Major Advances with Heat Pumps in the Extreme Cold
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- čas přidán 6. 03. 2023
- The Problem with Heat Pumps and Cold Weather. Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided - Enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for FREE! Heat pumps are versatile, efficient, and great for both heating and cooling … or are they? Whenever heat pumps are mentioned, critics bring up their ineffectiveness in cold weather, so is that still true? Or do more modern heat pumps continue to work effectively in cold climates? The arguments against the “heat pump all the things” attitude appears to have some truth (at least on the surface). Should you really be pumped for heat pumps or is it all a bunch of hot air?
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Why did you install a water source heat pump when the payback period is so much longer when compared to an air source heat pump, and in some cases, is just not as cost effective? R&D in the air source heat pump segment is explosive because the technology is so much more affordable compared to water/geothermal. I would not be surprised if we continue to see dramatic increases in the efficiency of air source heat pump systems, such that water or geothermal systems make no economic sense in almost every conceivable scenario. Some HVAC or building scientists already allege that water/geothermal is simply not cost-effective in the face of air source heat pump offerings.
The video was somewhat misleading as the differences between air source and ground source heat pumps was not covered and talking points erratically jumped between the two systems. I would have also appreciated a more in-depth pyhsics explanation on what happens when outisde temperatures drop below 5°C (instead of waving everything off with the annual average COP and only a superficial mention of problems with the phase-change of the work fluid).
Thank you. I wondered about the cost of electric heating these days. Which I include heat pumps in. More of a fan of passive solar and thermal mass heat with masonry heater 85%+ efficient as supplemental. I am building off grid. So include extra solar and batteries in my price. Keeping solar systems separate. One system for smoke detectors, one for lights, one for kitchen d.c. appliances, one for one small inverter for power tools. Small simple solar systems like on boat lifts are cheap and easy. I wonder if spending more on insulation would be better than a heat pump? I have to use air tubes because of floor. So wondering if I could fit a heat pump in the tube. It has to function to drain heavier than air gases. Especially with a skillion masonry earthship. The off gassing in greenhouse. Don't want toxic organic gases to build up. Starting with cheap skillion pavilion frame on block piers. And will connect block piers for over insulated short cold north wall later.
I have no experience with heat pumps but a question about the difference between air and ground sourced types. It makes sense that the air sourced types would lose efficiency as temperatures exceed 100f or below minus 30 but is there any reason for ground sourced to do so.
Have You done a case study for a blackout situation with solar panels and heat pump?
Can Your solar panels, that feed into the grid also run Your own heat pump in case of a blackout or brownout?
My sister had a heat pump installed about four years ago. Last month, in our area of Canada, we had a temperature drop of -25c for a couple of days. Her heat pump is her main source of heat. She has never had an issue with getting heat.
Do you happen to know what kind of heat pump your sister has?
Geothermal?
@@WhatTheHellIsWrongWithYouuI’ve never heard of a -25C one tho 🤷
The other problem is as temperatures drop, you need more “heat” just as they are getting less and less efficient.
Also when we have natural gas heaters, when someone’s gas system breaks down, they can get an electric heater and put it on a grid that isn’t heavily loaded.
I just moved to Idaho and it got down to -20 F (or nearly -30 C). Those are the kinds of temperatures I'd like to be sure it works still at.
@@jsbrads1 I don’t understand why people are so worried about “the grid”. Demand goes up, utilities will increase their capacity. Its not a you or I issue. I dont even heat my house with NG or Electric. We’re on an efficient, cheap pellet stove.
I live in Canada, so days of -20C or colder are not a freak occurrence; and yet our house is heated and cooled exclusively with a heat pump. The one that was installed when the house was built in 2000 struggled when the temperatures dipped below -5 or so, but the new one is able to push out air that's even warmer than what the old auxiliary furnace did on the really cold days (previously had a dual energy setup due to the inherent limitations of last-gen heat pumps). We've reached a point in the technological advancements where there's really no good reason why every new construction building doesn't have a heat pump as the entire HVAC solution.
What size pipe work do you have?
What brand heat pump do you have?
Meh Ive had heat pumps in New Zealand for 15 years and they're not cheap to run, and wood/coal burner seems to be cheaper to be honest - You just set the burner to low over night and with an Hvac systen the whole house stays warm while using little fuel
I'm super interested - living in canada as well with a heat pump of the early 2000's and it dies at -5 exactly like your experience. We're considering changing it because we're basically spending all winter on Aux. Heat. Can you share your brand of heat pump?
In Calgary, Canada we see many weeks where temps stay between -25 to -35 C even dropping below -40 C on certain days.
I installed a geothermal hvac system 3 years ago and it has been flawless. We live in the Denver area with temperatures down to -20 F. Obviously, with the geothermal setup, cold weather doesn’t affect the performance so it does fine in winter. What I’ve been most surprised by is how great it is at air conditioning and how cheap it is to cool the house in summer. It costs next to nothing to keep the house in the mid to upper 60s in the summer (our bedrooms are all upstairs and I sleep better when it’s cool). Overall a great investment.
I hired a FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON to heat MY….cave.
Expense not an investment
@@karmendimas5274 Over time, it is no longer an expense.
Likely it has a resister heating when it gets too cold : so it is not actually using the heat pump when it is too cold. Below 45 F , head pump becomes ineffective.
@@babajaiy8246 so the electricity and maintenance is all free to run it?
My parents installed a vertical one around two years ago here in the Swiss mountains. Together with our solar panels our house is now basically self sufficient and both the heat pump and the panels have worked fine in the two years even during cold days in winter
You found solar panels that produce electricity without the sun?
@@FiZc Although this is a very common misconception they actually do receive sunlight in Switzerland.
