Harnessing America's heat pump moment

https://www.heatpumped.org/p/harnessing-america-s-heat-pump-moment

by ssuds • 9 months ago

243 515 9 months ago

we’re waiting on people

Right on. I have a heat pump water heater and a heat pump heating system in my HVAC. Getting those installed felt like swimming upstream. Most contractors would try to dissuade me from them.

Luckily, I found a contractor who was skilled and knowledgeable about heat pumps and rebates (back when govt thought climate change was real). Very happy with my heat pump tech.

jbm• 9 months ago

I had a similar problem too. Was unable to find anyone who was willing to quote me on a heatpump when I was installing my air conditioner. I assume it will be better in 5-10 years when I have to replace them.

Spooky23• 9 months ago

Unlikely. Private equity is swooping in, especially in places like New York that have taken bizarre regulatory stances against gas.

In my area, about 75% of the HVAC companies have been swept up. Prices are up 75-150%. I got my gas furnace replaced to to beat the ban, and had a fireman who works a side gig do the job for $15k. The bids from the companies ranged from $25-85k

bamboozled• 9 months ago

We have the same setup , we love it.

brendoelfrendo2• 9 months ago

I guess I lucked out; our house had a (very old) whole-home (that is, ducted) heat pump system for heating and cooling when we moved in. When it was time to replace, our local contractor knew exactly what we needed. They even do mini-splits, had we wanted one.

Glyptodon3• 9 months ago

Do newer ones somehow not need ducts?

Edit: (or so you mean mini splits?)

ortusdux• 9 months ago

I ended up self-installing my HP-WH. Professionals either tried to talk me out of it like you described, or charged a premium for the upgrade. My county has a rebate that allows for self-installs. It was rather straight forward and ended up being ~$700 in the end. The old unit I tore out took an extra $350/year in electricity, so I've already broken even.

darth_avocado3• 9 months ago

I’m in California, I have two heat pumps installed. I can sum up the problems as follows:

1. They are EXPENSIVE. The equipment itself isn’t that expensive tbh but installation is pretty expensive. The government subsidies have made sure that the contractors jack up their own prices by as much.

2. I end up paying more in utilities because electricity is very expensive and heat pumps aren’t nearly as good at heating in the winters as old fashioned gas furnaces when it comes to the cost.

I made the massive investment because I could and I eventually want my house to run completely on rooftop solar as a way to reduce my carbon footprint. But the cost is nowhere near mass market adoption price range.

ssuds10• 9 months ago

I wrote an op-ed in the SF Chronicle a few months ago about electricity costs in California holding back electrification, it's a real challenge: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/heat-p...

That said, I've found that in most cases (assuming you're on the right electric rate plan, that's a whole other conversation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42763695), most homeowners in california actually see operating cost parity or a slight decrease, even with super expensive electricity. Silicon Valley Clean Energy recently did a study substantiating this: https://svcleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/Bill-Impacts-of...

thevillagechief• 9 months ago

I got a heat pump with a backup gas furnace this year. A heat pump just felt like a no-brainer of I was going to get an AC anyway. But gas in PA tends to be cheaper, so the system will use gas at a certain point. The problem is I couldn't have picked a whose installer if I was throwing darts at the wall, but that's another story.

sitharus2• 9 months ago

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

smileysteve• 9 months ago

Re #2.

Tuning a heat pump vs resistive heat is a much tougher game than it should be. In a moderate climate, I use my ecobee to ensure aux heat doesn't come on until it's below freezing, and it should only come on if something has gone wrong at that point too. Unfortunately, many thermostats by default will use resistive heat in relatively normal scenarios, of worse, when you've programmed home and away times intended for efficiency but disparate enough to activate resistive heat.

vladgur• 9 months ago

That is precisely why im not planning to install a heatpump until i have rooftop solar.

Here in Bay Area my gas furnace is generally off late March through late october and while gas costs have gone up over the years, electricity easily goes up 10% year over year. We are currently in $0.43 per kwh territory OFF-PEAK. This is nearly 3 times the average rate in the United States.

I wont be investing $$$ in heatpumps until i spend $$$$ on solar panels and that wont happen till i replace my roof in a few years.

PS. this is why buying a hybrid a few years ago instead of buying an electric was a good call. Our gas prices stayed pretty much the same, while our electricity is up 30% since that time.

surajrmal• 9 months ago

The same problems apply to evs and yet people seem to buy those too. Maybe most folks end up getting them second hand which is not an option for heat pump.

Solar + heat pump will take me 10+ years to come out financially ahead (if not longer) but if you're invested for the long term it does come out ahead (even factoring in opportunity cost). The comfort level is also dramatically better in my house due to more even temperature, so I would argue in many situations it can be worth a premium. I thought for sure I was going to need ductless per room to get this level of comfort but it turned out to not be true. If you didn't have ac before, it's also nice to have the option to use it on hot days.

ricardobayes2• 9 months ago

Honestly yeah. Even a certified heat pump engineer would try to persuade me to "just get a gas boiler" when asked for quotes.

micromacrofoot• 9 months ago

Our local installers seem to be taking advantage of the moment quite a bit, install costs are have skyrocketed over the past decade... double what I paid when the market started heating up. But at least the techs seem more knowledgeable, when I first had my system installed it seemed like they had no clue how they even worked.

andrewvc• 9 months ago

One other challenge is for existing homes a water heater may only have a gas line running to it. Want a heat pump hot water heater? Hiring the electrician alone, not to mention potentially ripping up walls will ruin any economic advantage.

atrus• 9 months ago

A possible challenge, yes, but there exist 1500w, standard outlet hpwh, and it's a lot less common to not have any power near a water heater.

quickthrowman5• 9 months ago

A 1500W electric water heater would be painful to use in a home. A typical 30-60 gallon EWH is 6kW.

And for the record, every single natural gas water heater is connected to 120V power for the ignition circuit.

underbluewaters• 9 months ago

This was a major barrier for me. I had to replace an existing natural, tanked gas water heater. Ultimately I just bought a $750 replacement because I could easily swap it out myself. Installing a heat pump would have involved an electrician to install a new circuit, and possibly other changes. While there were some 120v models available locally, they all had pretty bad reviews. So I would have paid a couple thousand dollars more. Maybe I could break even over 10 years paying less for gas but that seemed like a poor use of funds.

nsxwolf2• 9 months ago

When I needed a new air conditioner I looked into heat pumps. 3x the price.

wffurr• 9 months ago

That's crazy. It's a reversing valve.

But you might also be comparing multi-stage variable load DC heat pumps with single stage air conditioners and not an actually equivalent air conditioner.

jjtheblunt• 9 months ago

or local sellers are incentivized profitably to push old technology air conditioners?

prlambert5• 9 months ago

That seems really weird, the only real difference is a reversing valve that costs a couple bucks. A heat pump is an AC, it just can be run backwards to produce heating as well. In cooling it's literally the same thing.

bluGill8• 9 months ago

I know, but I don't make the price lists.

thinkcontext• 9 months ago

I'm no expert but the difference in the real world is more than that (though am doubtful about 3x the price) . The delta-T between heating and cooling is significantly greater in most places so you need a bigger system. You also need things like the ability to de-ice.

supportengineer3• 9 months ago

That's the upfront price. What about the total cost of ownership (TCO)?

nsxwolf2• 9 months ago

TCO vs size of check wife is comfortable writing.

kragen18• 9 months ago

For me it was more like 1.1× the price.

mithr• 9 months ago

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo.

Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my existing gas heating in place and automatically switching to it when it gets cold enough).

I was also told that the electrical grid in my area is having difficulty keeping up with the push towards heat pumps, which increase load exactly on the coldest nights of the year, when you need heating most.

VWWHFSfQ• 9 months ago

A heat pump just makes no sense whatsoever for me in my northeast town. The electric bill alone would outpace the old propane bill, not to mention installation.

And it won't even work during some of the coldest winter weeks when you _really_ need it to work.

Maybe I would consider it if I was in, like, Nevada or somewhere.

corbet• 9 months ago

My heat pump, in Colorado, kept the house warm at -18°F last winter. Without firing up the backup resistance heating strip. I think it works.

(It is more expensive to operate than the natural-gas furnace was, though).

doctorhandshake6• 9 months ago

The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.

cycomanic2• 9 months ago

I don't know what sort of heat pump systems are common in the US, but Sweden (and AFAIK Norway and Finland as well), are probably >%80 heat pump for single family homes (most apartments are community heating at least in the larger cities). So it's absolutely now problem to run a heat pump even if it is very cold outside, but if you want to improve efficiency in areas that are super cold you can drill into the ground for a heat sink (those are called Bergvärme in Sweden).

Regarding cost, in most of the countries I've lived in a large fraction of the cost in the gas bill was the distribution cost. So once you switch to a heat pump, you also switch to electric cooking and even if heating with electricity would be significantly more expensive you would still win. Is that different in the US?

yxhuvud• 9 months ago

It works just fine during winters if you do it properly and couple them with ducts that are a couple of hundred meters deep.

Loughla2• 9 months ago

Our heat pump for HVAC is awesome.

Until it gets under 30. Then you can watch the power meter crank when auxiliary heat kicks on. And we only keep it 65 in the house in the winter.

Luckily I live in the upper Midwest, so it's only that cold for like 4 months. . . Pretty cool. P.r.e.t.t.y. cool

notyourwork2• 9 months ago

Some heat pumps are rated for much lower temps.

orev2• 9 months ago

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

There would be an increase only if people were supplementing the heat pump with electric heat, which to be fair is a possibility.

There’s a lot of misinformation about heat pumps, especially by HVAC people who don’t have a lot of experience with them, so they tend to recommend what they’re more familiar with.

But yes, understanding the electricity cost is essential when considering one.

eldaisfish5• 9 months ago

They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling

This is completely wrong. The amount of power depends on the temperature delta. When cooling, you are typically not cooling your home to 30 degrees Celsius below the outdoor temperature. However, when heating, you are typically heating your home to around 20 degrees above outdoor temperature. Heating consumes more power than cooling.

goalieca• 9 months ago

I would be curious to know the difference. In summer you might find 30c outside and inside 20c so a difference of 10c. In winter it can reach -30c and inside is 20c. This is 5x more!

gardenhedge• 9 months ago

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

simmonmt• 9 months ago

Costs are a big thing, sure, but for me it's electrical reliability. For better or worse our heating oil and natural gas supply are both more reliable than our electricity supply. I don't need the heat going out in the dead of winter when some wind storm drops a bunch of branches on power lines.

