. Defrosts are a challenge, yes, but when you look at heat pump performance lists that are available out there, it's companies like Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, LG, and Daikin that are making the best-performers. Carrier has one series (Infinity) that adopts those technologies. The other domestic players pretty much don't produce anything but basic systems as far as I can tell, and their best-performing models all appear to be rebadged imported mini-splits.
@@TechnologyConnections actually Lennox produces a 25 seer system that has variable speed compressor/motors throughout and can control the speeds of them accordingly. Also I know rheem/ruud produces at least a 20/22 seer variable speed system as well. The domestic companies are producing them but at the typical total cost of $18,000-25,000 it’s just not very popular with consumers overall.
I live 100m from open unfrozen ocean and my heatpump would use so much electricity when temperature dropped below about -7c with wind coming from the ocean that I had to turn it of to save energy and use 100% normal electric heating. With dry wind from inland the heat pump worked perfectly fine saving energy down to -20c. This fact that air to air heatpumps do not work well when it is cold and high humidity is no one that tells you...
On your point regarding the Honda fuel cell. Fuel cells still involve a combustion reaction, and therefore a natural gas fuel cell will emit CO2, which is something to avoid
@@TechnologyConnections so what you're saying is, he must work for one of those companies who doesn't embrace the better way of doing things and he is speaking of that technology vs what you're talking about? I'm just trying to understand the gist of what's being said. Much of this is way over my head. Lol! Thanks to the both of you for the wealth of information that I didn't know that I was interested in until right now.
Howdy, Been following your channel for some time now and I really appreciate your level of detail in your videos and I would like to say that I enjoy your content immensely. With that being said, I recently went through a transformation with heating and cooling in my house. When I purchased the house it had a Hydronic heating system and a 10 seer trane air conditioner from 1999. While this was actually really efficient, it heated my house with the gas water heater that cost about 30 a month in the winter. I average a trend of 27KW a day in the summer of electrical usage. I went to upgrade, with cost in mind only switching to a heat pump and a normal gas water heater made financial sense. I will update when in the winter, but with the 14 seer heat pump I purchased, my energy usage in the peak (daily) of summer went from 27KW to 18KW. This is huge, I paid around 5200 for the heat pump and air handler combination, my gas usage is also down , but I can only measure that in dollars (around 4 dollars so far a month I will know more next month).
I just replaced my natural gas furnace with a heat pump. Washington State has the third lowest price on electricity in the US, so it made sense to. I wanted to add on a central A/C for the summers, because I hate when it gets above 75 in my house, but due to the tight space where the existing furnace was, it was easier to fit in a new heat pump and add in a compact electric furnace as a backup. Our natural gas has also been pretty cheap, so I haven't seen much difference in heating costs from the year before, but I'm still happy with my purchase. I think I'll be even happier when summer hits and I don't have to worry about using window A/C units anymore :).
Thank you for doing this update. Because of your previous heat pump videos, I was set on only getting a ground source heat pump, but they are prohibitively expensive to install here (in Scotland). Watching this has me willing to start crunching the numbers on air source, as I'm desperate to not have to get another boiler. I'm looking forward to the install video.
in scotland, unless your house is super well insulated, you have at least double glazing, and most of all floor heating, or in alternative dirt cheap electricity for the next 20 years (lol about that), forget about heat pumps unless you like cold houses. i live in switzerland, i have done the math based on years of logging data from weather, heating requirements and so on, i went for oil at the end.
@@crono331 That math can only be based on electricity and fuel prices, as the video said, fuel vs energy costs taken into account, the best decision financially could be very different, and is usually locally determined. Unless a country is having an energy crisis, heat pumps should turn out far cheaper for the same running cost, due to their ability to "exceed 100% efficiency". All fuel heating systems are below 100% efficient, so it only makes sense to use (assuming your fuel system is 100% efficient!) if the ratio of electricity price vs fuel price is higher than the COP of a prospective heat pump, which is generally between 2 and 4, meaning your oil must be something like 1/4 the cost of electricity, which can only be an extremely local situation! If a heat pump leaves your house cold, you either got too small a unit or desperately need to upgrade your insulation, as any heat source will have to output more heat!
@@xiphosura413 "so it only makes sense to use (assuming your fuel system is 100% efficient!) if the ratio of electricity price vs fuel price is higher" exactly. but the world is big and places have vastly different conditions. last oil i bought i paid 65 cent a liter (24 of which tax...) , with electricity at 25 cent per kWh. therefore i would have needed a CoP of 4+ in order to get cheaper thermal kWh. now things have changed and oil is 150 cent a liter and a heat pump would have been better, but unfortunately i dont have a crystal ball. and oil could again drop a lot like it did in 2008. at least with oil, i can stock up 4 years worth of it in my tank. electricity, you are in the hands of suppliers and governments. "you either got too small a unit or desperately need to upgrade your insulation" i have a big house, live in a cold climate, and all insulation that i practically could do without tearing down the house is done. large heat pumps are very expensive. i did the maths, HP needed a lot of best case scenarios to work out. oil, i am still using oil i bought very cheap 3 years ago. overall, i saved a lot of money already by going for a new oil furnace. unfortunately, in these unstable times, it makes really no sense in investing large sums for something that i know i have to stick with for 20-30 years. and btw. my old oil furnace was installed in 1973, lasted me almost 50 years. zero chance a heat pump lasts that long and people will find out they have to replace it in 10 or 15 years because the electronics that failed in it are no longer in production.