@@TheCoon1975 Sunlight during the night or shady/rainy days? Tell me more, please ;)
@ No, no that would be silly. The way it works is during the night time you can take power back from the grid. Most homes with enough solar capacity are able to feed more energy into the grid during the daylight hours so they have a net surplus of energy. It's a balancing act where you share the load between homeowners and the energy provider so that they don't need to run at full capacity during daylight hours because of backfed energy. It's not a perfect system but it's certainly better than building more coal fired plants to run everything and we can't let perfection be the enemy of progress. There are other options as well, for example at my place in Texas I have enough capacity to charge my battery banks during the day and that will usually be more than enough to do whatever I need at night without even pulling anything from the grid. I know this is prohibitively expensive for most people so I don't suggest this as a perfect solution either, I was just in a position where I could afford to install this equipment on my new built home so I did it because I enjoy the feeling of not being reliant on outside power sources. It won't be economical enough to pay for itself within the years of life I have left but that's not what it was about for me personally. Battery tech will improve and become cheaper so eventually this will be a much better option for more people.
@@FiZc I’m assuming you’ve never heard of batteries?
I spent about 1 1/2 years working on a 'ski shack' that was heated by two large geothermal heat pumps, fed by a single vertical well. In the winter, there was a thick layer of frost on any section of the fluid pipes in the mechanical room where there were gaps in the insulation, including where the 'warm' fluid came out of the ground. Even though the source fluid was well below freezing, the three-story building was kept very comfortable.
Vertical well heat pump 100 to 400 feet deep
For a vertical system, holes (approximately four inches in diameter) are drilled about 20 feet apart and 100 to 400 feet deep.
Cost between $20,000 and $38,000
Unfortunately, vertical loops are the most expensive type of geothermal system to install, since installation involves deep and wide boring. A vertical loop installation costs between $20,000 and $38,000.
The electricity to pump up the water, assuming it is a deep well, was also probably significant. However, since the water was probably dumped into a holding pond for use on the snow cannons, they were able to kill two birds with one stone. I looked at pumping up water for geothermal, and the electricity to lift the water 500 feet killed the efficiency of using it for heat/cool. Plus, I needed then to do something with the water.
@@apostolakisl the geothermal brine fluid is circulated in a loop, there is no lifting involved as the pressure equals out. If you're in a cold climate it's the way to go. I have two 200 meter holes and a 7 kW heat pump (compressor draw), circulation pump is only some tens of Watts.
@@ixer76 And what is your cost of drilling that 400m of hole? Where I live, that would be about $60/meter . .. or $24000 for the holes, the piping and backfill. Now consider how many years it takes to recover $24000 because of your increased efficiency. Perhaps you pay 50 cents/kwh or something obscene like that and it makes sense. They wanted $80,000 to drill the 7 holes it would have taken to get me a geothermal heat pump at my location. And considering I have 8 months/year of AC, the holes would have gradually warmed up by the end of the season and been less efficient than air source. Unless your electricity is obscenely expensive, or you have easy access to shallow geothermal well, it makes no sense (cents) to do this.
@@apostolakisl 400m, what are you going to heat? That's a crazy big pump. 130-200m is usually the norm for normal sized house.
Convinced my parents to switch from propane to a pair of mini-split heat pumps at the start of this winter and it reduced their monthly heating cost by about half. Payback on the cost of install is going to be about 6 years, though probably a little less than that, but we don't have solid numbers for summer cooling vs the old terribly installed central air-conditioning that the mini-splits are also taking the place of.
Hehe Propane (R290) can actually be used as a refrigerant in a heat pump and R290 is one of the best refrigerants with the fewest compromises as it has good system performance and very low Greenhouse Warming Potential (GWP) with the main concern being flammability. So your parents might have switched from Propane as a combustible energy source to Propane as a refrigerant; check if the type used is R290
@@NavarroOne Propane + isobutane?
I have had an open loop heat pump since 2005. Works great. Most issues I have had are with the water well that supplies the ground water which is where you get your heat. Properly constructed closed ground loops will prevent those issues but add costs. Once I figured out all the issues using the open loop it works great. It really comes down to maintenance on the open loop side and tricks to make it easier to deal with.
Matt, I have been using ground sourced geo-thermal (liquid to air) systems for the past twenty three years. The first system was a WaterFurnace (pump and dump) that was installed in 2000 and is still operational today. The second system installed was a HydroDelta in another new build that finally gave up the ghost last spring after sixteen years of operation. My replacement unit is a WaterFurnace again. This unit is far superior to the unit installed in 2000 and is 50% more efficient than it’s predecessor (HydroDelta). Even with energy prices being more expensive than when we built our home seventeen years ago, our monthly bills are half of what we were paying two years ago. We are heating and cooling exclusively with the geothermal system, our bills range from $ 108.00 to $ 238.00, our home is 4,200 sqft. We are not passive home certified nor compliant, though we removed as much of the thermal bridging we could.
Always like your content! Keep up the good work. Paul
Have had Geothermal for past 10 yrs well to well hydron module it's garbage not any cheaper ...when it breaks down dig deep ... don't get sucked in !!!
Matt, you really need to more clearly address the differences between air-source heat pumps versus ground-source heat pumps.