I'm aware that both my boiler and a natural gas furnace have electric blower motors. It's a lot easier to power them from a generator than it is to have a generator than can power a house worth of heat pumps.

ssl-34• 9 months ago

You can have both, though. A person doesn't have to make a binary decision of heatpump OR natural gas.

Please remember that traditional aircon is also literally a heat pump. It's perfectly acceptable to have a ducted heat pump and a ducted natural gas furnace both sharing the same ductwork.

In this use, the heat pump and the furnace are just installed series with eachother, with one singular blower motor that is used for both roles. This arrangement is very similar (identical, really) to the layout that combined (heat+aircon) systems have used for many decades.

Power out, or simply very cold outside? Your house still has a natural gas furnace (which can be made work with a fairly small generator), and your rig doesn't require expensive-to-use heat strips for the coldest days either.

silisili• 9 months ago

My personal anecdote? Don't.

I have a house where the first floor is served by a gas/ac combo unit, and the second floor with a heat pump.

I literally see no advantage to the heat pump and wish I didn't have it. It takes forever to heat and cool, comparitively, and likes to ice over when it gets too cold in the winter while running 24/7 doing nothing. The emergency heat eventually kicks in and fixes it, so I'm considering just running emergency heat all winter.

owenthejumper2• 9 months ago

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

rainsford• 9 months ago

The fact that your heat pump setup is also taking longer to cool suggests there's something fundamentally different between the setup on your different floors, not that there is something bad with heat pumps in general.

A heat pump in cooling mode works exactly like an AC unit, because that's exactly what it is. So if your AC unit on the first floor cools more quickly than you AC unit (i.e. heat pump) on your second floor, it's because A) your floors are different sizes or insulated differently or something else is different about their construction, B) your units are sized differently, or C) your heat pump has some mechanical problem. But the fact that it's a heat pump should make no difference to its cooling performance.

potato37328424• 9 months ago

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

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

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

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

blahedo2• 9 months ago

People are reluctant to install them because they don't work as well as the good old boilers we'd be replacing. I'm not saying they can't, and I'm not saying that there are zero models out there that work. But in practice, a lot of us that have interacted with heat pumps have the specific experience that they get anemic as the temperature goes down and eventually become unable to do much of anything.

I live in the mid-Atlantic (US) climate zone, where it's certainly not as cold as the north but definitely goes well below freezing regularly for several months of the year. The place I've lived for 15 years had a heat pump and a (oil) boiler with radiators, and when it was below 40°F (~5°C) I had to switch to the radiators. It's because it's old, everybody told me, modern heat pumps are better! So last year when both systems needed repairs at the same time, I not-entirely-willingly switched to a brand-new 2024-model heat pump. It absolutely could not keep up when the temperature was freezing until they came back and installed resistive heat strips for low temperature---these seem to be a fancy version of the heating elements in a space heater or a toaster. They do not seem to be particularly efficient. And to the extent that my "heat pump system" does now more or less keep the house adequately warm, if not as comfortable as the radiators always could, it's not solely due to the heat pump, but the other stuff they had to put in because the heat pump couldn't keep up.

My experience is far from unique. Maybe it's that they only install the good ones in farther-north locations! Maybe it's that the good ones are just way more expensive! I'm perfectly prepared to believe the factual statements about the physics and the tech. But if we're talking about perception and "why aren't more people looking to install heat pumps", it's because lots of people have experiences like the above, and that is what the industry needs to work on.

lbotos• 9 months ago

What brand and was it sized for winter load?

Im in NY, 6 heads across 3 floors with 2 heads per outdoor unit. 2500sf covered.

Mitsubishi h2i (i think im on my phone). Get plenty warm in the winter as my sole heat source. I could have gotten smaller outdoor units and had resistive backup but I didn’t want that.

maxerickson6• 9 months ago

How is the insulation in the house? Poor insulation and an undersized system will be a bad experience regardless of the heat source.

baggy_trough2• 9 months ago

It wasn't a bad experience before, but now it is, because of: new heat pump

prlambert5• 9 months ago

Yes this is actually the worst – when open minded people get a heat pump for "the right reasons" and then have buyer's remorse. Completely backfires the transition. Do you have a ducted or ductless heat pump? Sounds like ducted, and if so that might be part of it too. The air cools down in the ductwork and if that's not accounted for - i.e. you reuse ductwork that was meant for a furnace – you run into issues like this. And you also need a cold climate heat pump.

(disclosure/transparency I'm the founder of Quilt, a ductless heat pump manufacturer)

switchbak3• 9 months ago

Hi Paul - I'm a big fan of Quilt from Vancouver Island.

It seems to me that you're helping to close the loop on some of the quality concerns that the parent commenter has. Inappropriate sizing/installation and poor product selection seem like common issues from HVAC installers that aren't particularly well versed on heat pumps.

Wishing you continued success, and that hopefully it'll be available in Canada at some point! And also I remember you from the Scala meetup in Vancouver :)

pfdietz2• 9 months ago

When we had our ducted heat pump installed, we also had the ducts in the attic covered with extra insulation, as well as spray foam at the top of the foundation to seal that completely. This all really helped.

JeremyPOsborne13• 9 months ago

We account for duct losses at Electric Air when sizing. It’s baked into industry standard Manual J sizing calculators and other methods. ManJ isn’t perfect find for this purpose.

In this case, contractor should have advised the heat pump would not keep up and recommended a different solution.

WorldMaker• 9 months ago

The strength of your heat pump shouldn't be outside surface temperature, but underground aquifer temperature. Those two temperatures are related but not as directly as they seem. A good aquifer in certain cavernous regions of the US might stay about 55 degF year round, regardless of outside surface temperature. 55 degF is still below what a lot of people want their home to be year round so a heat pump still has to supplement heat somehow in winters (or radiators or what have you), but a "free" boost to 55 degF is still a better starting place than 20 or 40 degF outside temperature.

I don't think latitude is a factor in how efficient a heat pump you can find, I think the type geography under you feet is (probably where "interior" regions probably have more luck than coastal regions), combined with how well regulated or unregulated your area's aquifer generally is (things like nearby wells and industrial water dumping will effect aquifer levels and temperatures). (Maybe not enough heat pump proponents realize that you only have good, cheap heat pumps if you have a powerful EPA and other Water protection groups fighting the good fight in your region.)

estimator72923• 9 months ago

You're talking about geothermal heat pumps which are far less common than air-to-air heat pumps because they are far more expensive.

These are entirely disjoint concepts.

jcalvinowens2• 9 months ago

The radiators might make you feel warmer despite not actually making the air in the room warmer: the black body radiation from the big warm radiators affects your perception of warmth in a not insignificant way.

card_zero• 9 months ago

Seems to me that making people feel warmer is the objective, and making the air warmer is not.

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

Basically the idea behind infrared (and far infrared) heaters. I'm really curious about them, but there's no good way to trial them without buying and installing.

estimator72923• 9 months ago

Resistive heat strips are what all electric furnaces use. It's just a bunch of coils of nichrome heating wire. The efficiency of a resistive heater is basically 100%. One Watt of electricity in gives you one watt of heat out.

The mistake people make is assuming a heat pump can do everything by itself anywhere in any climate. If you have cold winters, you need a dedicated furnace to supplement the heat pump.

I say supplement because while an electric furnace is near 100% efficient at turning electricity into heat, a heat pump can be far more than 100% efficient. And that's the crucial detail: a heat pump can give you more heat per Watt than a resistive heater when outside temperatures are warm enough.

amarant2• 9 months ago

This is such a weird tale to hear. I heat my 2 story 147m2 house in Sweden with a single heat pump and it's downright cosy down to -10C. I have noticed that my office, which is located at the furthest possible place from the heatpump, tends to get a bit chilly when outdoors temperatures fall below -10°c. usually a blanket is enough to keep me toasty, but on the rare occasion that it gets real cold (below about -15°c), I have a fireplace to save the day. That fireplace actually gets used more for the cozyness of a fire than it does for actual need of heating, but it does help on the worst days of Scandinavian winter.

All this to say: if your pump can't handle +5°c, I wonder if you got scammed or if there are other factors at play? Is your house insulated at all? Do you keep your windows open throughout winter? Your experience is so different from mine it's hard to believe we're even talking about the same technology!

starkparker• 9 months ago

It's the insulation. While it depends on the location and geography, I'd wager that American homes are probably less well insulated than Swedish homes because they didn't have to be.

That contrasts quite a bit with Swedish home standards, which have long been built more air-tight and with considerably better insulated even if they're of comparable age. This has been true for decades, became even more stark in the 1980s, and likely remains very different on the balance: https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/1984/data/papers/SS8...

ip263• 9 months ago

Some heat pumps bottom out at 35F, some at -15F. It seems to be down to the breed of heat pump, and there isn't much in between.

ssuds10• 9 months ago

I just wrote a big thread yesterday responding to someone with similar concerns to yours (https://bsky.app/profile/shreyassudhakar.com/post/3m3w3nra2h...). Copying it here if it's helpful to other folks. FWIW, the challenges you are facing seem to be grounded in bad design and application, which happens more than it should and really sucks. We need to move the bar much higher for the contractors installing heat pumps. Here's what I wrote on that thread:

This is why contractor & homeowner education are so so so important to get this energy transition right! I always hate to see reviews like this from folks that have installed a heat pump.

It’s almost always a combo of poorly communicated expectations & installer issues.

A few thoughts…

1) “Air doesn’t come out hot” is a common complaint. It’s by design! You don’t need scalding hot air to have a comfortable space. If you’re targeting a 70 degree setpoint, even 80 degree air will get you there eventually. Heat pumps work best when you let them run - they soak the space with heat.

Your furniture, walls, floors all equalize in temp and radiate heat. A totally different form of comfort than standing in front of a vent that blows hot air at you for 5 minutes and then shuts off!

