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Does anyone here have experience with heat pumps? I'm on oil heat and needless to say, shit's gotten ridiculously pricy lately. I feel like I should be able to switch over to something cheaper and break even within like a year or less, because of how much I expect to spend on oil this winter.
Most local people in my very progressive corner of the world keep talking up heat pumps like they're the best thing since the invention of the chimney. I find this suspect myself. I've never heard of this technology before really recently, and I'm only hearing about it from people who are really into green energy. And it sounds too good to be true. It heats and cools for less money than any alternatives, supposedly. But I really know close to nothing about them.
My culture war shenanigans sense is tingling, so I wanted to find out if anyone here, a place I trust has not drank the green progressive Kool aid, has experiences with or knowledge about heat pumps. I guess I just don't trust the people I'm hearing from, I think they're willing to stretch the truth for what they think is the greater good. Are they worth it financially? Do they work well without tons of annoying maintenance? What about if your state offers financial incentives for moving to heat pumps, are they worth it then?
I am licensed as a journeyman HVAC technician, although almost all of my work experience for 3+ years has been in related fields that do not involve heating.
Heat pumps work as long as the outside temperature stays above a certain minimum. They are cheaper than straight electric but typically not natural gas, and they will run longer than either of those two to bring the room up to temperature. If you live in North Dakota, this is not a good idea because heat pumps generally have a minimum outdoor temperature to work properly. This temperature tends to drop over time with improving technology, but you should probably add 10-15 degrees to what the salesman tells you it is. If you live in the south, it is probably a good trade on the whole. You will probably need to replace your entire AC unit in order to make it work, as well, and this is unlikely to be worth the cost unless you can get a large government tax incentive. Heat pumps running more cheaply than natural gas is a straightforwards lie in most markets in the USA, but it is not a lie from the green energy lobby, it's a lie from heat pump manufacturers trying to overstate their efficiency. This is a very common problem with HVAC manufacturers in general and if the green energy lobby had consulted any actual HVAC technicians(which they almost certainly didn't) they would have known that heat pumps are not cheaper to operate than gas furnaces unless the operating condition is a purposefully rigged laboratory. On the other hand, heat pumps usually are cheaper than fuel oil if you have a fairly mild winter, and unless you live in Fargo heat pumps are nearly always cheaper than electrical resistance heating.
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America: they're great for general use in moderate climes, electricity prices are typically steadier than fuel oil prices which is good in that you don't have to time it. They're also a lot more medium term reliable than furnaces, which are constantly going out with one little thing or another in my experience, but eventually the heat pump will have to be replaced much sooner than a furnace. But you can't beat a big furnace for horsepower if you need to keep a big house warm in a freezing environment.
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Heat pumps work really well when your winter temperatures are moderate, or you go with a ground source heat pump and you have relatively cheap electric.
When it gets really cold heat pumps lose efficiency and most systems swap to an electric resister heat source. If that's quite rare and your electric is cheap enough the efficiency is really nice.
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I live in a subtropical area and have an AC. My house is also insulated about as well as a tent (and is of an age and height where replacing this is very difficult and expensive) so I have a lot of solar panels and just run the AC/heat pump at need. Each year we get about a month of winter where I use a heater - because of the aforementioned lack of insulation. Anecdotally, my electricity bill for that month (July) dropped by about 50% as I'm using a heat pump rather than an electric heater.
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What a difference geography makes.
In my part of the world, I've never seen a home without a heat pump. My childhood home in the 80's had one. In the 80's it fucking sucked. My dad cursed it every winter when it would struggle to get the house above 60 degrees. Thing was probably struggling greatly, and way past it's lifespan in the late 90's when I have the clearest memories of it's horribleness.
These days they're pretty sweet. Every unit I've ever rented had one. Even units which had natural gas for stoves. The home I bought has one, that the HVAC guys who service it tell me is pretty good. When it gets below freezing it kicks on auxiliary electric heat which spikes my power bill something fierce. But outside of a few prolonged cold snaps in January through March, I can't really complain.
In fact, there are hookups in my basement for when the house used to have gas heating. At some point that got torn out and replaced with the current heat pump system.
There are downsides to the heatpump. We were investigating getting some form of backup power, and the amps required to start a heat pump can be a challenge for most generator or battery systems. You basically need to invest in special, low start versions of that equipment if that is ever a thing you have in mind.
This seems to have changed recently. All the new models use inverters with variable speed motors rather than kicking on and off like a normal compressor. Intended to smoothly regulate output, it also dramatically reduces startup surge.
There are lots of people putting 9-12kBTU units on RVs now, hooked into surprisingly small solar or genny systems.
I'll take some measurements and report how well that works in practice this winter, if people are interested.