Big fan of the channel. As far as heat pumps: I spent 15 years in a rattle wagon installing & servicing HVAC equipment from residential to industrial. I then moved to and currently in systems integrations/building automation dealing with a LOT of HVAC and energy equipment for the past 10 years. Not all heat pumps are created equal. The majority of residential heat pumps are air source (like a standard air cooled residential AC). This leaves the heat pump impacted by a number of factors but in particular outdoor air temperature. The hotter it is outside the harder the unit must work and the same is true with the colder it gets outside. The further below freezing or above 90F air source begins having issues. For heating you have to consider the energy efficiency of the unit, snowfall, defrost cycle, and how cold winters average in your area (specifically days below 20F) - there is a point that switching to auxiliary/emergency heat be it electric resistance heater, hot water coil, gas fired becomes increasingly required for cost and comfort. The biggest complaint from new air sourced heat pump owners always claimed in the winter when they first tried heating with one - "the air coming out of my vents isn't very warm" ... depending on the air source heat pumps age, efficiency, sizing, install, condition, etc. the supply air temperature will be traditionally cooler than that provided by an electric or gas fired furnace - with the heat pump working correctly. Average life of typical residential air source heat pumps - if you get 15 years you're doing great. I had an air source heat pump that lasted 30 years - I however did my own maintenance & repairs and could get parts & refrigerant at cost - at about 18 years the amount of maintenance & repairs began ramping up quite rapidly. The "efficiency" & cost savings MYTH that sales people in the HVAC industry use to up sell their customers ... You will never reach those numbers by just swapping out an old system for a newer more efficiently rated system. Why? a typical residential single family home is wildly inefficient for infiltration - if you're not going to upgrade your insulation, air barriers, windows, thermal bridges, etc. then paying for a high end air source heat pump you'll never see the savings promised or have the unit pay itself off in the time claimed - your house is still leaking and energy costs just keep increasing. The only heat pump I would buy, & have plans to have installed in 2024, is a closed loop ground source (geothermal) system. When sizing you can't just take current weather/climate - you need to look at projections for what summers & winters are likely to be like over the life of the system to meet those demands ... the upfront price is eye watering - but if you pay all that money for something sized for today it may meet demands for the next few years but be completely inadequate in 5 - 10 years. Will all your heating and cooling inside your home be provided by forced air? Will heating be provided by in floor radiant heat? Baseboard radiant heat? If heat provided by forced air will you have aux/emergency heat installed in case the heat pump goes down? How old and efficient is your hot water heater? Will you replace the HWH and have it connected to the geothermal?
If BTU/$ vs BTU/$ a heatpump is more efficient than a furnace, how is the air sealing going to affect that ratio? Why would a heatpump lose more heat with poor air sealing and insulation vs a furnace, its heat going to the duct either way.
@@williamlancto3655in addition for a forced air system, the air discharge temperature for a furnace is usually hot, around 110-120*F, which forms a stratified layer of hot air against the ceiling where there are usually tons of holes and gaps for the heat to escape out of the house. On a heat pump system the temperature of the air is only warm, between 80-100*F, so you'll get better mixing and less force driving through the gaps/cracks (which should also help preserve humidity inside the house).
@@williamlancto3655 Heat pumps are very impractical if you live in a northern climate and have an older home (40+ years) and/or your home is not very energy efficient. 2+ weeks ago we had -20F temps with a -30F wind chill 35-40 miles north of Boston. It really depends on your situation and where you live.
What the heck is a "rattle wagon"?
@@AnyBodyWannaPeanut Company/business truck...
I lived in Breckenridge,CO and I had a split unit mainly for summers. I used it to augment my hydronic floors. It always blew hot hair when I needed it which would be on cold mornings. We often got -20 to 0 weather. I love that you can run them in reverse!
I installed a cold air heat pump in fall 2021. I live in southern Ontario Canada. In addition I improved the insulation in my basement. I used closed cell spray foam on the interior of the foundation concrete walls. The previous insulation was a combination of pink fibreglass and foam board. I can’t give a precise breakdown of my current electrical bill as I have an electric water heater and electric car charger and clothes dryer. However my highest electricity cost on a 30 period in winter has been $264 Canadian. Generally between April to October my electric cost has ranged between $110 to $165. I cannot account for the heat savings for getting rid of my direct vent gas water heater which used heated inside air for burning the gas. One important benefit is that we keep our house at 70 deg F for 24 hours/day 7 days a week. So for me I cannot say enough good about it. My model is a Mitsubishi Hi2 model. The outside unit is almost silent particularly when on air conditioning mode. I got a $5000 Cdn Greener Homes grant on this install.
I had a Fujitsu cold climate heat pump installed at my place in northern Vermont back in 2017. I have had days where it's been well below -20°F and it ran fine. The temperatures where it has the most trouble is when it's around freezing with a high relative humidity. That's really the only time I notice it because it has to go into the defrost cycle fairly frequently. The only other times I have a problem is when a tree takes out the power but I hope to get solar and batteries to deal with that at some point.
That's gonna be one hell of a solar setup. Won't consider propane or wood backup?
Confirm, in PNW we have damp winters and my heat pump does a lot of defrost cycles when it drops just below freezing.
Every since PPL bought out my Utility provider, I've had more outages... its ridiculous.
So powerloss when you need heat most would flat out suck... so good idea to get solar if you can afford it.
@@MRSketch09 Bro my modest house uses 10kwh to heat on a modest day, can't imagine the consumption on a 0 degree F day. I would need a six figure solar system to get close to heating my house with a mini split.
Generator for backup?
My aunt has had geothermal for over 30 years, you freeze in the summer and sweat during the winter, the only time they ever used additional heating was when it dropped below -30 for about two weeks straight in the ohio river valley. I have always planned for geothermal heating and cooling when I get around to having a house built.
Could you do a follow up video that focuses on air sourced heat pumps? Additionally talk about the potential installation savings that may be had when living in more mild climates and replacing a current ac/furnace combo.
We live in the mountains in CO and installed a heat pump last year, and it’s been great. Even when it’s been well below zero. As expected, electric use went up but our gas bill went way down. House has stayed warm and we will probably expand with one or two more to fully cover the whole home in the next few years, especially given how wicked volatile gas prices have been. Hoping to also put most or all of the system on solar as well to reduce or even eliminate our dependence on big utilities.