2) AC doesn’t reduce humidity as well. Unfortunately, this is a classic problem with oversized heat pumps. The key to dehumidification is runtime. A well sized system will run for longer, which will pull the humidity out of the space. If the system is too big, it’ll cycle on and off & not dehumidify.

Your contractor should be do load sizing calculations to determine the size of your heat pump, not using rules of thumb or matching the size of the existing equipment! The very best contractors use performance based load calcs, where they look at your past energy bills to size your new system.

3) Supplemental heat runs a lot - this SUCKS. Electric resistance heat is really expensive to run. It really should be something that comes on for emergencies, if ever. Definitely not regularly.

Many contractors set the temperature where the supplemental heat kicks on way too high. You could be running the heat pump (which is way more efficient) to a much lower temperature, but it’ll switch to expensive aux heat instead. Fortunately, the fix to this is simple - just a thermostat setting.

In other cases, they’ll install a cheaper mild climate heat pump in a truly cold climate. This might save money up front, but it’ll kill you in operating costs when you’re paying 4x as much as you could be in the middle of winter to heat your home. The lowest bid could cost you in the long run!

PS - this homeowner later chimed in that swapping the thermostat helped reduce their electricity bill roughly $30/month! A lot of heat pump issues actually boil down to a poorly configured system. Choosing the right contractor is probably the single most important decision you'll make when you get a heat pump installed.

doctorhandshake6• 9 months ago

This. I had 12 contractors come out for an estimate. I insisted to each that I would only consider estimates accompanied by a Manual J (aka show your work). I got 4 estimates with a manual J, and one of them the vendor said ‘despite that the math says you need a 4 ton outdoor unit, I’m giving you two,’ and refused to budge on that.

I went with a vendor who did the math and sized accordingly and my system works great - great comfort year round and very low energy usage.

twothamendment• 9 months ago

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

uhfraid2• 9 months ago

“Air doesn’t come out hot” is a common complaint. It’s by design! You don’t need scalding hot air to have a comfortable space.

“It’s a feature, not a bug. Just put on a hoodie and get under the blanket!”

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

2) AC doesn’t reduce humidity as well. Unfortunately, this is a classic problem with oversized heat pumps. The key to dehumidification is runtime. A well sized system will run for longer, which will pull the humidity out of the space. If the system is too big, it’ll cycle on and off & not dehumidify.

What if I want more humidity?

(The traditional way with a furnace would be with a bypass humidifier, where ultimately, the energy to vaporize the water comes from whatever the heat source of the furnace is.)

mrguyorama• 9 months ago

Well

Mitsubishi sells heat pumps that produce 14kw of heat output all the way down to 5f at a COP of 2.3.

Resistive heat has a COP of 1, by definition.

Do you know the size of your oil burner? It's likely over 20kw output.

It's not that pumping heat cannot work sufficiently at cold temperatures, it's that you are expecting the electric car rated 100 horsepower to go as fast as the gas car rated at 300 horsepower.

An oil burner sized to the same output as the heat pump also would not keep up.

If you installed two of those Mitsubishi heat pumps (which would require two independent 240v circuits), you would be at 28kw output and would not need resistive heat strips. These units also claim 75% rated capacity at -13f so that would be about 21kw of heat output even when very very cold.

If your resistive heat strips activate at any point other than extreme weather events or emergencies, your "system" is not sized properly. They are a massive waste of power and money.

A big part of the problem is that the contractors who are essentially the point of sale for these systems are just obscenely dumb about them. They will sell you utterly undersized units or sell units that aren't rated for cold, as well as just install things so poorly that they drain condensate into your walls and cause mold issues. They had similar problems with Oil burners, but at least those they tended to upsell bigger systems so their ignorance didn't matter. They seem very bad at doing the planning or design required to actually spec out a system, so you have to be your own engineer.

and that is what the industry needs to work on.

I don't know how the industry is supposed to force contractors to read their very very clear documentation, or follow the very clear instructions (of boiler manufacturers no less) of "You must measure heat load to accurately size a heat appliance".

mulmen• 9 months ago

Where in the system did they install the resistive wires? Is that a defroster on the evaporator (outside) or is it inline with the condenser?

Merad2• 9 months ago

I have to agree. I've spent about 2/3s my life in houses with heat pumps and the last 5 years with a gas furnace (the rest being wood heat as a child). Mostly in Western NC and Eastern TN near the mountains, so chilly but not extreme cold.

Heat pumps work, but they aren't nearly as _pleasant_. You can write essays about the efficiency of heat pumps, how lukewarm air works just fine to warm the house, how heat pumps are great _most of the time_ and you can supplement with space heaters or whatever when they fall short... But as long as furnaces are accessible and affordable, an awful lot of people are going to choose to have nice warm heat that is always going to be nice and warm regardless of the outside temperature.

smnrchrds2• 9 months ago

I have never had a heat pump, so I wasn't aware of this shortcoming. Could you please explain a bit more how different it is with heat pump compared to furnace?

throw0101a6• 9 months ago

The place I've lived for 15 years had a heat pump and a (oil) boiler with radiators, and when it was below 40°F (~5°C) I had to switch to the radiators.

When was the heat pump manufactured? Mitsubishi, for one, publishes data were they have 100% heating capacity at -15C, which some models being 100% at -20C and -23C:

* https://www.mitsubishielectric.ca/en/hvac/home-owners/zuba

There's a website for cold climate air-source heat pumps (ccASHPs), that has performance data down to (at least) 5F/-15C:

* https://neep.org/heating-electrification/ccashp-specificatio...

* https://ashp.neep.org/#!/

OEMs can optionally have publish data on "Lowest Cataloged Temperature" if it's below 5F/-15C.

Also: how (air) leaky is your house? how much insulation? For a lot of folks dealing with those two things would be more cost effective than anything.

As it stands, even if you are heating with "cheap" methane (née 'natural') gas, propane, or oil, you're throwing money out the window by letting the heat out in winter. (And the heat in / cold out in the summer.)

uhfraid2• 9 months ago

Spot on.

Glyptodon3• 9 months ago

I live in a heat pump only house and the only thing I don't really love are mid summer electric bills, but I think that'd basically be the same with a dedicated AC. In my climate heat is more nice than complete necessity and usually only spikes bills if there are true hard freezes.

I will say, they seem to have gotten more expensive. It took about $10k to replace ours (it was over 20 years old and replacing coolant+fixing was quoted at nearly half that). Even though research suggested it could be more like a $6.5 to $7.5k cost, it was hard to even get people quoting in a timely manner, let alone getting any kind of a deal.

prlambert5• 9 months ago

Cool to see a Heat Pump article near the top of HN! I'm the founder/CEO of Quilt (https://www.quilt.com/), which is mentioned in the article, and a decade+ daily reader of this fine site. At Quilt we've run the Nest playbook for ductless heat pumps as our first product. The plan is to do what Tesla did for automotive to the built environment infrastructure category (HVAC, plumbing, etc) and create the first major American manufacturer in a ~century.

The article has bullet #1 in problems to solve as "Contractors who default to what they know." This was one of my founding hypotheses to and it turns out I was wrong, this was the hardest won learning yet at Quilt. We originally were fully vertically integrated and had our own installation force because of this reason – we wanted to solve all the big problems, thought contractors were one of them, and so had to become a contractor. But we quickly saw we were getting in the way of our own mission to accelerate the energy transition (because we had far far more demand than we could scale operations to reach it). So in March we (initially cautiously) switched partnering with existing contractors and I have been delighted by the industry reception. There are so so many existing contractors who want modern tech and see working with us as a breath of fresh air. I definitely sold them short and in retrospect it was naive and even a little elitist.

Happy to answer anything more. Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we're growing super fast and just posted an Embedded Software Engineer role: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/quilt/jobs/4952684007 :)

ssuds10• 9 months ago

Hey Paul! Good to see ya on here. I'm in a Facebook group of small HVAC contractors, and recently there was a conversation about who is installing heat pumps vs traditional ACs and furnaces. I was thrilled to see that most were saying that they are moving a lot of their business toward heat pumps. Of course, there were a few that were stuck in their ways and were "gas or die" type people, but it's exciting to see the ship slowly starting to turn. There are more and more heat pump forward contractors coming online every day, and it's great that we can team up with folks like you pushing the hardware forward. There is so much work to deploy these systems, and winning is going to look like all of us working together!

commandersaki• 9 months ago

Is Heat Pump the same as what Australian's would call a Split System?

ssuds10• 9 months ago

Yes! Also often referred to as "Reverse Cycle Air Conditioning" in Australia

JeremyPOsborne13• 9 months ago

estimator72923• 9 months ago

Split system is a common term that covers both heat pumps and traditional AC systems. It has to do with the physical setup, not the theory of operation.

A heat pump specifically is an AC system that can run in reverse: moving heat from outside to inside.

bluGill8• 9 months ago

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

A previous house the heat pump was sized to work to 14F. They make them that will work down to -25F, but since it gets to -30f where I live (about once every 10 years, but that is enough) we need a backup system so is probably isn't worth getting a system sized to as cold as possible.

Ground source heat pumps are a common option in rural areas - they cost a lot to install ($50k - and this is the cheapest version that needs a lot of land thus rural areas). They are likely to pay off if you live in the same house for 50 years, but the initial upfront costs are high (you do get a house worth $10k more than other heat option). Worth looking into if you are young and have reason to think you will live in the same house for 50 years.

switchbak3• 9 months ago

It's really amazing how often I hear that same story: poor choices by the installer left the home owner in a bind with a poorly functioning system. The industry (certainly the residential side) really does need better educated installers/planners.

Even as a homeowner who's a bit of an energy geek, it's entirely too challenging to understand the entire space and what options fit one's needs. LLM's help a lot here (if you can trust them!), but it's a funny situation where there's silos of knowledge that are hard to connect.

bluGill8• 9 months ago

The system works well - just not how I want it. I was expecting to need the gas heat 1-2 weeks per year not 2-3 months.

glxxyz18• 9 months ago

I'm amazed at these prices, I replaced a propane tank + furnace with horizontal loop ground source for $40k Canadian (+ tax, but government rebate matched that). It's almost paid for itself in about 6 years, I gave more detailed numbers in another reply.