@@crono331 I have no doubt that you made the best choice at the time for the costs and options available, my main point is that your case is a very specific one, and to rule out the possibility of an electrical heat pump system across all of Europe in general (from Switzerland to Scotland at least going by what you said!) because of a single isolated set of circumstances, is somewhat disingenuous. You said yourself how current prices give a very different picture even for you, and while yes, fuel and electricity prices can be very volatile, when you look at the big picture, as time goes on, fuels are going to peak higher and come down less and less. Electricity on the other hand across most of Europe could be harvested from someone's roof, and renewables (with cheap surplus power production periods) are ever increasing. As for heating ability, glad to hear your place is all insulated up, honestly more than any particular heat source insulation is what will make the real difference. and on the topic of reliability, technology connections addressed that in his other videos far better than I could here. Costs of systems capable of managing a large house is also something to consider, ducted systems (the best for it from what I know) are becoming increasingly cheap, and units with a COP rating of 4 (or greater, just not in the snow) too. My family installed a heat pump unit in our house a few years ago for what would now be considered a rip-off price, which runs predominantly off our solar and essentially costs us nothing. No problems with it as of yet either, but we'll see if it can last more than a couple decades without expensive repairs. We also got an electric oven and cooktop to replace gas ones as bottled gas prices were getting ludicrous. I do live in Brisbane, Australia, so we definitely use it for cooling way more than we ever use it for heating. But it goes to show that apart from the extremes of cold climates where fuel happens to be extremely cheap, they should be on the cards, certainly going into the future, and they're a no-brainer if you have a solar system. One shouldn't just dismiss them outright for so many people based on a single anecdote. Scotland in particular is getting increasing amounts of wind surplus power as far as I know, so as for electricity prices there, they're set to fall.
@@crono331 I live in the Midwest where winter temps drop to 0F to 20F for weeks at a time and in 20s and 30s the other. Even when it was -20 last year.I have a air source heat pump and it works just fine without even using the emergency heat strips. The cost vs gas heat is about the same. I could also add alternative energy to my house and it would cost even less then gas.
Hey just so you know, you're videos are in a special "always watch immediately" category for me. You're one of I think three channels like for me. Keep up the good work.
@@oktayyildirim2911 Just letting you know, "You are one of I think three channels" is the same as "You're one of...". They were correct and you're wrong.
Love this video, the information and the engaging delivery. Thank you! Just on the verge of replacing my 12 year old gas furnace with an air source heat pump and electric air handler combo, subsidized under Canada's Greener Homes program. This video gives me even more confidence that I'm doing the right thing!
My 2 cents on the backup heating: Regardless of fuel source, you should ALWAYS have a backup heat source. Things break, and you don't want your only heat source breaking when it's 10 degrees outside.
My old house gets cold overnight without a heater, and I dont have central heat anyway but in the morning it could be around 4.C cold but not freezing. It is an old 50s timber home AKA weatherboard, and I live in a colder part of Australia coldest it got to here was around -7.C.
Another option, if you don't want to (or can't) install a completely separate back-up heating system, is to buy a generator and run that to provide the electricity you need when the city power goes down.
@@matthewparker9276 an old 1950s weatherboard aussie house has no insulation in the walls just the lapped timber exterior, attached to the stud wall with the plaster walls on the inside. and no insulation under the floor either, just in the ceiling. Brick Veneer as they call then fair a bit better. old houses like this are glorified tents.
@@steviebboy69 I went from the UK to Armidale (1000m altitude, 250km from the coast) in the 1960s, when Australian houses had NO insulation of any kind. That first winter was the coldest I've ever spent.
18:10 Thank you, I like this point a lot. Most homes already have no backup heat source, so why is that only now an issue? With the extra efficiency of heat pumps on all other days, having to bust out the space heaters a few times isn't a big deal. And like you mentioned, tons of places will never face this obstacle. I live in Georgia, and even basic heat pumps will work year round.
I'm in GA as well, and for the (newer) side of my parents house that uses a heat pump, we never really need to change the thermostat out of the 70-77°F range. It's only when we have cold snaps or abnormally hot summers where we'd *need* to set it outside of that range.
Yep. I've never seen a home with two primary heat sources. Just one. Most people rely on space heaters. I've seen too many new homes where people don't even have a space heater because they just trust the new HVAC install. Fun aside, about a decade ago we went through a pretty darn bad cold snap here in Arizona, and it got down to about 0F. In some areas (including where I lived) due to poor planning, the natural gas lines froze or became unreliable. Thousands of homes with natural gas furnaces were without heat. My house with it's really crappy 90's era heat pump had heat. Granted it had to run the restive "emergency" heater. But I had heat while thousands around me didn't. Including those who just love to deride heat pumps as dangerous and prone to failure, while claiming that they'll always be able to burn gas...
The reason it becomes an issue is that gas heaters are almost always able to supply enough heat, while there will be a few days every year where a heat pump won't (unless you live in a warm climate or are buying one of the brand new ultra-expensive units). So you will definitely need a backup. That backup could just be wearing two sweaters inside and shivering, but for most people it's going to be space heaters. (And to be fair, space heaters are still really cheap, so it's not exactly a huge deal.) In my experience, people without heat pumps have no backup source of heating of any kind, including space heaters. In my 30 years with gas heating, I have never had the need for one.
@@EebstertheGreat Had the furnace go out at -30C one year. Used the electric oven as an emergency space heater. I reasoned as long as the door was closed, and I did not set a stupidly high temperature, it was reasonably safe. You are essentially using the outer walls of the oven as a radiant heater at ~80C or whatever the steady state surface temperature is.
@@jamesphillips2285 Yeah, I feel like every electrical device is an emergency space heater. Some are just really tiny. My friends have used an electric stove for the same purpose.