I had an cold weather, air source heat pump installed in my house last fall and I live in New York State's North Country where we routinely have weeks with a high of 0F. My heating bill went from ~$2,800/ year to ~$1100/year. So far, no problems with the heat pump keeping up. And I now have central AC at no additional installation costs. Yes, heat pumps work in the cold weather.
were you using electricity or gas heating? Water boiler or forced air?
@@mrdan2898 The heating system is forced air. The new heat pump has an air handler that was tied into the existing duct work, which is why central AC was added at no additional installation costs. The old oil burning furnace remains as a backup.
Can you share what make and model heat pump you went with? We are in the Syracuse area so somewhat similar temperatures.
hi I’m in the process of deciding heat pump with emergency heat or hybrid, which uses propane below 30 F, we live in NJ, I’ve few questions
1. Will emergency heat be able to heat to any temp we need, like up to 74-75F?
We’ve two zones and main unit which I’m planning to replace serves, 2300 sf first floor and basement 1900 sf, can heat pump with emergency heat do it?
I had a heat pump last year to mostly take over from an electric hot water furnace. I also had some insulation upgrades. My winter time electric bills have dropped about 45% since I was moving from electric resistance heating.
It did have trouble recently when our area broke a record and hit -29C (-20F) and we had to run the main furnace for about 13 hours, but otherwise got us through the whole winter without using the furnace at all.
The main thing is my heat pump will put out about 18k BTU per hour at 0C but drops to something like 10k at -25C so make sure it's sized properly for your house and situation.
When I built my 1500 sq ft rancher in 1995 I chose a WaterFurnace brand ground source heat pump as my HVAC system. After 27 years, yes 27 years, of operation it still runs flawlessly! It is extremely efficient as my monthly electric bill for this all-electric home has averaged $89 for the pasted 12 months. As an added bonus, my water heater is connected to the WaterFurnace and provides free hot water. This system has paid for itself several times over in saved electric costs. In addition, there is no annual maintenance costs; in 27 years of operation the only repair cost was for a bad relay switch ($60) and 2 service calls to optimize the pressure in the field pipes !
Hello Matt, I noticed one big draw back you missed but might not effect the US market as much. Most heat pumps water flow temps normally max about 50°C rather than the traditional 70-80°C. This mean on a wet system with radiators the rads output is halved but the reduced flow temp. This leads to most homes needing to install massive radiators to achieve the same output needed to overcome the houses steady state heat lose. This can add a massive cost to the install unless you have a new modern well insulated house designed with a low flow temp in mind.
The other thing that is missed is price per unit for each type of fuel. If the COP of a boiler is 0.9 and the heat pump is 2.5, but gas is 1/3 the cost of electric then it is still cheaper to run a boiler than a heat pump. Not very eco but still something to consider when waying up the facts. Hope this helps
How do you compare the price of gas vs electricity as it pertains to efficiency?
Don't forget the summer- if you need air conditioning it's pretty hard to do without using electricity.
@@kj_H65f I'm in the UK so we rarely install AC in domestic homes. Therefore we only really need heating in the winter. This being so I can compare the winter COP for the heat pump of 2.5 (1kw in of electric = 2.5kw out of heat) against my system boiler of 0.9. (1kw in of gas = 0.9kw out of heat).
So to put 1kwh of heat in via the heat pump at average UK rate of 34p/kWh would be 13.6p (34p / 2.5). To do the same via gas at UK rate 10p/kWh would be 11.1p/kWh (10p/0.9) Therefore you can see in this case it would be cheaper still to run gas. Also save the £20k I would have to spend to swap and upgrade my radiators again to deal with the lower water temp in radiators.
Hope this helps answer your question.
I ran the numbers and figured with my costs for gas and electricity I’ll need a COP of 3 to break even (western South Dakota). That should be achievable on average. My understanding is that the COP increases with a warmer ambient (outdoor) air temperature. So peak COP is apparently more like 7. I think the single reported figure for COP may be based upon a set temperature or average of a defined range. But with the tax credit and prospect of higher gas costs, as well as my aim to decarbonize, it’s time for a heat pump! Still mulling over geothermal vs. air...
COP of at least 3 is the general rule. As far as massive radiators are concerned that can be tackled using dual or triple panel radiators with convector fins attached. This means that the new radiators might project from the wall a bit more but have the same wall area. The best option is to use underfloor heating loops wherever possible.
@@rogerphelps9939 Well that's the problem. The heatpump is expensive. Installing underfloor heating loops is expensive. New radiators are expensive. Better isolation is expensive. This is why in the Netherlands, where houses used to be designed to be warmed with 90C gas boilers, are very expensive to convert to heatpump solutions running most efficiently at 35C. And then there is the problem with the grid not build to deliver all that electricity.
We installed mini-split air-sourced heat pumps last fall, and have been heating with a combination of wood + mini-splits this winter (in NH). Getting a smaller system (sized for cooling, not heating) saved on up-front costs. Our mini-splits are rated down to 5F, and are great without wood down to about 25F. I doubt we'll need supplemental wood once we re-insulate and re-side.
If you want to heat when colder, all you need is a larger heat exchanger(within reason of course), but this is the main limit. A GOOD HVAC technician can add a much larger heat exchanger to grab that heat from the outside air.
Don't be so sure. Also live in NH, and I heat primarily with a mitsubishi h2i cold cimate heat pump connected to a CERV forced air system. New build home, super insulated (10" thick exterior walls) and super air tight. When it dibbed to -20 this winter the house was 55F by morning and unable to climb without the aid of electric heaters and gas direct-vent fireplace. Even when it dipped to right around 0F the house got down to 60F by morning. The manufacturer says 100% capacity to -5F, but that's not what I experience, even with an energy efficient home. The coeffecient of performance seems to drop off rapidly.
I am a viewer of Technology Connections and have been sold on the idea of heat pumps for a long time.