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

Your setup sounds great, but depending on location in Canada, gas can be much cheaper than propane. I just priced running a gas line for my BBQ, and I'd break even on a $500 install cost after about 40 20lb propane tank fills.

ip263• 9 months ago

gets to -30f where I live (about once every 10 years)

For this specific problem, I'm always inclined to just keep a 1800W space heater or two in the closet.

bluGill8• 9 months ago

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

quickthrowman5• 9 months ago

It’s very hard to say whether heat pumps are cheaper than NG for heating. I pay about $0.25 per 100k BTUs which is about 3kWh. 3kWh costs about 50 cents. As long as the COP is above 2, it’s cheaper to run the heat pump.

Once you factor in an electrician and pipefitter for installing a heat pump, plus the cost of the heat pump, refrigerant, and furnace coil, I’d imagine you lose money in the long run.

If you then additionally include the strain on the grid from all these new data centers without enough generation capacity, I’ll stick with natural gas for heating air and water.

SigmundA5• 9 months ago

Its not hard to say at all, the math can be done pretty easily based on your local electric and gas rates, and most people who go for a heat pump already need an air conditioner for summer.

The math actually works out in many places unless you have cheap gas and expensive electricity. Its also better then to burn the gas at a power plant at 60% efficiency then 300-400% efficiency at the heat pump than pipe and burn the NG at 80% efficiency in your furnace.

quickthrowman5• 9 months ago

Its not hard to say at all, the math can be done pretty easily based on your local electric and gas rates, and most people who go for a heat pump already need an air conditioner for summer.

I went on to do the math for operating costs for myself in the very next sentence. Excluding labor and material to replace a furnace with a heat pump, operating costs are lower as long as the heat pump has a COP of 2 or higher.

Predicting future electricity and gas prices is virtually impossible but it is possible to quantify how much it costs to convert a natural gas furnace to a heat pump system at present. I’m saying it’s difficult to know at the present time if the TCO of the heat pump beats out natural gas. Where I live in Minnesota, I’m skeptical you’d come out ahead. In a state like Arkansas or Tennessee, the heat pump is likely to come out ahead due to lower heating needs.

SigmundA5• 9 months ago

Recently went with heat pump water heater and cloths dryer, very significant energy savings and they both work great using around 1/3 the energy.

Most of my energy is for HVAC cooling in the south and that is already a heat pump. The house is well insulated and also have solar so along with the water heater and dryer I am around net zero in mid summer and and now that temperature is more mild I am producing much more than using even with one EV as well.

It really nice to have an all electric house along with at least one car and a large solar backup system I am pretty self contained and don't really have to change anything if grid goes down.

TimTheTinker4• 9 months ago

Nearly 2 years ago, we had a small tornado come through, taking out our electricity for a week. During that time, it was snowy and the outdoor temperature was well below freezing (it reached about -10°C (12°F) at night).

Keeping my family warm was a real struggle that week. The next spring, I went to Costco and bought a big tri-power generator and wired up a generator interlock on the electric panel. Now if we lose power, we can run the natural gas furnace & blower with no problems. I can also power the generator from my home's natural gas supply instead of making frequent trips for gasoline.

So I'd say heck no to swapping the natural gas furnace for a heat pump. I'd much rather use natural gas to power both the generator and the furnace/blower than risk needing more electricity to keep my family warm than my setup can handle.

switchbak3• 9 months ago

Don't you still need a generator to run the blower and the logic on the furnace? I mean, obviously a much lower power load, but wouldn't a generator still be necessary?

TimTheTinker4• 9 months ago

Of course. My point was that unlike my natural gas furnace + blower, a heat pump would be more than what my portable generator could handle.

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

The math on natural gas generators gets weird in places with cheap gas and expensive electricity, to the point where it can sometimes be cheaper to generate your own electricity from natural gas than to purchase from the grid.

TimTheTinker4• 9 months ago

All this push to electrify everything makes me nervous, as it effectively centralizes a lever that someone evil enough could use to coerce the general public in unsavory ways.

I'm doubly suspicious of areas that combine mass-electrification with reducing availability of the most reliable alternate source of electricity (i.e. generators). California in particular is pushing to make generators increasingly hard to obtain.

supportengineer3• 9 months ago

> someone evil enough

There's so much evil being demonstrated today, in real time, that we can't dismiss this any more, it must be seriously considered.

crote• 9 months ago

What makes you believe the same doesn't already apply to natural gas, or petrol?

Besides, coercing the general public like that generally doesn't end well: people tend to get annoyed when their basic needs of survival aren't being met - especially if it is a deliberate choice. The people in power will be gone within days.

TimTheTinker4• 9 months ago

Modern coercion happens far more subtly and less overtly than it did in 20th century totalitarian regimes. The proletariat isn't the only group that learned lessons from that period of time.

bethekidyouwant2• 9 months ago

I moved from gas boiler to electric years ago and would like to move to an electric heat pump hybrid, but it doesn’t exist. Moment lost.

LgWoodenBadger3• 9 months ago

What do you mean when you say “heat pump hybrid?”

bethekidyouwant2• 9 months ago

Well, they have electric boilers, gas boilers, and gas/heat pump hybrid boilers. but not restive/heat pump hybrids. (for houses heated with hot water) I suppose this is because the return temperature to the boiler is already 50 Celsius so the heat pump can’t help you at all

Edit: Oh actually, I was wrong.(and I guess it makes sense. It would suffer the same problems as an electric hybrid) There is no hybrid gas heat pump for hydronic heating. Basically my entire city is hydronic heating so heat pumps are not an option. However

a bunch of my neighbours have heat pumps and I suppose it’s just heating one room in their house and it’s not even connected to the thermostat of their hydronic heater in any way.. Seems pretty silly to me. At least you get an air conditioner out of the deal so that you can use more electricity in the summer.

supportengineer3• 9 months ago

I'm thankful to live in the Bay Area. One time we took a trip in the dead of winter. We turned off our heat completely. We were gone for a week. The coldest it got inside the house was 55 degrees.

kridsdale3• 9 months ago

Congratulations?

DazWilkin• 9 months ago

I live in a community in the Pacific Northwest that was built in 2018 and (almost) every home (22/23) has (Carrier) heat pumps; for some unknown reason, the other has heated floors.

Many of us are proponents of heat pumps thanks to reduced costs and emissions *but* we've not had a generally good experience possibly (!) as a result of bad installation and definitely due to limited numbers of indoor heads (if I close my main bedroom door, the rest of my upper floor has no heating/cooling).

There's always someone in the community frustrated that their house is too cold/hot, that the condensation drains are blocked and water is running down an interior wall, that an indoor head or the condenser is having problems, or that there's unexplained coolant leak.

People moving into the community are inheriting issues with at least 2 homes having to augment/replace the system. To save breaking into the walls, this often necessitates putting the power, coolant and drainage lines on the outside of the house and then boxing the result.

We're saving money on monthly bills (probably; we don't have a comp) but many of us have spent quite some $$$ on maintenance and replacement equipment.

nine_k3• 9 months ago

Looks like poor installation.

I've spent 1.5 years in a brand-new building with Mitsubishi heat pumps. It had some initial trouble with a faulty electronic component, but afterwards it worked quite fine, needing little if any attention.

delfugal• 9 months ago

Installed a Minisplit to heat/cool a 1,000 sqft large work area. My average monthly electricity cost is maybe $30 to heat or cool. The tech in these are amazing.

danielodievich• 9 months ago

Right as COVID lockdowns were starting in early 2020, our gas furnace reached the state of nearly broken and would have been unfixable if it finally broke. We called local HVAC for a quote and they convinced that instead of simply replacing the furnace, we should get full-house air conditioning with electric heat pump with gas furnace backup. We agreed and what was amazing was that they wanted to install it the NEXT DAY. Unprecedented speed. This was because it was COVID and everyone was stopping construction projects etc. Their technicians were ready to go and needed all the work. Next day wasn't good so we installed it the next next day. 4 burly guys, all masked and gloved, did it all in just a few hours. Our friends trying to do the same couple of years ago had to wait months for installation. We've been enjoying AC since then, a lot.

I think it cost about $13k for heat pump and furnace and labor, maybe a bit more with tax, and I got ~1.7k rebate/refund of some sorts? Or 1.3k? I don't fully recall why but it must have been government sponsored.

My ongoing energy costs are about the same, but the mix completely switched from gas to electricity. I cook with gas so there is just a bit every month, but virtually no heating with it, the gas hardly ever starts except in the height of winter. If I only had solar to feed it with sun, but the house location with shade, hill and trees isn't suited for it. Instead I pay a little extra to energy company to presumably source my electricity from solar. Works.

kragen18• 9 months ago

what it’s going to take, from the human side of the equation, to make heat pumps the obvious, accessible, and default choice for millions of American homes.

Well, this has already happened; living in a third-world American country, I've been heating my houses in winter with heat pumps every winter for many years (even though they iced up occasionally) and most air conditioners here are already heat pumps. Frio/calor, they're called.

But, installations strictly for heating are probably never going to happen en masse. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698730 I analyze the costs. It turns out that heat pumps cost around 39¢ per peak watt they save, while low-cost solar panels cost 6.5¢ per peak watt they produce, so it's almost always cheaper to install enough solar panels to heat your house resistively. And that gap is going to continue widening for the foreseeable future.

Our heat pump, a cheap-shit Electrolux mini split assembled in Tierra del Fuego, broke down last winter; somehow the refrigerant escaped. The repairman did a pressure test with nitrogen but couldn't find a link. He pre-emptively soldered shut a pipe that had been crimped shut at the factory, and pointed out that, probably, if we hadn't been using it as a heat pump, it would have been fine. Certainly it would have had many fewer hours of operation. We ended up spending about US$100 on the repair, which is the price of 1500 peak watts of solar panels. I think that brings us to about US$500 total spent on the thing—insignificant to people in the US, but a significant chunk of change in most of the rest of America.