I am on the UK. Our government gives us £7500 towards getting a heat pump fitted. Energy company Octopus Energy fit them at cost. I will only have to contribute £3000. This price includes everything required including 12 new radiators. They will then at my request disconnect me from mains gas. I generate electricity from 16 solar panels and have a home storage battery. My very small contribution to reduce carbon dioxide levels. Loved the video and it is brilliant to put out this message worldwide although some countries are way ahead of us.
whenever I took thermodynamics in college, just as a side course to computer engineering., it never made sense to me how 100%+ efficiency was possible. Fast forward 20 years, I watch your videos and say "ohhhh..... that's how that works" I paid $200 for that damn book. I need you to rewrite it and let the new people know... LET THEM KNOWWWWWW
Indeed... I know what you mean. It's more of a "play on words" or a reorganization of philosophy- I would say. Truthfully... there really IS no getting more than 100% efficient. You understood reality before you took the course, and were simply taught to understand core concepts using phrases like "greater than 100% efficiency. It's complicated to learn because it's a bending of the actual truth so that students can learn needed principles.
Nice video! I live in Sweden and even though we have quite cold winters all types of heat pumps are very common here and so are roof top solar, I think that is a winning combination.
ACC:Xess, you live in a country where rationality dominates in the domain of public policy. It's the opposite in the US. We'll do the wrong thing for decades or even centuries before deciding that it's time for us to change.
Your last couple videos have convinced me to switch to a heat pump from my ancient boiler/baseboard heating system instead of replacing the boiler with a modern one. So far I'm loving the multi-zone mini-split heat pump system.
@@spadress the company you chose and the quality of installation is 10x more important than the brand. you can have issues with any brand, make sure the company you pick will be there when you need them, if you have problems. your labor warranty is likely tied to the installing company unless you are purchasing a separate labor warranty. Even then, most companies dont want to do warranty work for another companies install unless they are desperate for work. Ask around and try to find someone who had issues but it was handled in a great way. Then ask them what brand(s) they sell and why. there is honestly very little difference between most brands, many share most parts and components. I forget the exact number, but something like 30 brands and 90% of equipment is made by 8 Companies. Its also common for units to not have a Logo Sticker until you buy it, then the supplier puts the label on through a flap in the box before they bring it out to your truck depending which brand you buy. One unit might be sold under several brands. (its crazy but sometimes a "premium" brand may cost more than their "offbrand" when all thats different is the sticker! Seen this at many suppliers.)
I installed a mini-split heat pump system in my office last year. It worked great in the summer, cooling during the 95F days. This winter, we had a few nights of 0F, and the heating kept working but ran more often. I do keep it warmer when cooling and cooler when heating. The propane price was already high, and we had to get more middle winter as we are figuring out the new places. That was not a nice bill. Only a few winter fill-ups and I can pay for the main house getting AC and Heat Pump installed. Paired with solar at some point, I cant see keeping propane as our only heat source. One note, last I had heard from guys in the power plant industry, the new GE turbines claim 30-64% efficiency not sure if that was with heat recovery steam generator (HRSG), I know one project I worked on it was more efficient to create electricity to run motors with HRSG than to direct drive the systems using natural gas. It's also too bad we are scared of old nuclear technology and not the new fail-safe high efficient nuclear steam power generators. The new ones are small self-contained systems that can be deployed locally for power use and have a life span of up to 100 years.
I have a 120V window heat pump made by Friedrich (the Kuhl model) and LOVE it! Window heat pumps look like an A.C. but can go in reverse. It’s not as powerful or efficient as a ductless mini-split; but all the mini-splits have to be hard-wired to your breaker box whereas a window heat pump just plugs into an outlet. Window heat pumps are pretty rare though. Amana makes a 240V window heat pump and that’s the only other once I found. Friedrich makes literally the only 120V window heat pump on the market. They say it heats when the outside is as cold as 37 degrees F, which is pretty rare for where I live (Los Angeles). It’s kept me warm in in the winter and cool even during brutal heat waves.
The heat pump in my all-electric house (dated 2006, since that's when my house was built) has resistive heating elements (heat strips, like you said) in the indoor part of the system, in case it gets too cold for the heat-pump to generate enough heat. You can definitely tell when those things kick on -- our electric bill goes up by a good 25% or more in those months. It's amazing to me that these new heat pumps can still draw heat from the outside air even when the temperature is only 5 degrees F. That's a relatively recent development, I'd imagine? My 16-year-old heat pump definitely cannot do that. If it drops below about 28 to 30 F those heat strips kick on (the thermostat has an "Emergency Heat" indicator when they do, so you can easily tell). But I live in northern Georgia, so it's pretty rare that we drop below freezing at all, let alone below 28 or even 30 F. We might spend a grand total of 14 nights a year with temps that low, and maybe 5 or 6 where it stays below freezing for 24 hours in a row? When this system craps out (hopefully not *too* soon, but these things usually don't last more than 20 years, so it's gotta be in the not *too* distant future, I'd imagine) I'm definitely going to pay attention to the COP rating of the new one we'll be buying. I'd bet we could get one that wouldn't even need resistive "emergency" heat -- dropping down to 5 F in this neck of the woods? Unheard of. (I just Googled it. I was born in April of 1970, and since then there have been four -- FOUR -- times that the temperature has dropped below 5 F here, and the most recent one was way back in 1985. LOL I think we could put out a few space heaters for a few hours on those days, if something like that ever happens again.)
In northern Georgia myself atm. Knowing how the houses around here are built, I’d imagine a few million in water damage if it were to drop to 0*. No water shutoff for outside faucets, water in the garage as opposed to a conditioned space.