-
It was such a light-bulb moment when I learned that a heat pump is essentially an air conditioner that can run the temperature in the other direction, becoming a heater.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Everyone has been using them going on 70+ years now. A lot of cheap legacy infrastructure still exists though. Though with the dirt cheap price of NG... heat pumps are still more expensive to run long term. Only if you use solar thermal and geothermal in combination does the price over the VERY long term come close to NG.
@@w8stral What is NG in your context?
The only thing the abbreviation points to for me is National Guard, which doesn't add anything sensical to your comment.
Congratulations on your vertical well heat pump system. I've had one installed 14 years ago, using 4 wells 150 meters deep. Great investment. Together with solar panels, equals zero energy costs.
damn, that's my dream setup..
Please tell us when the investment paid off?
Geothermal really depends on your location. If you are Midwest then it can be worth it. But inverter style heat pumps can work significantly lower. My central heat is an inverter HP and it works down to 20*, and the only reason it can’t go lower is I went with the cheaper smaller unit, partly because my house is old and the ductwork is screwy and a larger one wouldn’t have been worth it. But I live in the pacific NW so we have only had one week so far this winter I had to regularly run my furnace.
Vertical well heat pump 100 to 400 feet deep
For a vertical system, holes (approximately four inches in diameter) are drilled about 20 feet apart and 100 to 400 feet deep.
Cost between $20,000 and $38,000
Unfortunately, vertical loops are the most expensive type of geothermal system to install, since installation involves deep and wide boring. A vertical loop installation costs between $20,000 and $38,000.
@@drdoolittle5724 Only 22 more years to the break even mark...
I have had heat pumps for 30 years in various houses The biggest problem is unskilled technicians who can not charge a split system properly. Pre charged connecting lines are a solution but are some times messy to install.
I had a geothermal heat pump system in Grande Prairie Alberta for 22 years. It got me through -45 temperatures at least 4 times, with no problems. (Remember that this was a geothermal system, so I had 3/4 of a mile of pipe 10 feet under ground, circulating a glycol solution)
So, it did work, however saying that it doesn’t use much energy is not true. I was using considerable amounts of electricity to run the system. I was using more money to keep my house warm than neighbours using natural gas, by up to $200 per month.
Consider, for a moment, what would happen if even only 30% of the buildings use heat pumps, and at the same time, 30% of the people use electric cars. People are already saying that people should charge their cars over night, but that is the exact time when house heating would be needed.
Think of everything!
Here in the UK people are being pressured to install heat pumps and are regretting it even with the government subsidy. Here are some of the reasons:
- Most people are installing air-sourced heat pumps. These are not as good as ground sourced and dont work as well in cold weather, but they are much cheaper and avoid problems surveying pipes etc which is often completely impractical here.
- Even with air sourced heat pumps the cost is much more than £8K. This is partly because existing central heating systems need to be ripped out to replace with with bigger pipes and radiators, but also because we get ripped off and government subsidies just result in price hiking so that the installer makes more profit rather than the customer getting it cheaper.
- The heat pump needs to be run continuously to be effective. This raises the cost vs other ways to heat your house. It may be better to run ordinary electric heaters when needed using battery or other storage mechanisms to charge on cheap overnight rates. In theory it may seem more expensive because it does not have the efficiency of heat pumps, but if you only need to heat for short periods it is much better. This is especially true when the house is empty most of the day which is the case for many working people here.
- In the UK there is less use for air conditioning so the fact that your systems doubles as air conditioning that you might install anyway is lost here.
In summary I think people in the UK following the advice of this video will end up feeling misled. Perhaps with more innovations and price cuts the situation will be better in a few years. Meanwhile people would be best advised to stick with their existing gas boilers.
The grants in the UK were aimed at air-to-water or ground-to-water systems last time I looked, probably because the government doesn't want people using the heat pumps in Summer and making the national CO2 figures look embarrassing. Air -to-air or ground-to-air systems get over the big insulation costs and are often the best option, even without grants. There was a House of Lords report last month or the month before that was published in the trade press that expressed extreme concern that people aren't availing of the grants (something like 10% of the expected uptake), probably for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
I am a technician that works on heat pumps and I found the problem with them in southern Minnesota where I am is that the balance point is usually somewhere around 20 to 30 degrees so the biggest problem I see with them is that they do not put out enough heat in cold weather
I live in Huntington NY. I have a heat pump and it seems to work just fine in virtually every condition. This past Christmas the temperature got down to ZERO Fahrenheit for the better part of a week, It didn't seem to bother the Heat Pump much. It ran allot but the house was comfy. My Heat Pump is Lennox Signature Series 5 Tons. It is an Air to Air System.
Welcome to the party Murica! 🎉
I am from Michigan but for 13 years have been living in Sweden, the heat pump capital of the world. 90% of single family homes use heat pumps here, mostly air source, about 20% ground source.
I live in the arctic (68 deg latitude) and have a mini-split supplemented with wood. COP drops to around 1.5 when it’s -25C, but it still covers most of our heat needs. This is also an old, basic cabin with minimal insulation and old windows. A new house would have no issues.
If you are planning to have cooling anyway, a reversible heat pump is an economic no-brainer.
