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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?
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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