@@andyruse4670 oh yeah - that’s definitely a thing here. When it gets down into the 20’s the news will remind everyone to drip their faucets. The folks that don’t? They get tons of water damage. But they’ll only forget to drip their faucets that one time. 😂
Your heat pump may be completely turning off the compressor and only running the emergency heat. You can reconfigure your system to run the compressor continuously under heavy load and only use the emergency heat as supplement.
@@gregorymalchuk272 if your running r22 its probably about break even$ between hp and em heat at 15 degrees in most cases. With older systems, using outdoor temperature sensors and cutting out heatpump at 15 and below, heat strips at 50 degrees and above~ will usually get you through most situations. The cold air blowing for hrs with the usual droop of 2 degrees between auxheat and hp hitting target temp leads to long periods of luke warm air blowing on you making you feel cold. Sometimes its worth actually being warm.
I have AC which work till -13F but it need 1.6Kw to make 2.5Kw of heat, problem is that when everyoe will be using Heatpump electricity consumption will skyrocket in cold days and there will be a blackout..... PS 2.5Kw is enought to heat our small house which have 128square meters, with 1.64coots insulateon on roof 1.14foots on walls and foundnation... With good windows s and recuperationn .
I had a 48,000 BTU ductless min-split system installed August 2021 in my old, drafty New England house. Air conditioning benefits aside in the summer, I was particularly interested in heating. Previously I was typically going through one tank of oil every 5-6 weeks running November to March (about 5 months), depending on how cold. This translated to 5-6 tanks per season, which at $500 or so per tank, translated to $3,000 or so spent on oil per year heating. Over the same period of time this year, with my heat pump I was able to cut my oil to just about 1.5 tanks, or about $800 spent on oil. That's $2,200 saved on oil. Over the same period, my electric bill went up about $175/month, or $1050. Net savings $1,150. With a savings of $1050 and a finance plan of $170/month, that means at an "average" monthly savings ($1050/12 = ~$87.50) the oil savings alone are paying for about half the system. Not bad, and I'm thrilled with summer AC (functionally central AC) and the reduction in oil burn. Love my system.
A lot of people in my area are regretting getting a heat pump. It's costing them more in electric then what their old gas and electric used to be combined. In a lot of cases a couple hundred more a month.
I heat my whole house through all of winter here in Sweden using a split heat pump. 170 m2 house (1800 sqft). ONE heat pump which I got installed for 1500 USD 7 years ago. This technology is simply astonishing. I recovered the installation cost the FIRST year.
Worth pointing out that even in cold environments where a heat pump can have issues, those issues can be mitigated by pulling air through a ground loop. Most places that experience ambient temperatures below what a heat pump can operate with have ground temperatures that are reliably above 40F year round available a mere few feet down into the soil.
Problem is that not everywhere you could do it. Also feet is not much. Ideally meter or more Keep in mind that flora not likes cooling of their roots. You vould literally kill green stuff by ground collector. Boring down deep hole could be as expensive as heatpump itself if not a bit more. Also prohibited if there is unstable soil, water wells etc. The whole problematic is complicated and even air-water system might not be allowed due a noise level.
I'm considering getting a heat pump for my house now after seeing this. Don't forget about electric blankets as an alternate heat source. I feel they are more efficient than a space heater as it doesn't need to heat an entire room/house for the heat to be effective at providing heat to us. Also I just heard at work yesterday that Tesla uses heat pumps in their vehicles, which now after your explanations makes a lot more sense.
So the AC in literally every single car is a heat pump... They just can't be run backwards to do the heating, which makes sense since you already have a huge source of heat in the engine coolant which doesn't require any extra energy to run.
I mean, all cars have heat pumps, basically, because they have AC systems. They just run off the engine instead of electricity. Electric cars use electricity to begin with, so... they also need a way to supply heat, whereas combustion motors can use the heat produced during operation to do that. It's definitely most efficient to warm a person and keep the building cooler, but with plumbing, you can't keep them too cool.
Nooo not every car. No cars other than Electric lol a heater in most cars is just a radiator with a fan. It will not use a refrigerant to reverse and heat the air. It just uses spare heat fron the radiator coolant loop in the car to heat your car by blowing air over a hot pipe. I mean if you really wanted to be a dick about it and argue that a combustion engine is essentially an air pump like a compressor maybe its a heat pump but no Tesla uses electricity to heat and cool air.
there is one problem though, people most likely don't want to install these systems because they take a long time to install and are prohibitively expensive for most of the working class, for example, in the UK, i doubt anyone will be rushing out to install a system like this because literally no homes, even new ones, have no HVAC systems.
I think that’s why ductless units would work well. One would just need to put a small hole for the circuit of pipes with the refrigerant through the wall
I'm always stunned by the amount of effort you put into research and then into creating the video. Your videos are really long, but not a single second is boring. Keep up the good work! 😎
I've already switched, couldn't be happier. Got Toshiba penta splits inverter. Very cheap, and VERY efficient. My home is 3 floor around 200 meters square, with 10cm styrofoam isolation, and temperatures reached -10 degrees Celsius where I live on several occasions. In two years Inverter didn't suffer much. It inverts the cycle for about 10 minutes to defrost itself in like every 3 hours or so.
Jeesh i bet the toshibas were pricey. I import aircons into australia, and woudlnt touch the toshibas, far too pricey. Mitsubishi is the ones i grab. I can get a 4kw reverse cycle tropical rated so works up to guranunteed to 50 degrees celcius. for around $300 each.
@@Steve211Ucdhihifvshi Where I live Toshiba is actually cheaper. I wish I could afford Mitsubishi, it's much better quality and with more features. My guess the prices varies mostly from shipping cost.