Heat pumps are an energy-crisis-era efficiency measure to conserve energy. But energy is no longer scarce. After 50 years, the energy crisis is, if not ended, at least ending. If your house's solar panels are producing more energy than you can use or sell back to the grid at a decent price, the energy to run a resistive heater is free.

gwbas1c4• 9 months ago

Remember: The season that you need heat is the season with the least sunshine. Solar is only cheap as you claim due to net metering; without pairing it with batteries or some other form of storage, you're pushing your heating cost on others by flooding the grid with electricity when it isn't needed.

Now, I will gladly point out that I have a roof of solar panels, and benefit from subsidies: It's important to understand that solar currently is unsustainable economically and will only be sustainable with more R&D on storage.

kragen18• 9 months ago

No, I'm not talking about net metering, which has nothing to do with the cost per peak watt.

You're right that you do need energy storage, though. Even sensible-heat thermal energy storage is completely adequate for this purpose, and it's very cheap, on the order of US$2–3/kWh. See the sand-battery outline I wrote yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45690085. Electric night storage heaters are widely available off the shelf in many countries already, though not in the US.

For some other kinds of energy storage, it's debatable whether utility-scale storage or household-scale storage is more efficient; you're trading off economies of scale against transmission and distribution losses and transaction costs. But low-grade thermal energy storage is clearly better at household or neighborhood scale; my design outline linked above comes to a price per kWh that's 3% of the price of the batteries needed for BESS, and maybe 15% of the optimistic cost estimates for sodium-ion. You have to reduce the energy to low-grade heat up front to store it so cheaply, but that makes it hard to redistribute later—to redistribute low-grade stored heat from a central energy storage facility, you need something like New York's steam district heating systems. It's far cheaper to store the thermal energy at the point of use.

This is not a new idea. It's the idea behind adobe walls, Russian stoves, rocket mass heaters, electric night storage heaters, dol beds, kachelofens, kangs, earth-bermed walls, Trombe walls, and ondols. People have been doing this for 7000 years, without an electrical grid or, for that matter, electrical power at all. It definitely doesn't rely on net metering!

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

But, installations strictly for heating are probably never going to happen en masse. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698730 I analyze the costs. It turns out that heat pumps cost around 39¢ per peak watt they save, while low-cost solar panels cost 6.5¢ per peak watt they produce, so it's almost always cheaper to install enough solar panels to heat your house resistively. And that gap is going to continue widening for the foreseeable future.

My counter-scenario: My utility provider wants ~$40k to upgrade my home service to 200 amp, so the up-front cost of electric resistive heat would include that.

kragen18• 9 months ago

Either that or solar panels, yeah. I mean it sounds like US utilities are doing a pretty bad job of delivering the unprecedentedly cheap solar power of the last three years to their customers in any case. They're still acting like we're in an energy crisis! So you have to install the modules yourself.

jasonthorsness• 9 months ago

I’ve had a heat pump with backup gas in Seattle area since 2016. Great to have AC and heat; the gas comes on when house needs to be warmed quickly. I like constant air circulation and have it set so fan runs even when it doesn’t need to heat or cool so it works really well for me; no complaints at all.

jdkee• 9 months ago

Did ChatGPT write this?

gwbas1c4• 9 months ago

My mini-split was installed sometime between fall 2017 or spring 2018 when my house was built. It failed when it was 6 years old, and the lineset had to be replaced because there was too much acid in the insulation and it corroded the copper.

The problem was that the lineset was in my walls, so replacing it would require ugly lineset in a highly-visible place on my house. All the quotes to fix / replace it were absurdly expensive.

Because the mini-split was for a room that I use occasionally, I just use a portable air conditioner and a space heater.

ssuds10• 9 months ago

Quality control by the contractor is soooo important. Formicary corrosion like you described can happen if a contractor doesn't pull a proper vacuum on the system to evacuate moisture before releasing refrigerant. I saw an anecdote where Bill Spohn, who literally owns an HVAC tools company, had this happen with the contractor installing a system in his own house! (https://www.heatpumped.org/p/are-heat-pumps-a-commodity)

I suspect it's especially bad with new builds, as new builds are a race to the bottom and every subcontractor is fighting to get the lowest bid. The best way to make it cheaper is skip steps, and that hurts in the long run. Sorry you ended up in that situation, crummy experiences like this set the industry back. For what it's worth, the same corrosion could happen with a traditional AC system too (it's not just heat pumps). But the difference is, often those refrigerant lines don't get as hidden on interior walls as the ones for ductless mini-splits do.

the_cat_kittles2• 9 months ago

pretty sure the white insulation on the lineset, when exposed to moisture and UV, can create an acid that eats the copper. thats probably what happened

gwbas1c4• 9 months ago

It was a manufacturing problem with the lineset:

https://minisplit-services.com/blog/f/why-is-white-line-set-...

The white insulation material, typically made of polyethylene or similar compounds, was found to degrade prematurely when exposed to UV radiation.

According to my contractor, this was a problem with lineset manufactured in 2016 and a little after. All of the HVAC companies that I called understood the "white lineset" problem.

danielsju65• 9 months ago

Maybe I have scar tissue from COVID prices but $20k to install a ductless heat pump vs. a $200 to throw a window A/C in or $700 for a portable heat pump. While I get that these heat pumps are better for the environment and much more efficient it's a last mile issue. The installers charge an arm and a leg and I'm not hurting enough to self install. I'm hoping the window heat pumps that just run off mains will be available to more markets soon, I could buy one of those for every room in my house for less than the install on a single mini split.

Where it did make sense was when I was getting solar. It was only a few thousand since I already had the trades out and reducing the load was important for the ROI on the panels.

chongli4• 9 months ago

This is talking about cold-climate heat pumps. A $200 window AC isn't going to heat your house when it's way below freezing outside.

$20k USD is insane though. I live in Ontario and we paid $12k CAD (pre-government subsidy) for a modern heat pump with a backup high efficiency furnace for when temperatures dip down to -40 or lower.

danielsju65• 9 months ago

True. We have natural gas and an existing steam radiator setup though, for the two months a year window heat pumps can't keep up. The upfront investment alone would heat my house for 10-20 years.

Honestly, just piling more insulation in the attic and doing an energy audit will probably put the ROI out another 10+ years...

I'm hoping the newer window units that are being rolled out to the NYC market will be good enough to put downward pressure on the outrageous prices in the installation market. Or maybe I'll just dedicate a weekend to DIYing :P

dzhiurgis4• 9 months ago

Actually its probably most efficient way because you have best control. That said having whole house ducted you also get benefit of fresh air via ERV (arguably more important than heating).

mikepurvis2• 9 months ago

Similar for me, also in Ontario. I got a three zone mini split this year that I’m hoping can cover most of the shoulder seasons and keep me from using the gas boiler, though it remains to be seen if that’ll actually pan out; so far the kids have complained that their rooms are a lot less evenly heated when it’s the heat pump running rather than the rads.

glxxyz18• 9 months ago

It's the opposite for me, much bigger ROI on the heatpump than solar. Rural property, 10 years old, ~3,500 sq ft + basement, in Canada where summer can be above 30C (86F) and winter below -30C (-20F). Electricity costs (Canadian) 7.6 ¢/kWh off-peak and 15.8 ¢/kWh on-peak here.

I spent C$40K (about US$30k) on a ground source aka 'geothermal' heat pump to replace furnace powered by propane tank. I kept propane for on-demand hot water and whole house generator. I have no options for utilities other than electricity.

A couple of years later I spent another C$40k for a 20kW rooftop solar system, with net metering and no battery. Net metering was critical for getting any return at all. A battery is next to useless here- I generate almost all of my solar electricity in May-Oct but use the majority of it in Nov-April. Net metering lets me 'store' excess from summer and use it in winter.

Annual costs:

Before:

    C$8,000+ propane (heating + hot water)
    C$2,500 electricity (cooling + misc)
    $10,500 total

With C$40k investment in geothermal heatpump:

    C$4,500 electricity (heating + cooling + misc)
    C$500 propane (hot water)
    C$5,000 total.

With heatpump and then C$40k investment in rooftop solar:

    C$2,000 electricity (heating + cooling + misc)
    C$500 propane (hot water)
    C$2,500 total.

So I'm seeing about C$8k/yr saving for C$80k investment. The heatpump saved me over $5k a year and the solar about $2,500 a year. The heatpump has pretty much paid for itself after 5 years, the solar will take at least 15 years (unless prices go way up) although should eventually see some return 15-20 years out.

In reality it might have cost even more than that to heat with propane. On the propane furnace we barely heated in winter, burned a lot of firewood to make part of the house livable. I'm trying estimate how much it would cost to heat the house to a comfortable 20C (68F) although the thermostat now with the heatpump is set to 22C (72F) in winter so there's an improvement in comfort as well as the ROI.

mattmaroon4• 9 months ago

Solar in northernly climates is still not practical. (I’m Canada adjacent.)

danielsju65• 9 months ago

For me it helped with the ROI because I couldn't go any larger than a 6kw array due to roof shape/exposure. Only roof mounted solar is permitted in my community :/ So a ductless saved us energy in the summer months vs. window units, so I could bank more with net metering when the sun was shining.

EgregiousCube• 9 months ago

Excellent data, thanks! Net metering does look necessary for economics. Have you factored in relative replacement/maintenance costs for the geo pump vs furnace? Also curious how much your investment was discounted thanks to tax subsidies.

caminante13• 9 months ago

I'm jealous of the learning and hobby project.

Though, the returns are (edit: "not great") if the figures above INCLUDE net metering revenues.

    Heatpump = Negative IRR until y8
    Solar = Negative IRR until y16
    Heatpump + Solar = 0 NPV through y25 | 8% discount rate

db48x• 9 months ago

Err, be careful. You made these improvements sequentially, not independently. Each one halved your costs and might still have done exactly that if done in the opposite order.

dns_snek5• 9 months ago

Net metering lets me 'store' excess from summer and use it in winter

FYI net metering is unsustainable for the grid and policies will probably change (reducing rates for energy, increasing rates for delivery fees to offset the "freebies") as soon as adoption reaches a critical mass.

kalleboo4• 9 months ago

For comparison, I just bought a house here in Japan. Installed 6 minisplit heat pumps across various rooms in the house. All together it cost me 750,000 yen ($5,000) for the hardware and 90,000 yen ($600) for the install.

danans2• 9 months ago

Japan is where early air-source heat pumps first achieved market success, so it's unsurprising that they are much cheaper to install there, because of the relatively large number of installer options.