I live in SoCal where we have been having the coldest, wettest, snowiest winter in a long time. There is a Fujitsu Halcyon inverter based heat pump at my place and it is zoned out, which is really helpful. What I have found with this unit is if you play with the temps and the unit kicks into high gear to warm the place up, runs rather inefficiently to do that. So if you are hoping to save energy by letting the place get cold for a short little while, say you go out for a bit, and then warm it back up, that doesn't save anything due to the subsequent huge draw to warm the place back up. You need many hours of letting the place be cold before that 'trick' starts making any actual sense. But if you just let it cruise at a set temperature with a good thermostat reading source (if you know what you are doing, you can switch between reading from the AC head and wired in remote control with these units), it is super efficient. Pointing this sort of thing out in your video briefly doesn't quite do it justice in how important it is for a heat pump to be able to cruise at a more or less constant low pump speed. Also zoning is great at night for just keeping the bedrooms warm and thus less load on the unit as I don't heat the whole house at night, but the unit is setup so it can if all the zones are on. At least in SoCal in the valleys where it is not too terribly cold, granted I did see snow outside on a couple of different days where I live, which is basically unheard of for decades now as temperatures have warmed up due to global warming and the concrete urban jungle heating effect from population growth covering the land, this unit is amazingly efficient, even on the days where I saw snow falling onto the house. I mean significantly colder outside with thick cloud cover blocking the Sun completely over a 24 hour period, but only a modest, incremental extra use of electricity.
I have talked to others and found an example where someone had their thermostat set to the same as mine and their overall living conditions not that different from mine, however they have been using a natural gas heater to hold that temperature. I spent ~$80 on electricity for my heat pump for the billing cycle. They spent $600 on natural gas for their furnace over the same billing cycle.
When you are talking about a $500 savings in a single billing cycle using a commonly available inverter based heat pump in SoCal, well maybe there needs to be more focus in getting this tech in everyone's home out here in SoCal. The technology is definitely ready for this place and with sky high bills for not doing it, it is a must just to be able to have a chance to afford to live out here without freezing to death in the process.
Thank you so much for this info. I am in socal and I have a contractor waiting for me to pull the trigger on a full HVAC install. The gas furnace to heat pump difference is only about $450. I think I’m going heat pump.
Both electric and gas rates are pretty bad in So Cal, right now, making heat pump efficiency a better way to go.
For some reasons, you forefathers did not pack the secret of "thermal insulation" when they migrated ..
I have a air-based heat pump by Daiken and the upfront installation was around $15K fully installed with insulated ducting. It's everything Matt says they are here. Very low maintenance, and considerably quiet. Down side? When it falls below 10 degrees here in Alaska, it does struggle a little to keep our home temp which we like at 68 degrees. So we supplement that heat with a pellet stove. I burn through maybe 10 bags (40lb ea) of pellets a year on cold years, less on not so cold years. But the challenge for us is not it becoming too cold, it occurs around 31-34 degrees which causes massive ice buildup within the unit. I bought a handheld pressure steamer to deal with that when it gets bad. Overall, it's my favorite way to heat where I live and it doesn't stress my energy bill out at all.
Trudeau will be coming after that pellet stove before long.
I bought a home in Canada with a 4 year old mini split air heat pump to supplement the other electric heating sources. We had temps of -20 c with a wind chill of -30. I tested the temperature of the heat blowing from the heat pump. The air blowing out of the unit was 28c. I was pleased and mildly surprised.
We've had a 5 ton geothermal system with 2 wells 288ft deep for one year. One thing I've noticed is in very cold weather 0F the incoming loop had a temp of 38F which was the lowest temp of the season.
Matt,
My heat pump stopped working last month. So this video was very helpful. Two things stood out: 1) newer heat pumps are able to work at lower outside temps, and 2) there will be rebates available to help with the cost.
I'm especially interested in the IRA rebates you mentioned, and I've tried to find out more about them before watching your video, but the DOE website is not clear when they will be available ... or if they will be retroactive for systems installed this year before the money is released to the states. I'd really appreciate your help in finding out.
Since the repair cost would be $4-5000 and since it is 18 years old, I think it's best that I replace it. So I've been on an HVAC crash course ... and in the process I learned about this rebate program and about tax credits (for 16+ SEER systems) I have delayed having a new system installed; so hopefully I can take advantage of this rebate. I could really use the help, since estimates range from $10 - $14,000! In my income bracket the rebate would be 50% of the cost up to $8000.
I can wait a while longer, but I need to have something done before summer.
Thanks for your help!
Can you please share link about rebates?
@@ninjip3460you’d better to Google and read it in IRS website. Only $2k tax credit is offered by federal government.
Hey Matt! I live in Michigan and installed a Daikin system in a new house 2 years ago. It wasn’t clear that that heating part of the system could manage the (sometimes) -10 degree conditions. But I wanted in floor heat anyway. Together the radiant floor heat with the mini-solos works beautifully. Good luck with your project and thanks for all you do.
We just installed a dual fuel system in our home, gas furnace and a heat pump. The heat pump works from 35 F or above and the furnace works from 34 F or below. I live in Denver Colorado and the Daikin fit heat pump was pretty much my only option. One major consideration is that the heat pump runs pretty much constantly. We keep our home at 67f and the air that comes out of the vents is not warm or hot. But it does keep our house at the temperature we selected. Our cats hate it. They no longer sleep on the air vents. The major adjustment for us has been it feels like the system is constantly running. It reminds me of being in an office building where the HVAC system is constantly reading. Very grateful that we went with a super quiet heat pump and furnace blower because if it's going to be constantly running it will drive you crazy.
I installed a Pioneer 12k btu heat pump on our shuttle bus camper. Did all the work myself except for final tubing connections and pulling vacume. Kept us cool in FL, in full sun in a metal box.(It's great that with 800 watts of solar panels, 3-100ah lithium batteries and 2500watt inverter, works fine as we travel down the road). Liked it so well I got a 24k unit to install in the house. Has worked well with temps down to -10F.
I've decided that this channel is decidedly fantastic! Matt has pumped up my enthusiasm for all the great work he is doing! 😊❤🎉
In your follow-up, it would be nice to see some additional maths. In the UK - and it may be the same elsewhere - piped natural gas is pretty much universal, and electrical power is also generated by natural gas. We may have an increasing base of renewables, but every additional kW of electrical energy is generated by burning extra gas. Using more electricity does not make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow stronger. In addition, electrical energy is 5-6 times the cost of gas per kWh - and with good reason: The efficiency of the gas power station itself is only 32% (according to my search) and then there are transmission losses on top of that. Right now and here, I don't think the sums add up for heat pumps, both from an environment and an economic point of view.