Italy has apparently had a successful heat pump replacement program where the government payed 110% of the installation so there was a bit left over for the homeowner. There's always corruption and stuff in Italy related to things but this but it has still improved Italy's GDP and made it more environmentally friendly
The funny thing to me about this is that, I live in Finland, a country that 1. Does not have natural gas pumped into residential houses (at least as a default, it might be an option if you are willing to pay for the pipework being laid) meaning we by default use some sort of electricity dependent heating, and 2. where going below -15 Celsius (that 5 Fahrenheit break point) is a normal fact of life. As in... a large part of our winter is spent at below -15 Celsius. And according to a survey in 2015, over 70% of new residential single family houses built in the nation, chose some form of heat pump solution for heating (around 55% of it being geothermal heat pumps). And that was 7 years ago (at time of writing)! So they certainly weren't installing heat pumps that we would call cutting edge today. If a country that is half above the arctic circle (admittedly, by landmass, certainly not by population. But the difference between north and south isn't going below -15, Celsius, its if we go below -30 Celsius) can handle the vast amounts of it's heating with heat pumps, the idea that they do not work in the states (with the possible exception of Alaska) is ridiculous. And it's not just geothermal pumps either. While they are the vastly most popular option, the only heating solution to beat a heat pump of ANY KIND, was direct electric heating beating air to water style heat pumps. On top of that, due to our energy efficiency laws, it is very rare that you can legally heat your house exclusively with direct electric heating, but rather in vast majority of cases, you need some kind of less resource intensive heating solution to supplement it. And of course, most of the time, it is some form of air heat pump.
Air pump haver here in the midatlantic area. My hvac system was nearly state of the art when it was installed in 2017. I live in a trailer with not so great insulation… my auxiliary pump comes on when the temp gets down around 15 degrees outside. This happens infrequently. I’m very happy with my heat pump.
OK, you've convinced me - I need to change out my gas heater for some level of heat-pumpery and maybe get cooling out of it as well, which is something that we traditionally don't need here in SF but the prevalence of days which would benefit from cooling have gone WAY up in recent years. So, I guess you've given me a homework assignment. Gee, thanks. :)
In mild weather like SF portable or window heat pumps works pretty great. I personally am in the bay area as well and used a portable heat pump to great results. Just needs to be a dual hose unit and properly sealed. Or even better a window or split unit.
@@fwir711u2 If these extremely good and well researched arguments in this video didn't convince you because the video is "cheap", you have bigger issues.
@@Scum42Look at his other comments on this channel. Dude is either an obvious troll or a truly ignorant climate denier. In either case, don't waste your breath.
Heat Pumps have been widely used for heating in Europe for as long as I remember. One of the main selling points here, that was worth mentioning, is that they can be used for both - cooling and heating, (hence known as just Air Conditioners here) and thus saving you a lot from having to install two separate systems, especially on new buildings. Having had (and still have) both - AC and gas fired radiator based heating I must admit that radiators bring much more comfort than air conditioners do, however, although more expensive to do, heat pumps can be used to heat water and than respectively radiators for much more comfortable conventional heating.
People have varying memories - as a kid I was sent to the Fuel Monger to buy a hektoliter of cokes (a sack full) to our single stove; no one thought of heat pumps at that time (late 1950's) ;-)
That answers a key question that was on my mind during this whole video: "Can these systems operate both ways for heating and cooling?" I'm glad you brought that up. I live in a place that hits all temperature extremes, and we could benefit from some new systems.
@@Tera_GX Yeah they've been used in Asia forever. Japan first, and more recently China as wealth has increased. I have a Fujitsu heat pump from 12 years ago but it was kinda hard to get in the USA. IIRC the USA wrote really high COP requirements so the heat pumps couldn't be sold in the USA - When in reality they competed perfectly well with the central air systems we are used to in the USA. Good ol domestic protectionism....
@@Tera_GX The whole reason why it's so weird to many people why these aren't already used more in the US is because they're effectively just air conditioners with a couple of extra bits in them. If everyone who has installed a new aircon in the last 20+ years would have installed a heat pump instead they could have both had the same coolness they've always enjoyed, and (probably) cheaper heating. Unless they're on something like district heating, which for what it's worth is absolutely fantastic to have if possible. Neither the tap water nor the hot water for the radiators uses up basically any extra electricity (apart from the controls and pumps running the whole system), just waste heat from nearby power plants.
@@Tera_GX Huh, I didn’t realize that he didn’t touch on the cooling side. I guess it’s because this is a follow-up to his other videos, but it’s interesting that a discussion about heat pumps would make someone who isn’t familiar with them ask if they could be used for cooling. I never thought about it from that perspective. In his previous videos, he talks about the fact that the extra hardware needed to allow a standard air conditioning system to run in both directions really isn’t much. Of course, he goes into a lot more detail. If it interests you, I think that they’re worth watching.
Just got a new HVAC installed. It's gas. I used to have an air source heat pump, and it worked ok but was on resistive half the winter. It also cost more to run than forced air gas. At the end of the day, money talks and 96% efficiency is good enough for me. If I ever build a house, it'll be set up with ground source.
The original heat pump video is what convinced me to, a few years after originally watching it, to push my contractor to put a heat pump in my house that's being built instead of a gas furnace. I live in central Florida now where harsh cold weather is practically just about never an issue so I thought it would be the perfect solution for my house. On top of that I won't have a furnace taking up space in my house so more garage space for me yay!
I moved into a new place (northern US, we get plenty of snow here) most of a year ago, and was surprised, given the climate, to find the central heating was an air-source heat pump. I haven't had the slightest issue with it, though. Things have clearly improved since my knowledge on heat pumps was gained.