In the US, they are struggling to break out of the eco-luxury product niche (where they have been stuck for a long time).

nine_k3• 9 months ago

How much time did it take?

upcoming-sesame2• 9 months ago

Do you mean 6 A/C units ? I. e. 6 outdoor and indoor units

regardless, this is incredibly cheap

canpan• 9 months ago

Another person living in Japan. Sounds about right. A unit from a good brand (daikin, mitsubishi) costs ~$800? More or less depending on the room size. We had them installed when we built the house, installation price included. Two are enough to keep our house cool or warm in any season (it's a well insulated house). We have another in the guest room, use it only for when guests stay.

steveBK1233• 9 months ago

In US the labor & markup is a huge component.

I got HVAC drop-in replacement quotes ranging from $7k to $14k for what upon some quick research was about $3k in hardware.

prasadjoglekar• 9 months ago

This. The quotes I got for a single 2 ton heat pump with a oil backup ranged from $15K to $45K.

It's insane and really made me look into the DIY installs. Even if I broke 2 of those it would still be cheaper than one professional one.

Solar install is another scam. All those companies want to steer you into a PPA rather than let you buy panels.

ricardobayes2• 9 months ago

Yup, got similar quotes. I'm really not going to pay that for a day's work (2 people). The price difference over installing A/C is staggering and don't know where it comes from.

jofla_net2• 9 months ago

Its most simply summed up as what I call the tradesman's protection racket.

On one side of the coin you have any moron, calling himself a repair man which can and does end in disastrous jobs which can be unsafe. This though has much lower pricing.

The flip side is, basically a protection racket where suppliers only sell to you if you have a 'loicense' and the hurdles required to become said VIP are so high, giving your body to a master tradesman to get a piece of paper over many years and be allowed to practice installing said systems results in a huge shortage of qualified people. Prices then skyrocket.

I wish I could live in a world somewhere in the middle, but as I've seen both ends of the spectrum, they both suck for different reasons.

adwn2• 9 months ago

Have you considered that the second path you outlined, "giving your body to a master tradesman to get a piece of paper over many years" (in the figurative sense), is in general a necessary prerequisite to avoid the first path of any moron being allowed to "[call] himself a repair man which can and does end in disastrous jobs"?

I wish I could live in a world somewhere in the middle […]

This world would just be a mixture of both, with many more semi-skilled tradesmen doing many more half-assed jobs, but not having to train as long.

lotsofpulp5• 9 months ago

giving your body to a master tradesman to get a piece of paper over many years and be allowed to practice installing said systems results in a huge shortage of qualified people.

The job is physically difficult and does not provide steady hours. It involves driving long distances each day and working in hot and cold and rainy conditions, in cramped corners, in houses with varying levels of cleanliness.

People with options tend towards other careers, resulting in lower supply of qualified people, and hence higher prices to compensate for the drastically lower quality of life at work.

potato37328424• 9 months ago

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

matwood3• 9 months ago

COVID prices just aren't a good comparison. I needed to replace a tankless water heater and was quoted $4k. I laughed, paid $1100 for a top of the line one and had my neighbor help me who used to be a plumber. Took 30 minutes and a bottle of a tequila for my neighbor.

nine_k3• 9 months ago

Of the $20k, let's assume $5k is the hardware. Now $15k is the work. Let's consider the installation a highly skilled job, commanding $100/hour. This is 150 hours, or a tad more than 6 business days for a team of 3, working with full load 8 hours a day.

Does a split system indeed take so much work? What is so effort-intensive?

Nition• 9 months ago

Absolutely not. A basic ductless heat pump takes three or four hours to install by a couple of workers.

brianwawok7• 9 months ago

That’s just how US HVaC places price. It’s a racket. I got 45k quotes for 5k of hardware for an 8 hour max job. Good reason to learn DIY

JeremyPOsborne13• 9 months ago

2-3 hours planning, parts list, client management,

4-6 hrs to run electrical,

2-4 hrs to mount condenser,

4-8 hrs for medium line set,

4-8 hrs air handler, duct, platform integration,

1-2 hrs with thermostat and condensate protection,

1-2 hours nitrogen testing and pull vacuum,

1 hr documenting photos for incentive programs,

1 hr spending time educating customer about the system.

Messing up a parts order and figuring out a solution 4 hrs too often.

Total: 28 hrs, or 2-3 days of 2 people depending on the travel from their shop to customers home. I agree. Let's get that down to 12-16 hrs or single day and the best shops and installers can do that.

CA Labor law allow about 6-7 hrs of work on site as installers often have to start at their shop.

$3-4k of labor cost for small-mid size. Best might be be 2-3K labor cost. Minor equipment 1-2K, permit and testing required $1K. Then 50% gross margin is the target, net costs $2.5K indirect labor, $2K sales cost, project management, trucks, insurance, software, 10-20% net margin.

Just added the details in a comment above. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705876

CalRobert4• 9 months ago

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

stavros2• 9 months ago

I think the better question here is "why can't I pay a fair price for an expert to do this for me?". What has happened to the market?

willis936• 9 months ago

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

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

everdrive• 9 months ago

We just got quoted $20k for the minimum setup for our house. Meanwhile, I have two "free" window units which probably cost me an additional $300 in the summer. I really want heat pumps, but I just can't see how I can justify it for $20k.

tibbon• 9 months ago

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

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

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

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

coffeebeqn4• 9 months ago

That’s wild. Is it something that plugs into a central air so not the usual consumer heat pump? I just got a nice heat pump in Finland for two floors with two indoor units for about $3000 with install. It should handle 99% of our heating needs. The most expensive units on the market are about $3000-4000 and for install I got quoted $1k fixed without shopping around. That includes drilling through two brick outside walls. The units are all made in China and labor is cheaper in the US if anything. Where are these prices coming from ?

The materials they install are small copper pipes and insulation and a 16A capable electric cable and some plastic. Maybe $100-200. I feel like you guys are getting screwed.

dns_snek5• 9 months ago

It would be helpful to provide the rated thermal power of your heat pump. You might need a 3kW heat pump while they need a 16kW one.

steveBK1233• 9 months ago

Northeast US here.

My 30 year old central air which covers 1 floor of my home went out recently so I got a bunch of replacement quotes, most vendors I asked for both a traditional central air & a heat pump central air quote.

The quotes were generally 50% more expensive for the heat pump option.

Vendor A: $12.5k AC, $17.7K Heat Pump + extra electrical work for the heat strips.

Vendor B: $8K AC, $11K Heat Pump + they don't think the existing ductwork is sufficient for comfortable heating and would recommend redoing some of it.

And I wouldn't qualify for any tax credits because it doesn't cover full home (there are upper floors without ducts that already are on mini splits & baseboard heat).

Also worth noting the range of HVAC quotes for the same spec cooling in the same home are insane. Every quote I got seemed to widen the range.

sevensor• 9 months ago

My house came with ghastly inefficient heating (ceiling cable) and no AC. Mini splits were worth every penny.

retrochameleon• 9 months ago

I recall the extra cost for heat pumps being criticized for being artificial by Technology Connections. The installers are to blame.

derektank• 9 months ago

How are installers able to discourage competitors from driving down prices?

JeremyPOsborne13• 9 months ago

Some are trying to cut HVAC install costs in half, and a lot of people are already working on it including Jetson (where the author works) and disclaimer my company Electric Air.

Average install is about $20K in California (varies by state). Here’s how that usually breaks down:

- Equipment: $3–5K for a basic swap (some go up to $10K for single system)

- Direct labor: $3–4K (about 15–20%)

- Materials: $2–3K

- Permits and testing: around $1K total

That leaves about a 45% margin to cover overhead:

- Indirect labor: $2.5K (installers when not installing, install managers, attending city inspector visits, call backs when installers make mistakes)

- Sales: $2K (around 10%)

- Project management: $500

- Trucks: $500

- Misc costs: $1.5K (insurance, software, payment processing, etc.)

Total overhead: $7K: Net margin: 10%

10% net margin at the end of the year isn't egregious.

That’s how a typical small-mid HVAC shop runs. The best HVAC shops can make these numbers be much more competitive. How do we make it better:

- Bulk order equipment

- Streamline direct labor

- Use virtual site visits instead of in-person sales calls

Do all that and you can bring a $20K install down close to half, while paying installers better and speeding up electrification.

harmmonica• 9 months ago

I'm not sure if you're going to get downvoted here for the advertisement (not by me because I find it useful and interesting), but can you be specific about what "streamline direct labor" means? Also, with the virtual site visit, are you guaranteeing the customer that the estimate you give virtually will be the ultimate price?

Any chance you can you take on solar next because if we could get a solar system for half the price we'd sign right up. All we hear about is how cheap solar is now, but the labor costs have risen more than any hardware price decreases.

reverendjames• 9 months ago

I live in Asia and I'm in charge of air conditioning at my company. A ductless A/c is approximately $1,200 installed. $20k? You should put a split unit in each room. If one breaks, go sleep in the other room. I have 6 of them installed in my apartment.

danielsju65• 9 months ago

The $20k quote was for two ductless units, with two heads each, which would just cover the bedrooms in my home.

Quite the racket here in the US. They’re still a luxury product.

vagab0nd• 9 months ago

The barrier isn’t the tech. It’s people.

Maybe? Or maybe the tech is not superior enough (considering the overhead) so nobody cares.

coopr• 9 months ago

We love helping folks save on heat pumps with our free, expert analysis and live advice service https://www.QuitCarbon.com - check it out?

cwillu2• 9 months ago

Only if you write a haiku about the site guidelines first.

Animats2• 9 months ago

Everybody seems to agree that installation costs way too much.

There's a few parts to this. Everything has to be carefully sized - power, pipe sizes, unit locations. You need to put a house's thermal profile (how much heat loss, how much air leak, how much thermal mass) along with the regional thermal profile into an engineering calculation which computes what you need.