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Wow. What part of the world are you in?
One problem here is that if you want to get the full state subsidies, you cannot have a backup gas or oil system. You need to be entirely on a heat pump system. So having a backup for the inevitable sub 0 days in January and February isn't an option, or at least not as enticing as an option.
Middle of the east coast, United States.
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My parents have had one for approximately 10 years and they absolutely love it, and say that it's saved them thousands of pounds. Three caveats -
they live in rural UK, so not crazy cold, though since it never gets that hot there they start relying on it fairly early in the year (October-April at least).
they also have an Aga for heating the kitchen, and two log fireplaces for when it gets really cold.
they have quite a lot of clear land by UK standards (a large garden plus a small field), which made it easy to install and apparently more efficient.
Also, maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I'm surprised more people don't use plug-in electric heaters. Obviously it's different if you live in Nunavit, but my wife and I are UK-based and only turn on our central heating during the very coldest winter spells, otherwise getting by with a small electric heater in the living room or bedroom. Admittedly it's very mild where we are, but I spent some time living in a very cold part of Japan where central heating was rare, and I really liked having the temperature differential and walking in from the cold bathroom to go tuck myself under the kotatsu.
Electricity costs about twice as much as natural gas for the same amount of heat. Standalone heaters also have substantially worse temperature control, air circulation, noise, etc.
Setting up a central heating system with a lot of zones isn't that much work (at installation time. Refits can be more difficult), so you can still get the temperature differentials if it's a widespread part of the local culture.
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Heat pumps are great if you are in a normal-ish climate. I've had a few and like them.
I highly recommend this guy as an introduction https://youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto
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A heat pump is basically an air conditioner unit that you can switch from circulating cold air and discharging hot air to circulating hot air and discharging cold air.
Heat pumps can have in theory +200% efficiency. This means for every unit of energy it moves two. So for heating, it takes one unit of energy to move two units of energy from your cold end to your hot end.
This number is only really impressive when you’re comparing to electric heat. Where 1 unit of energy going into your baseboard heater provides something like 1 unit of heat in your house.
If your burning #2 fuel oil (or any other fossil fuel really), it may not be cheaper without pairing it with a geothermal cell. There’s a few kinds of geothermal cells, but they’re basically wells or loops of pipe buried in the ground. Since the ground temperature is something like 55 degrees and water has a very high specific heat, it is easier for the heat pump (air conditioner) to pull heat from that water then from the probably much colder air (while heating). It’s also easier to discharge that heat when you’re cooling so it’s a savings on air conditioning too. Even at the same temperature, the water can transfer much more heat.
TLDR
Heat pumps are better than baseboard heat, but may not be more cost effective than fossil fuels unless paired with geothermal.
I’m not an HVAC guy, so anyone that is please correct any misunderstandings I have.
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Maintenance isn't a problem from what I've heard. But they can be noisy, and they have a lifetime of 15-20 years.
People in EU use them, but we have very well insulated homes, and high natural gas prices.
Probably not worth if you live in the US and can use natural gas. I don't think you can be in the EU and use oil heat, lol.
If you live somewhere rural that does't have natgas, maybe look into wood (pellet) gasifiers. Some of them can run for multiple days, and it should be cheaper. Definitely going to get cheaper once EU stops shipping in wood pellets to burn in thermal power plants.
A quarter of German households use oil for heating, and a third of Polish households use black coal.
Wait, what. I thought they stopped using it in 1970s-1980s like.. everyone else.
Okay.
One of the dirty secrets of Germany's "energy revolution" that most of their used energy isn't electric. Everything from their heavy industry to heating is still mostly fossil-based, and quadrupling(+) electricity prices has dissuaded any changeover.
In fairness they have very few decent options.
Because they chose to be fucking idiots. It's self-imposed idiocy to not build nuclear. A sane country could have district and industrial heating done by modular reactors.
The risk posed to health by a passively safe modular reactor buried under five meters of concrete with only salt coolant loops exposed are nonexistent. You could literally kill more people by a bomb big enough to damage it.
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Not for long at this rate.
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I had a heat pump in my rental apartment in Philadelphia. It seemed to very effective, both in winter and summer. That was an air-source heat pump, however, and it was not a huge apartment. I don't know how cost effective it was.
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A heat pump is just an aircon that can work in reverse. To be more precise, any aircon or fridge is a heat pump, but a "heat pump" in the marketing speak is a split-system aircon that can work in reverse.
Yes, it's a much more efficient heating system than one that is simply converting fuel or pixies into calories, but its efficiency trails off the bigger the temperature difference. You can still use one at -15C/5F, but it will be just as good as a direct energy-to-heat converter.