I bought a heat pump dryer based on your previous heat pump videos. I love it. Sure, it takes a little longer to dry stuff but it uses a ton less electricity (measured with an energy monitor.) Thanks for converting me.
Living in a tropical climate, heat pump dryers would be awesome for me. Given the only time we use dryers is in the wet season (the hot part of our year) it’d be like running an auxiliary aircon unit!
Agree, I got one a few years back & it is great. Previously the house turned into a giant steam room with a standard dryer on, but with the heat pump dryer, there is no change in room temp.
I’d like to get one as well. How much longer does it take than a regular one? Like if a normal one only takes 30 minutes to dry bedsheets, how long would a heat pump dryer take in comparison?
@@Ebalosus To be honest, I am not really that sure of time - I pretty much just set & forget it. I also always have it set to the lower heat setting.. but I did find this snippet, which is based a full drum capacity; "As a rough guideline, the most energy-efficient heat pump dryer will take an average of 2 hours 45 minutes to dry a full 8kg drum of laundry. A condenser dryer will take around 2 hours 15 minutes to dry the same amount of laundry. This is 30 minutes faster and is due to the high drying temperature used." So, there is definitely a difference there, but probably not a huge deal (and that is coming from a person who is hugely impatient!).
You do great presentations that are well thought about, thanks. For your next video I suggest that you also look at Mrcool DIY heat pumps. They overcome the main problem of connecting the refrigerant line sets by using prefilled refrigerant lines with their special connectors that just require 2 ranches to tighten. Currently Mcool DIY systems can go up to a 4 zones. I installed in my house two such systems with a 27,000 BTU 3 zone and 36,000 BTU 4 zone systems. I never installed any such system and 1st one is working great and heated my house in the winter at a fraction of the cost of oil heating. The 2nd one I will be finishing in the next week. Currently Mrcool are not the most efficient but are pretty good with SEER of 21.5 and HSPF 11 for the 36,000 BTU with 4 zones. For heating they work down to -13 F (-25 C) and for cooling up to 122 F (50 C) outside air temperature.
Factor in better passive designs, you have a big winner. Our old Victorian was built in 1970 with big floor to ceiling windows on the south end of the structure. During the summer, it’s engulfed by tree canopy. During the winter the leaves are gone and the home is bathed in sunlight. Fast forward to modern insulation, 3 and 4 pane windows, 3 solar DC mini split units, and an outdoor double burn EPA wood boiler, we have not used 100 gallons of propane in 5 years. We divert heat from the boiler to the house for 25% of the heating needs of the home, the rest goes to farm outbuildings.
4:40 The absolutely best way to use that gas would be to use it in a combined heat and power plant. In that case you'd have 40% as electricity and another maybe 40% as district heating (for hot water and heating in winter), if people outside the range of the district heating network used heatpumps you'd get about as an efficient system as is possible.
in my country there are numerous power-heat plants, that produce electricity and send boiling-hot water through the insulated pipes through the whole city. This makes them much more efficient at burning coal (yeah, in Poland almost all electricity comes from burning coal) - and this combined with good fumes filtering in big power plant than nonexistant filtering in individual stoves is really good.
You're talking about Cogeneration, which achieves an effective ~70% efficiency. Combined Cycle plants, which create steam with the waste heat and run it through a steam turbine, also top out at ~70% efficiency in low ambient temperature. Cogeneration is cool, but the infrastructure demand would be insane to implement.
@@buttonasas Combined Cycle involves primary generation using combustion turbines (large "jet engines") and use the super hot exhaust (waste heat) to generate steam that goes through a steam turbine.
@@miles9922 Nope, I'm talking about a system with a primary boiler burning wood chips and/or garbage, producing steam for a turbine to produce electricity and then using the condenser to heat water that is then pumped out to ten thousand buildings to produce hot potable water and winter time heating. This is called a CHP plant, combined-heat-and-power. My city has one of these, it uses mainly garbage and has a state of the art scrubbing system on the smokestack to remove any nastiness from entering the air. We also have two backup boilers that only produce heat connected to the system and are fired up when the temperature drops below what the primary plant can support.
Lets hope that increased demand and volume of sales for heat pumps has the effect of reducing price and further increasing efficiency. Great video, and yes, this viewpoint needed to be emphasized. See you on the next one. Cheers.
That's called "Economy of Scale". The more something is produced, the cheaper it gets. There's no need to hope for it, if demand and supply go up, price goes down. (please note this only applies to goods, such as heat pump units, and not to services or resources such as the fuel or electricity being supplied to your home)
@@TheAruruu You said there is no need for hope, but then don't address both things he is hoping for. If you read his sentence he is hoping it to be cheaper AND efficiency being increased. There is no guarantee efficiency goes up, albeit typically is inevitable, but this part of his comment does not fit into "Economy of Scale".
@@shingshongshamalama That's only the case if the supply can't keep up. If there is high demand, but higher supply then prices should fall or remain the same.
@@MrT------5743 except that heat pumps are the way things are gonna go. the efficiency advantages are just too large to ignore. it's purely a matter of time. i will say that it's worth hoping that time is sooner, rather than later though. anyway, as adoption of heat pumps increases, prices will go down, and efficiency will go up because of competition. companies want their product chosen first, and to be the best that they can manage. all you need to do is look at history to see this trend repeat itself time and time again.
Have a top of the line, high efficiency heat pump by Lennox. Don't expect it to work below 25 degrees fahrenheit. The Auxilliary heat source kicks in frequently below that. And, if temps reach the teens, have plenty of space heaters.
Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I live in a place that doesn't often get below 15C (59F) in the winter time but in those times having heating would be nice. Next time we upgrade our AC units we will get one with a heat pump function.
I'm glad that these heat pumps are getting good enough that they are starting to be effective where I live. Right now the majority of households heat exclusively with resistive electric baseboard heaters, which puts massive strain on our electric grid during cold snaps, and is basically just throwing electricity away.
plus those things smell bad, I hate them. it annoys me that we don't have reliable gas piping in tectonic areas, like we haven't figured out how to just make it work, but if this is the compromise, i'm all for it. anything to get away from everyplace having electric baseboard heaters
@@KairuHakubi I'd never thought of the implications of gas piping in seismic areas but that does make sense. Where I live most places don't have gas piping because electricity has been so cheap for so long that there has never been a huge motivation to install them.
I live in Atlantic Canada. We get steady temperatures of -20 C for weeks on end in winter. Our 2 heat pumps (although working very hard) kept us very comfortable.
Your recommendations are so good you should be hired to inform public policy makers. You could also share affiliate links to allows us to give you a percentage of the things we buy. I bought some things you recommended. The can opener is unbelievable
Wow, what timing. My family got our heat pump installation finished literally yesterday, after years of deliberation because we struggled to find a good contractor. I can already say it was a worthwhile investment, as we no longer have to keep several portable resistive space heaters running basically 24/7 to stay warm.
Yeah these technologies are new to the States and aren’t as simple to install as traditional ac/furnace systems. Get 3 quotes minimum, be ready for high upfront cost that save you money in the long run.
Thanks to your videos I spent the extra on a heat pump option last summer when it was time for an upgrade. In Green Bay, I calculated that my dollar break-even point was 39 Degrees. My system has a gas backup that I can toggle so my automation turns it from heat pump mode to gas mode automatically so I can use as little gas as possible. Thanks for your advocacy.
That would be my ideal setup from a running cost perspective. Especially with automation you can change the break even point as gas and electricity costs fluctuate.
Having lived in Illinois I understand being warmer in your freezer than outside during Winter, for me at the time it happened more than it has been over the last couple of years.
Great video, as always. Cheers from Canada, where I LOVE my Mitsubishi Heat Pump unit which runs multiple ductless units in my house, and can attest that it works great, even down to -25°C. Take into account that many of these systems (like mine) include infrared sensors on each individual room unit which can tell if anyone is in the room, so to further tote the benefits, the fact that the units are intelligently providing heat in the occupied rooms, and dialling down the heat setting in the unoccupied rooms, adds further savings. - Your fellow heat-pump enthusiast
Does it really work that well still up here? It hits -32°C or colder at least a few times a year in my neck of the woods, so although I’m interested, I’ve been skeptical on reliability in the dead of winter.
@@TakadoGaming I’m in southwest Ontario, so probably not as cold as many other parts of Canada. Worst we get in my area is about -25°C. But it cranks out the heat even on those days. It’s a Mitsubishi Hyper-Heat model (H2i). But, even if you do hit -32°, it’s not like it’s just going to stop altogether. It’ll work harder (my compressor is on the roof, so I can hear it working much harder on the colder days), and at -32°c, perhaps it might produce less heat. Just speculating, but maybe maintain household temp of like 15° (instead of 20° or wherever you set your thermostat). But in my experience, absolutely no problem keeping the house toasty hot, even when it’s -25°C outside. Beyond that, perhaps it might struggle, but it’s not going to die.
Roughly 50 years ago, my parent's friends had a natural gas powered heat pump in their Midwest 4500 square foot house. In summer they kept their house very cold, in winter it was toasty warm. Their utility bills were much smaller than our 1900 square foot house.
@@heyhoe168 no. Adsorption compressor is driven by heat source - can be electric heater, flame or even steam boiler. It is not as much efficient as modern motor-driven compressor, but has zero moving parts
You may be able to use a pop can solar heater, which is basically a box with a hose, a mirror, and black spraypainted pop cans in it, to preheat the air in front of the outdoor heat pump to boost its winter efficiency
I’m up here in the Milwaukee area of WI and I need to replace my HVAC system in my home. The contractor that is quoting the work is recommending a Armstrong heat pump that he says will only work down to 35 degrees. I went to the site and checked the weather history for my area and there are not a lot of days from October to March that I could have used the heat pump with those specs. Now after I watch your video you mentioned a lower effective temperature than I am getting quoted from my HVAC contractor. If I could find a unit that could even operate at 30 degrees it almost doubles the days that I could use it here in WI. It’s a lot of money to spend and be uncertain of what to buy.
Because of your video, I recommended my parents get a heat pump for a project. It can keep a large space at room temperature down to -25 Celsius outside because it's so dry in our climate that there's little moisture in the air to freeze onto the condenser
I was hoping this would touch on dual fuel setups. With a normal forced air system, if the AC needed to be replaced, it could be replaced with a heat pump and continue to use the existing furnace for backup heat under some certain temperature.
Dual-fuel is usually done as drop-in for the whole system. You can roll a bespoke system, like you've described but it requires special effort/know-how/controls* to work properly. They also really complicate the cost-effectiveness calculations, but in some recent work I did in the Northeast they were not cost-effective for new homes because you're paying for a furnace and almost never need to use it. In an existing home you already have the furnace, but they still have some disadvantages 1) typical ductwork results in a considerable loss of heating/cooling energy (10-20% depending on quality, location in home and art of the country), which is one reason ductless options (and there are more styles than just the wall mount units) are so efficient and 2) ducted heat pumps generally have lower operating efficiencies (excluding the duct loses) than ductless because of the way the head units work. * In theory several smart thermostats like a nest 3 or certain ecobee models can simply the control requirements.