I'm not sure I'm following you. If you're talking purely costs, then yes, many areas have crazy cheap gas prices that make the cost comparison tough. If you're talking about efficiency (how many kwh of energy to produce heat), it's no contest between a heat pump or gas heat. Heat pump wins that for efficiency. If you're talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even if your electric grid is powered by a natural gas facility, it's going to far cleaner powering your heat pump via that vs. burning the gas in every single home for heat. As the grid gets cleaner with more renewables production, or if you have solar on your home, it gets cleaner still.
@@UndecidedMF Thanks for taking the time to reply. What I am saying, is that people are tending to quote the 'gross' efficiency of heat pumps, which would be fully valid if the energy came from renewables. But it would be good to see a 'net' efficiency quoted, taking into account the efficiency of burning gas to produce the electricity to power the heat pump versus burning the gas directly at home. To me (guessing) the heat pump needs to be at least an average 300% efficient to 'break even' - and I know you said the latest tech is progressing beyond that - but a 'net' figure would still be good.
Plumber/Hvac mechanical contractor here. Everyone is missing the point. So these heat pumps will always provide heat even when the exterior coil is losing all efficiency due to a lack of temperature differential and icing up of the rad. In the pacific northwest the winters are cold and very wet, that exterior coil gets very cold and develops frost and ice which limits the heat exchange possibilities of the coil. The unit will then reverse and use the interior coil to take heat from the house and melt the ice off the exterior coil. You will technically not lose any heat because all air handlers essentially have electric coils installed integral to them to heat the air while this process is happening. This is very expensive. Heat pumps are great most of the time, but when its actually cold out you will pay a lot in electricity to heat your home. If possible have a wood stove as a backup, or a gas furnace as both of those will heat your home quickly and efficiently and the heat pump can pick up the slack.
I live in South Dakota and have used an air-exchange heat pump to heat my home to air temperatures down to -20F. The heat pump will send hot compressed freon into the home regardless of the outside air temps. Where they fall short is eventually your heat loss will exceed the heating ability of the heat pump. Heat pump heated air temp = 105F, forced air gas heat is much hotter.
I have just gone thru my first winter with a single stage, air to air heat pump and I am only "so - so" on its performance. About 50% of our winters here just north-east of Toronto are damp with a lot of freezing rain which means that we hover around the 0C (32F) degree mark and lots of moisture. Our heat pump (York) keeps freezing up and I know this because it blows cold air into the house while it is defrosting itself. I've had it run for 3 hrs at a time doing this and it's annoying as hell to say nothing of the electrical costs. Once the temperature falls well below 0C degrees and therefore most/all of the humidity is out of the air, it works fine. So the end result for me is, whenever the temperature gets close to 0C I have to turn on just my furnace to heat the house. Not great in my opinion.
Same here in Maine...I run my ASHP down to about 15f and then turn it off and switch my oil boiler back on for heat because having cold air blown on you while the HP defrosts is not so good. That being said I can't argue the fact that my heating costs have reduced dramatically through the fall and early spring months when the heat pump can easily produce heat and very rarely runs a defrost cycle. The summer cooling and dehumidifying the system provides is also much nicer than using the old school windows AC units.
This is exactly my concern.
Same in Estonia
Very wet and often hovering around 0C for months
many people are unhappy with it
I will stick to wood stove that also double as back up cooking when power is down
There are ways to mitigate the issue of freezing/thawing. Most manufacturers have a line of heat pumps designed for use in cold climates. The designs can vary, but in the simplest case they just include heating elements in the outdoor unit to help prevent freezing. But at 0C I think you should not be having such issues with defrosting. I live in a wet, snowy area that also hovers around 0C and there are no issues keeping warm with any our heat pumps (we have a mix of Daikin and panasonic units rated for -25C and -10C - and just the normal heat pumps not cold weather spec).
You should’ve got an asian brand like Mitsubishi, Panasonic or Fujitsu.
Won’t argue that perhaps the next gen of air heat pumps are better ( as well much more expensive btw) at handling cold weather ( the only thing that really matters).However we in the U.K. have electricity prices that are massively more than gas.How much more? 4x more!Now go away and recalculate .Interesting how you ignored the elephant in the room my friend.
Matt, the mechanism for transferring heat into the living environment is one of the major factors in overall system efficiency. For example, conventional radiators employ 55°C (min) water circulation. In contrast I have a ~70 tonne foundation slab *within* the insulated shell of my build, and this includes embedded underfloor heating (UFH) loops to heat the entire 70t slab. I can circulate wat at 30°C and this is plenty enough, and can put this heat in pretty much at any time of the day, that is whenever the electricity is cheapest. ASHPs have a far better CoP and better cold-weather performance at 30°C vs 55°C output, so the system is far cheaper to run. Putting the insulation under and around the slab instead on top; casting UFH within the slab adds relatively few $K to the cost of the slab _if_ this is designed in pre-build. Hence, these systems are far more efficient on new-builds optimised for their use and building codes should be updated to facilitate this.
Likewise DHW systems using PCM heat stores and input preheated from a 30°C buffer or 20°C slab can also work out to be cheap to run, but again the initial install really needs to be optimised for this for it to be cost-effective.