Maybe I’m getting confused due to a difference between Aussie vs American terminology. But pretty much every aircon I’ve seen, ranging from wall mounted units to ducted, can do both heating & cooling. Are aircons that only do cooling the norm in North America or something?
Wall mounted units, assuming you're talking about minisplit systems, have heat pumps built into them.
Ducted systems normally contain an air conditioner with a separate heating system in the same box. Sometimes this system uses electrical heating elements(like would be in an electric oven), but the preference has historically been for a gas furnace.
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A unit called an "air conditioner" in the US will only do cooling. The typical setup in the Northeast is some sort of fuel (oil or gas) for heat and an air conditioner (which may well be a retrofit or just window units). Electric baseboard heating (resistance heating) is also not uncommon at least not in existing homes. Heat pumps (which can do cooling by running an air conditioner "backwards") have been pushed for many years, but there's resistance because
Electricity costs more, even with the greater efficiency of the heat pump
Even in the best of conditions the output air temperature isn't much above the existing temperature, so they don't feel warm.
They don't work worth a damn when it gets really cold; either you're stuck with it being much colder than you'd like or the auxiliary resistance heat comes on and costs you a fortune.
Every few years heat pump boosters will swear up and down that the third problem has been fixed. Like the existence of the smokeless diesel or the decent compact fluorescent, this is never actually true.
So now states and municipalities are simply banning new gas hookups to make their citizens worse off to "save the environment".
To be clear, the claim that the third problem has been fixed is almost always rooted in a real claim by a real manufacturer which wants to sell some heat pumps. Manufacturers of HVAC and refrigeration equipment lie constantly for the purposes of taking advantage of green tax incentives and any actual HVAC technician is aware of this- but green boosters are 1) not and 2) disinclined to listen to HVAC technicians.
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Judging by their excitement, they really were cooling-only units.
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It's not. Heat pumps typically have something between 200% and 300% efficiency at converting electric energy to heat. However, power plants are typically around 30% and 40% efficient at converting fuel to electricity, and modern home furnaces are typically around 80% and 90% efficient at converting fuel to usable heat (some will escape in exhaust). Therefore, it actually all nicely evens out.
Now, heat pumps can still make sense, because they can double as whole-house air conditioners in summer (if you're using heat pumps coupled with forced air, instead of, say, water-based radiant heating). They'll also make more sense in unlikely future where power generation is majority nuclear, or in even less likely one where we build out wind turbines on an area equivalent in size to the entire Northeastern US. However, as of today, the difference in efficiency is really not big.
This doesn’t change your point, but just FYI a modern, combined-cycle power plant should be around 60% efficient, when looking at the power coming out of the generator vs. the heat value of the fuel burned. 30-40% are car engine numbers, with engine power instead of generator power, or a cheap generator you can buy at Home Depot.
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A heat pump is just air conditioning run in reverse. I got one installed last year and it's been great. It's quiet, pretty cheap so far (although I haven't gone a full winter with it yet), and it also does cooling. You need some backup system for when it's really cold, as it doesn't work very well below 25° or so. Mine has a built in gas burner but many just use resistive heating elements.
The reason I wanted one is that it's efficient and it uses electricity. I don't want to be subject to market fluctuations in oil prices or to fuel taxes. Where I live electricity is mostly hydro and doesn't vary much in price. For your situation the numbers might be different, and it's worth doing the math or looking up statistics for other households in the area.
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Technology Connections has detailed dives into common technologies (Coffee pots, CRT tubes, lightbulbs, ev chargers, etc).
He has a good video with testimonials from a cold as fuck place re. heat pumps, and another couple hours of discussion in other videos about application questions. I found them interesting enough to watch just for fun, but I am also autistic so grain of salt.
Link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto.
I recently installed one for cooling purposes, and it is WAY more efficient than any option available at a massively lower price, if you can do all the work yourself. I had the punches, hole saws, pipe flaring kit, and wiring paraphernalia to put in a 240 sub panel and run coolant lines, you might not. Took me 8 hours over a couple days to complete, but that includes lots of time monkeying around with conduits in a 70 year old house with no attic.
I got a former coworker to charge the lines for me with his vacuum pump in exchange for helping him drop a submersible pump; you might have to pay someone if you choose to install one yourself.
I know that they sell precharged systems, but I'm paranoid about shit that is marketed as DIY so I went with a Lennox because they are cheep as fuck and I only need it for a couple weeks a year. Been working like a charm, and has not raised my electric bill at all 'cause I replaced a couple fans with it.
Last thing: IMO, DIY heat pump systems work best for single space use. I have one unit indoors in one room, so when we need to cool shit off everyone just goes into that room and shuts the doors. If you want multiple zones, you will probably have to get it installed professionally, which is $$$$$ depending on your area.
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