Thermographic inspections are a thing.[1] Usual price is around $400. They're not very standardized. You get IR images of a house, which is good for finding leaks but not quantitative enough to size a heating and cooling plant.

This would be a great drone application. Fly over and around the house. Build a 3D model of the house and paint heat loss on top of it. Crunch on data to get the engineering info needed to correctly size HVAC. Also discover big heat leak points. Turn this from experienced guessing into measurement.

Then submit that data sheet to multiple sites that offer heat pumps.

Startup opportunity here.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/thermographic-inspections

mastax• 9 months ago

Isn’t it important to right-size non-heat-pump installs anyway? Too large a system causes short cycling, humidity problems, temperature swings. I have read installers habitually guesstimate over size to over charge (rather than do the proper calculations).

EngCanMan2• 9 months ago

The reality is that this is all solving a problem that people don’t have.

Forced air is a terrible way to heat a building yet thats how most homes are heated, and it is good enough for most people.

If you perfectly size a furnace for the coldest days of the year, it is now oversized for the other 90% of days.

The cheapest way is to install a multi stage heating/cooling system that works on first stage most of the time, and second when it needs to, like having 2 small furnaces. This passes the ‘good enough’ test for the vast majority of homeowners.

ralph84• 9 months ago

They oversize because customers who have an oversized system generally don’t complain but customers who have an undersized system definitely will complain when it can’t get to and hold their desired temperature.

Aspos• 9 months ago

I would argue that accurate sizing is not that important as labor constitutes the bulk of the cost. My total bill was about $20K and going for 30% less capacity would net about $19K so its easier just to go for the maximum. Calling in an IR imaging drone would certainly cost more than the potential savings from accurate sizing.

Unlike gas furnaces which basically can only do ON or OFF, heat pumps can regulate the heat with much higher granularity.

What certainly calls for innovation is managing the labor costs. In my case installation involved way too many people and way too many visits.

caminante13• 9 months ago

Reducing labor costs is hard.

For commercial applications, modular/off-site builds are a way to reduce labor costs. Yet, homes design are so fragmented that it's hard to build something plug-n-play.

jofla_net2• 9 months ago

or you could, you know, wing-it, like they do overseas, and I tell you, the world does not end.

Atheros• 9 months ago

You're better off guesstimating yourself than trusting contractors. The contractors are incentivized to severely oversize any AC units they install or else people leave bad reviews on their pages/listings when the installed unit can't keep up the one day every two years that the temperature gets abnormally hot.

I did this myself and insisted on a unit half the capacity that the contractors wanted. Several flat-out refused. But it works perfectly! Approximately one day ever two years it can't keep up. Which means that all the other time it doesn't short-cycle. Perfect.

Animats2• 9 months ago

That's fine for mini-split pairs. Whole house systems need more engineering.

pilingual• 9 months ago

This wouldn't work, unfortunately. A lot of insulation has a reflective layer yielding invalid readings from thermal imaging.

There are several other factors like air tightness which requires a blower door to measure and even the number of elbows in the duct system could have an effect. It's a surprisingly complex field. You wouldn't gain anything over a traditional home energy auditor.

The real opportunity is to scrap everything and rethink the system from scratch.

potato37328424• 9 months ago

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

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

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

code4life• 9 months ago

I don’t believe they last as long as a natural gas boiler, so the total cost of ownership needs to take that into account.

They now make really efficient refrigerators for your kitchen that you get to throw out every 2-5 years.

OneOffAsk• 9 months ago

I recently installed a mini split heat pump in a detached accessory building. The installer upsold me on a more expensive unit because I’d get federal refunds due to its higher SEER rating. Ok, sure: higher efficiency, same price.

In fact, efficiency was the main reason I wanted a mini split in the first place. It just bugged me to _not_ pump the heat entirely outside the structure. And I paid a bit more for that versus just using a window unit or “portable” AC. All we’re talking here is the location of the condenser coil: inside versus outside. It just makes sense to put it outside, with just a small penetration in the building.

Well, during electrical inspection apparently I paid too much. After paying more than a certain threshold for converting an unconditioned space to a conditioned space, I now need to insulate the accessory structure to a certain degree in order to pass code.

The kicker is, the only way I can insulate the space to meet code is to insulate with polyiso (aka styrofoam) because the structure is so small. So, I guess in an effort to be “green” according to local government, I need to rip out the mineral wool insulation, dump it and replace it with styrofoam. Or put the mini split in the dump and buy a cheaper less efficient unit like a window unit.

I’d save approximately $0.30 a year on energy costs to insulate to code versus what I have now with the mini split.

This whole industry is stupid and that’s because it’s regulated by idiots.

Name and shame: this is Chapel Hill, NC.

abakker• 9 months ago

I’ll just say that most of the core issues with heat pumps seems to resolved with monoblock designs. Specifically, by moving the refrigerant cycle outdoors, install can be cheaper, and capacity can be more variable than when you are relying on sizing to the phase change occurring in each indoor unit.

neltnerb4• 9 months ago

I've got to throw out an obvious explanation.

A third of the country rents. Renters pay the utility bills. Landlords pay for appliance upgrades.

Why would the landlord put any effort into upgrading appliances when the cost of not upgrading them is borne by the renters?

I've never rented at a place where they didn't want to fix broken equipment with the cheapest possible replacement. And no renter would ever consider purchasing a major appliance like this since they'll end up priced out before they recover the cost in utility bills.

They're a nice technology, but our incentives are all wrong for a lot of housing stock.

kortilla2• 9 months ago

Then why aren’t they in 2/3 of houses

edg5000• 9 months ago

They are efficient but do not have as high of an energy output as a smaller and cheaper gas furnaice. Apart from that, the water temperature is lower, so you need much larger radiators. Due to the lower energy output, you also need better insulation or a relatively massive heat pump. And the tech was not around 20 years ago (for reasons unknown to me).

tgma2• 9 months ago

Electricity is much more expensive than gas per J. You have to be ~3x more efficient to just break even.

neltnerb4• 9 months ago

I listed a reason that impacts a third of houses. I didn't write an essay because the article lists plenty of others. It was just weird that they never mentioned the misaligned incentives.

ZeroGravitas4• 9 months ago

In some locations you can't rent out places without minimum energy efficiency ratings, which then leads to insulation and heat pumps getting installed.

adrianN4• 9 months ago

Where is that?

SoftTalker6• 9 months ago

That doesn't square with the fact that new rentals are built with granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances. Tenants do shop around on the basis of amenities.

ericpauley• 9 months ago

Sure, but those amenities are highly visible. Lots of units have a stainless dishwasher exterior, but most will still be the landlord-special plastic tub inside. Who is shopping around based on whether or not there’s a heat pump? I would consider myself relatively well-educated on this and still the heat/cooling source is an afterthought.

neltnerb4• 9 months ago

The combination with air conditioning and dehumidifying is genuinely compelling for the simplicity. Especially in new construction.

But these things trickle down to renters last. And if the landlord installs it, you bet your ass the rent is going up more than your savings on electricity.

Lose lose lose, if it gets installed then the current residents probably get priced out anyway. It eventually trickles down but we could do so much better.

fulafel• 9 months ago

Interesting to view this from the POV of the fossil fuel usage rampdown needed because to mitigate the climate catastrophe.

It seems that the fact that a lot of people have utility gas over there, and low price of gas due to regulation (no externalities taxed in) is the big one.

taneq• 9 months ago

Trying to translate this terminology into normal Aussie speak here. :P So a “heat pump” is reverse cycle aircon, I’m guessing it’s usually a central unit ducted to each room? Am I right in thinking that “mini split” is what we’d call a “split system” (ie. wall unit inside, heat exchanger outside, refrigerant pipes running between)? Is there a power cutoff above which it’s no longer mini, or is anything non-ducted a mini split?

tefkah• 9 months ago

This piece isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about understanding why we’re not using the wheel we already have—

common man please just write the text yourself

monssooon2• 9 months ago

Question: I have just bought house and deciding heatpump vs oil. We have an autistic person in the house hold that is very sensitive to high frequency noises and perpetual sounds in general. He is used to an oil furnace turning on and of.

I fear for sound pollution from a heat pump.

Will anyone share their experiences with this? Even just a shuttle humming would be a disaster for our spectrum case.

Can we get a completely silent setup ?

otsegony• 9 months ago

I don’t know whether you can get a completley silent unit, but I can say that our Mitsubishi heat pump does make a high pitched sound while running. Although I am used to it now, I found it annoying until I got used to it. It is very different than the intermittent low pitched rumble of my oil boiler.

monssooon2• 9 months ago

Thanks. Yeah I heard others say the same. And that the sound can increase as the system gets older...

burnt-resistor• 9 months ago

Missed opportunity to discuss GSHPs and instead pushes electric HPs because it's a business blog masquerading as a .org to push product.

And also, contractors and maintenance shops push products that minimize their costs and maximize their profits. It's also why private equity owns effectively every high voltage motor capacitor manufacturer in the US and why those capacitors have such short lives now. It's not about minimizing TCO, it's about maximizing customer dependency upon service and parts without seeming there is any other choice balanced with the stochastic equilibrium of potentially more reliable alternatives threatening this "cottage" industry.

PS: clean your coils, change your air filters (without excessive MERV flow restriction), surge protect ECMs, and check your caps.

ddxv• 9 months ago

I installed diy ductless heat pumps for around 3k at my parents. They love it and burn less wood now.

empiricus• 9 months ago

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

danimal88• 9 months ago

Regarding the crazy prices - it’s structural.

