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My heat pump just got here, and once I've got it installed would anyone be interested in a post on some of the things I learned planning for the build? I did the usual unnecessary turbo-autism level of research, so it'd be nice for people to get some benefit from it before I close all the tabs and forget the whole thing.
There was a lot of discussion on the last heat pump thread, but nobody drew any conclusions. I think I've done enough to make some solid ones.
Related side question: what are people paying for electric rates these days? We've gone from 8 to 11 cents/kWh, which is fucking ridiculous even for the extra costs incurred here. Natgas isn't available here, but in most places the electric/gas price ratio is a huge factor.
I am very interested in hearing how much it is going to cost you. My 15 year old heat pump broke last winter, and I was considering replacing it instead of fixing, but the quotes were in $16-20k range, compared to $1000 to repair, so I decided to punt it. This is in expensive liberal coastal city.
$0 after local rebates and fedcreds. The unit was $1100: 12kbtu 22 seer 11 HSPF4 with capacity issues below 17F. Not a high end Mitsubishi hyper-heat. This was fine because of the incredibly mild climate (lowest temperature ever recorded is 13F, 99% temp is mid 20s), wood backup heat, and the grid likely failing anyway during cold snaps. More on that math in the post.
These things are pretty trivial to install, especially if you already have the line set routing and electrical in. Installation ripoffs are ridiculous, and usually you can just DIY and hire the local HVAC guy to pressure test and vac the lines for you to satisfy warranty requirements.
Any new unit is going to have major improvements over a 15yo one. What're your current setup and local temps like? Do you have some complicated 10-head multi-zone thing bumping the quote up, or are they just fucking with richlibs?
Starting Jan 2023 there's going to be a criminal 30% "inflation-reducing" federal tax credit for these things, albeit with some high-income reductions that you'll probably blow right past. Now's a good time to grab one if they make sense for your area.
The $16k quote included the following hardware:
Install and permits were listed as ~$1500. I was trying to find out how much these actually retail for, to see how much I'm being overcharged, but apparently the suppliers hide the prices from end-users for some completely inexplicable reason.
The heat pump I have also works as AC in summer, in case this is relevant for pushing up the price of the device (which I don't think it really should, given that pretty much all that is required to make a heat pump work as AC is a reverse valve).
I would get some more quotes. Mine was around $4,500 installed for a larger unit 5 years ago. Might want to look at the lower efficiency options too, not worth spending $10k to save a few hundred dollars a year.
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Oh, you have a ducted central air system, the expense makes more sense now. But the rated performance of that unit is still ridiculously bad for a scroll compressor that should have vapor injection improving its cold weather ability. The damn thing isn't even variable speed, which is an absolutely basic standard now.
Depending on how many rooms you need to heat/cool, see if you can get anyone offering a ductless mini-split install. Compare the specs with, say, a top of the line Mitsubishi MXZ-SM48NAMHZ, which is significantly cheaper with much better performance at twice the btu capacity (you definitely don't need something that big)
If you have a house with rooms rather than a studio apartment, a ductless mini-split doesn't make a lot of sense.
Depending on how many rooms you have, a few units or a multi-head one can. They're so much cheaper and easier to install than a central air system that it takes a lot of tiny conditioned rooms to tip the balance (and you really don't need it in every room)
And a lot of the central air ones are horribly outdated and overpriced, like what they quoted him.
Certainly you need it in every room. Unless there are rooms you don't use when it gets hot. Perhaps you don't need it in a bathroom; OTOH, I have one bathroom which has no A/C duct and it gets quite uncomfortable in the summer. An n-bedroom house will need at least n+1 units, most likely more than that.
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