A dual fuel setup is really, IMO, the way to go in very cold areas or places that have frequent power outages. You need a really big generator to power a heat pump. But the indoor unit is only a fan and a circuit board.
I friend is building a new house and his going to use heat pump, he also as access to wook so he was thinking to have a furnace in the living room (the pretty ones) connect to the whole system to help the heat pump, the installer told him he would lose money, the heat pump would uso more power because would be hard for her to adjust for the furnace. But hey we our could days are -2 or -3 in winter and that is only a hand full of times normally is above 0 celcius...
I put a PTAC with a heat pump in my 700sqf home. I live in the south now, so it doesn't get too cold, but have a resistive heater/ac to take up slack in cold/heat snaps. It keeps my pipes from freezing, and keeps me warm for a fairly cheap price. Purely electric home and diesel backup generator for power outages. Converted the propane tank to a diesel storage tank as well.
There are air source heat pumps that will efficiently heat through -22°F; the 5°F heat pumps have been outmoded some years ago. In upstate NY the 5°F simply isn’t enough without supplemental heat. There are also air source boilers which transfer the refrigerant energy into water instead of air in the home and which can have a natural gas backup which can add temp to the interior water is needed; these are a great system for colder climates and can include wall or ceiling cassettes with a refrigerant manifold controller that diverts the refrigerant to the cassette over the boiler in the summer to get the benefit of efficient AC in the winter and to the boiler to allow radiant or hydronic heating in the winter.
You hit on this a little bit in the video, but the "but sometimes" factor of this problem is a bit harder to find a solution for, in that when it's extremely cold, everyone will need their backup heat all at the same time. If the backup heat is electric, then we find ourselves in a situation where the grid needs to be able to support everyone in the area using resistive electric heat all at once, which would be very wasteful to build out when it will be used only in the rare extreme cases. The alternative option would be for the backup heat to be a gas furnace, but, as you mentioned too, this could introduce an added cost to families that will make them not want to go that route. Many utilities have a minimum that they will charge even for zero usage, so families would have to pay to keep a gas line active that they will only need a few days of the year. If there's no such fee in someone's area and the cost for zero usage is indeed zero, I think a gas furnace as the backup heat makes a lot more sense than resistive electric for the foreseeable future. True, resistive electric can become more "green" down the road, but realistically we aren't getting there before the next time that furnace will need replaced, so locally burned gas is still a better solution than purely resistive electric heat strips. Some kind of fossil fuel stored locally in a tank onsite could be an interesting solution, but transporting fossil fuels by truck is so laughably inefficient that we'd be wiping away a non-negligible chunk of the environmental benefits just accounting for the edge cases. But, that would be an easy transition at least in many rural communities where locally stored propane, oil, or some other fuel is a common means of home heating already. You could do a similar thing with something akin to Tesla's powerwall for homes with electric backup heat, but I'm not sure that manufacturing lithium batteries of that size and quantity to account for an edge case is a great idea. There's also the defrost cycle time that will require the backup heat, but the "but sometimes" factor isn't nearly as great there as it's very unlikely that a large percentage of homes will all be in defrost mode at the same time. All that said, and recognizing that heat pumps aren't without problems that we have to figure out how to solve, I still think there's very little reason not to have a heat pump installed next time anyone gets a new AC system, especially if the backup system is something that is appropriate for the infrastructure in their area. They *shoudn't* be significantly more expensive than an air conditioner. They often are, but that's an artificial markup. If everyone understood that heat pumps are just normal air conditioners with a reversing valve, it would be harder for manufacturers to inflate the price of a machine that does both.
There is actually an advantage to overbuilding our green energy electricity generation, and that's because it can enable carbon capture. To offset the worst of climate change, we not only have to get to net zero emissions, but net NEGATIVE emissions, i.e. capture CO2 out of the air and make it inert again. On normal days, we could use the excess to carbon capture, then on days homes and business need more electricity for heat, temporarily halt the carbon capture. In other cases, smart grids + smart homes could mitigate extreme energy demand situations by shutting off power to a home for everything BUT the heater. This would likely be for worst case scenarios though, and hopefully only for short periods of time. For more rural areas we could maybe go back to wood burning for backup heat, since wood is theoretically a "carbon neutral" renewable energy source, if we can cut out all the CO2 production in harvesting and transporting it.
@@marsilies unfortunately, in an extreme-cold situation with electric heating, by far the biggest part of electricity will be consumed by heating anyway, so there's not much to be won by turning everything else off. (Also, basically any electric device contributes to heating in the same way a dedicated resistive heater would.) Wood is hardly ok for everyday use (especially in cities) because of its unhealthy particulate emissions, but yes, it totally makes sense as an emergency backup in remote areas. Easy long-term storage, locally sourceable, and if worst comes to worst one can even sacrifice furniture etc..
With the advent of all electric cars on the horizon the electrical grid needs to be revamped regardless. Feel like in the future everything will be powered by batteries and electricity.
In Australia it’s common for people to just use 20lb gas bottles for their hot water systems. My parents claim the price of a swap and go bottle is about the same as getting a truck to come out to fill big bottles. (And I’ve never seen gas plumbed to houses) The same bottles can be used to bbq or whatever, I have a hose that connects the bottle to a gas torch for propane-oxy work. If someone has a gas furnace they could just keep it as a backup (the bottles may need to be kept somewhere warm to keep pressure up tho)
Thanks for a really nice video! You should also look into Air Heat Exchangers. Up here in Scandinavia the most common heating installation in newbuilt houses in the last years has become a combination of Air Heat Pumps and Air Heat Exchangers to minimize the loses when ventilating the house.