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

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

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

pants2• 9 months ago

I recently got a Mr. Cool DIY minisplit at Costco for $1600. I called an independent electrician to run the wiring for $200 and he helped me install the thing for another $200. So I got a fully installed minisplit for $2k and it works great.

brianwawok7• 9 months ago

Did the same thing except saved the $400 and did it in an afternoon.

alexnewman• 9 months ago

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

jgalt212• 9 months ago

We should add more tax credits because one Elon Musk is not enough.

paulbernard• 9 months ago

The real question is what the total cost of ownership and what is the payback period? Also there are regional climate differences that have to deal with very large temperature swings as well as very old poorly insulated houses. investing hundreds of thousands to re-insulate one's house, replace all the windows, excavate the heat sink and dispose of a furnace that is already working, so that one can buy a heat pump at greater costs than a furnace to achieve efficiency improvements that barely pay for themselves over thirty years when the same amount of money can be spent elsewhere. if it were such a great idea it would have already been done.

sholladay2• 9 months ago

We had a heat pump installed last year. It’s advertised as a cold-climate heat pump and it’s “good enough” for us, but it’ll never again be toasty on a cold night, just relatively warm. When under heavy load, it also has some kind of loud vibration issue, I think in the lines that run from inside out to the condenser. The system is an Ecoer, which is a Chinese company that pretends to be a U.S. company. And it has a really suspicious 4G cellular IoT modem that, of course, feeds all the data to their cloud, with no end-user access.

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

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

scottgg2• 9 months ago

Sounds like it wasn’t sized well?

sholladay2• 9 months ago

It’s the largest residential model that Ecoer makes. The home is a 3-bedroom, large but nothing crazy. The installers said they erred on the side of too big, rather than too small, and that’s corroborated by my back-of-the-napkin math and Google searches indicating that “too big” is standard practice in the HVAC industry. So in theory, it shouldn’t be a lack of power. I think it’s poorly optimized. From what I’ve been reading, the pressure in the lines is very important. I have no idea if they are pressurized properly. The unit apparently has sophisticated monitoring of the line pressure, but the IoT gateway has no end-user access which is a huge red flag for me that I wasn’t aware of before it was installed.

matwood3• 9 months ago

I love heat pumps. Had one in my house in the southern US and am about to put one in my house in the EU. I also recently bought a heat pump dryer, also great. Very gentle on clothes, doesn’t need a vent, or the high power plug - just a drain like a washer.

Marsymars14• 9 months ago

I'm planning on getting a heat pump dryer, but 3x the price (in Canada) means a long break-even.

matwood3• 9 months ago

Yikes. The LG one I bought in the EU was just a little more than a similar sized hot air LG one I had bought in the US a couple of years ago.

Nifty3929• 9 months ago

We live in a temperate climate and installed a heat pump / mini-split system to replace our central AC and furnace and get rid of all the ductwork.

It's awesome in many respects and I don't regret it, but it's also MUCH more expensive in the winter vs our gas furnace. Electricity is just so much more expensive than the gas equivalent for heating. Overall this is costing us a lot more money per year.

But the upside is that it maintains the temperature in each room much more effectively, and it's a LOT quieter, both inside from the air handlers and outside from the ... loud outside fan thing (compressor?).

tim333• 9 months ago

One thing I haven't been able to figure - I have a flat in Spain with a combined aircon heat system costing ~$3k which functions from the physics point of view as a heat pump but was not marketed as a "heat pump" which I think are supposed to be more expensive. Is there any difference between heat/cool aircon and heat pumps?

xeromal• 9 months ago

A heat pump is a reversable air conditioner so every heat / cool air conditioner is a heat pump regardless of name. Interesting that they cost more over yonder though if you use the name. We can get a heat pump here in the US for about 700$.

I installed one in the basement 2 years ago and it has been a gamechanger.

giardini• 9 months ago

Where do I put the wood-burning stove/heater?

scottgg2• 9 months ago

Heat pumps are so _ordinary_ here (Central Europe), im always a bit surprised how skeptical folks in the US and UK seem to be about them

mothballed7• 9 months ago

They're not skeptical, it's just that no one wants to pay $10k to have a $2k unit installed, and new entrants who want to offer anything other than what the entrenched services have to offer have to be abused and hazed for 4 years near minimum wage changing out $5 capacitors for $1000 (to their company, not them) before they can get a trade license, and after that they have to go through an onerous contracting paperwork to open up a business. So we don't get new businesses popping up offering mini split installation.

End result is most of the units that get installed in the US are probably DIYing off-paper and then shutting the fuck up. I live in a place with no inspections for owner-builder and that was the only way I was able to get away with it, and even then I had to pass an EPA 608 license to handle the refrigerants since I did not want to get fined a bazillion dollars if someone found out.

hexbin010• 9 months ago

Most UK housing stock is poor quality, old and draughty. Pre-req of switching is fixing that. Then, when you've got a nice hermetically sealed house, you need to solve fresh air, which is another cost. Labour is extremely expensive in the UK and tradespeople are poor quality and swindlers (sorry, it's true 95% of the time).

And most people don't have £10k+ to drop on upgrades

We're not used to needing aircon, so the whole concept is a bit foreign

Electricity is expensive (0.31 EUR/kWh)

Plus, we've been burned by governments pushing "green" things:

- They scammed us with cavity wall insulation, which has caused some serious structural and expensive issues. It was inappropriate for many houses and a ton of conmen popped-up to take government money with no fucks given

- Diesel was sold as 'green'

- They had a scheme pushing loft insulation but the installers often just threw rolls of insulation into the loft and ran way (not even kidding)

Basically, multiple governments have created just about the /worst/ possible history and conditions to get people on board with heat pumps

I have a very small, draughty house and spend ~800 EUR a year on gas (heating + hot water + hob). Not ideal but I'm still running on the gas boiler that came with the house 10 years ago that's only had ~300 EUR of maintenance spent on it. The house gets hot, I can have boiling hot showers whenever I want. If anything goes, wrong, I can all any of 30 people to come fix it

wigster• 9 months ago

with mr drill baby drill in the gold house this all seems obsolete

the_cat_kittles2• 9 months ago

i bought a mitsubishi minisplit, as well as a lineset, and installation tools (vaccuum pump, valve core removal tool, flaring tool, micron guage, nitrogen, pressure regulator, manifold) and installed it myself after watching several hours of ac service tech youtube videos. it was a little stressful but i saved 8,000 usd and i honestly feel pride every time i turn it on. its worked absolutely flawlessly. i recommend this route if you have the time!

JeremyPOsborne13• 9 months ago

Execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute, execute. It's working, keep going. Don't stop.

Make them easy to buy and install leading to lower costs, and more getting into homes.

radu_floricica• 9 months ago

It's... a bad article?

It takes as given that the tech is here, and it's economically feasible, but it's not giving any arguments. Just blames the people.

It's also not exactly defining the problem space. Is it talking about air-air AC with heating? Those are common and very cheap. Is it talking about large HVAC systems that include hot water? Those are indeed a hellof a lot more expensive, but also a hellof a lot more complex. And no matter what the author is saying, technology isn't to the point of giving us hot water from heat pumps. The math just isn't mathing - to take cold water and heat it up to "hot" by cooling off freezing air, you'd simply have to cool huge amounts of air. Yeah, probably, if you put a room-sized HVAC system and spend a ton on electricity - but that's where it stops being competitive.

Is it talking about geothermal heat exchangers? Because those are indeed a lot more efficient - but also more expensive for obvious reasons. You need to drill.

Krispy805• 9 months ago

I am a HERS Rater and Title 24 Consultant in California. Our State Government hyped the idea of replacing every unit in California with Heat Pumpsnover 2p years. Unfortunately the big cookie cutter new home developers did not really like the idea. Sonthey installed 80% efficient old fashioned gas firwd furnaces like usual in 90% of new homes since 2015. Heat pumps are flashy, but most models do not handle cold weather. Units that use R410A will not ever peoduce heat in the true sense of the word. They are much more efficient at cooling however they simply cannot produce meaningful amounts of heat. HP Units that run on CO2 (R-0) as a refrigerant have been used in Alaska winters to provide emergency heat. The extreme performance difference between R410A and R0 is so staggering that one might wonder why R22, R134, R500 or R410A were ever used in thebfirst place. That has to donwith patent law and stubborn, lead poisoned engineers. Ya I said it, anone born before 1980 is a retard with Lead Poisoning. Get over it boomer, nobody respects you cause you lead in your soft tissue!

Anyways, if you feel like running the AC, then go outside. It is much hotter in Mexico, think about that.

etchasketch• 9 months ago

It’s because it isn’t cheaper than running gas in large parts of the county. EFFICIENT doesn’t mean CHEAPER.

I did the math this past year with excel and chat GPT. Go to the side of your heat pump, look at the model number, go to the manufacturer website and pull the COP specs at every given temperature. Where I live in Chattanooga, TN, it can get down to 5-10 degrees for weeks at a time during December and January.

If you look up the cost of gas per therm, convert it to BTUs, and then the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour, and then compare the cost of running a heat pump vs the cost of gas at any given temperature based on the coefficient of performance of the heat pump, you will very quickly realize that depending on your local utility, there is no break even point. As in, for me, even if it was 68 degrees outside it is cheaper for me to run my gas furnace than it would be to run my heat pump, even if the COP was 4.

I did the math for Seattle (I don’t live there, I just looked at the local utility prices and went on their website and pulled some numbers) and based on current natural gas prices and electric prices in Seattle, it’s cheaper to use gas below 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature, based on the gradually increasing COP with temperature, then the heat pump is cheaper. But only cheaper by about 10 dollars per month. The 30-40 bucks a year you save running your heat pump during the winter months you will NEVER make back if you are shelling out an extra 10k for an install versus a gas furnace. And that gas furnace produces hot toasty air instead of lukewarm air.

The price of electricity weighs heavily on if a heat pump is CHEAPER (cheaper, not EFFICIENT) to run than gas. For all but the most advanced heat pumps, if you run the numbers, in most areas of the United States, with the exception of some parts of California, under an average temperature of 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit it is cheaper to use gas to heat. And in many, many parts of the east coast, Midwest, and south, gas is always cheaper to use to heat no matter what temperature, even if you have the most ridiculously advanced heat pumps with a high COP, and even if it’s damn near 70 degrees outside. Gas is that cheap, and packs in that energy.

I want everyone to note how this article only notes that heat pumps are more EFFICIENT. Not CHEAPER. Just because something is efficient doesn’t mean it’s CHEAPER. I want to stress that point.

I also want to note that as someone who has a heat pump, I would pay an extra 10-20 dollars a month for some warm dry heat, instead of lukewarm air. And I would pay that very willingly.

Harnessing America's heat pump moment

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