I installed a ground source heat pump system at my home( using water as the heat transfer medium ran 2 circuits of type K copper pipe in a horizontal and 2 vertical well loops that is a closed loop system that are 60 feet deep---existing before system was installed), that I built myself, and has been in operation 30+ years without any problems. all of the component parts are original( water temp leaving= 40 degrees F/ 50 degrees F return temp discharge air temp 120 degrees F in heating mode). I did hvac-r work on a commercial/ industrial basis( now retired). the older heat pump systems would not keep up with indoor heating requirements, and would operate nonstop when outdoor air temperature would get below 20 degrees F.( air source heat pump) the older systems would need additional back up heating in the form of resistive electric heating coils that are expensive to operate. heat pump technology has been around 60+ years, and was largely marketed/ installed in the southern states where it is much warmer during the winter. I would think that the new technology heat pump systems are much better, however the maintenance costs of failed component parts and installation costs could make this a financial wash, and when/if you reach the financial break even point, you are in need of a new system!!!!. do not be fooled by the notion that scroll compressors are rough/ tuff, and like "JOHN WAYNE" toilet paper will not take any crap off of any weather condition thrown at it, is in for a ruud awakening. where I worked, the scroll compressors were number one when it came to failures. the best compressors were the screw type/ reciprocating semi- hermetic type( that is the compressor that I am using at my home).
We had a brand new Heat pump (not geo-thermal) in our newly built house in 2001-2012. During that time once temperatures went below about 31F the Heat pump ran continuously and the Air pumped out was noticeably cold. The only way to get warm air was to use the supplemental heat (electric heating strips) and once they kicked in the electric bill tripled very quickly. I decided not to use another Heat Pump but rather gas heat for our next House and am very happy that we did. I heard that Heat pumps have come a long way but I won’t get another one once I actually see it.
Sounds like you had the old heat pumps that were before inverter drive compressors. The new mini splits are definitely a massive improvement over those old ones.
@@cosmicinsane516 Once the temp difference increases, the "massive improvement" can quickly approach 1 (COP). There are theoretical limitations you cannot do much about them. Inverter drives improve efficiency only marginally (start-stop vs VFD drive) but cost also goes up (essentially electronics).
@@janami-dharmam Exactly. At cold temps the best mini-splits are running COP of about 2. Geothermal can do better but install cost is prohibitive unless you can do it yourself.
You can't gauge a heat pump on how warms the air FEELS coming out of the vents. Yes, the heat exchanger of a heat pump is cooler (according to readings from my Amana whole home air to air heat pump this tends to be 100-200C) than the heat exchanger of a gas furnace (which tends be around 2000C) and if your vent is a ways away from the heat exchanger it's not very hard for it's temperature to be down to about 40C, which will feel cool on your skin because it's near body temperature, but it still heats the house by blowing less hot air in for longer. Anything above about 30C will still heat the space as long as it's not losing lot of heat from poor insulation or air leaks. A gas furnace will commonly have a vent temperature around 50-60C. You have to go by the overall temperature of the room or measure the vent temperature with something more precise than your hand.
@@jongoode3296 , I can and I did! The fact is that until about 31F the Unit came on and off in certain intervals. Once it dropped below 31F the Unit essentially never stopped and the House did not warm to the temperature selected. Only after switching to ‘Supp Heat’ would it get warm. So yes, Heat pumps from 2001 (build date) did perform extremely poorly below freezing. Nowadays it seems technology has improved yet I won’t buy another one until I can see it and “feel” it for myself.
I had a heat pump installed three years ago while it works pretty good for heating and cooling during the winter time it definitely struggles in and sometimes I need to add additional space heaters to keep things comfortable
They definitely come in different sizes and sounds like yours just might be sized big enough for your needs.
We put in 2 mini splits and our power bill went from $520 to $290 for the same period plus we were charging a PHEV that we didn't have the year before. They were just cheaper ones found on amazon but they work great, here around Seattle the coldest it's gotten this winter has been about 15-20F and they still keep working, not as hot but no problem keeping the house warm. We put one in at my work also where they still used an oil furnace, and it was about $700 or more to fill the tank. Just missing 1 oil fill nearly paid for the whole thing. Plus last summer they had excellent a/c just as a bonus, course any furnace is useless in the summer while a heat pump is a year round investment.
I have to chuckle at the sudden uptick in air source heat pumps. About 30 years ago I was involved in making a prototype one using a control board from Ontario Hydro research. We installed it in my 20 year old home (at the time) and found that the minimum break even temperature was about +2 deg.C. Not bad for R22 fluid, as I had absolutely no background in the field. During a visit to the yearly big US heating and AC show I asked Copeland (the compressor manufacturer) if they had ever thought of using a variable speed motor for better control, only to be told that their motor company had never suggested it. Going over to the booth of the motor company, I asked the same question, only to get the answer that Copeland had never requested this. The funny thing was that they were both divisions on Emerson electric.
5:07
That -5⁰ number depends on the fluid used.
You can design heat pumps with different optimal operating temperatures.
The downside is that if they work better in the cold they might not work as well in the heat etc...
You want them to be able to achieve both a liquid and gas state in the temperatures you got available to you.
8:33
Exactly!
Most heatpumps on the Norwegian market currently works best at -35⁰C (-31⁰F) and up.
Below -35⁰C the ones in *our* market starts to struggle (After all colder then -35 is rare in Norway, although it definitely *does* happen)
What about +30 degrees C and up?
Well you won't be using the thing for heating at that temperature, will you? As far as air conditioning is concerned it is pretty likely that, just as in the UK, air conditioning is not really necessary because it is unpleasantly hot for only a few days per year.@@SeattlePioneer
I'd have liked to hear more about the output of the heat pumps, especially GS and AS to Water (i.e. radiators). I'm interested to hear about any improvements to output temperatures, which obviously have an impact on installation cost (new and larger radiators, additional insulation, underfloor heating etc).
I have a 10 year-old Daikin Altherma 16kW Air to Water heat pump running on 400V for our 205sq.m. house. It heats up water and circulates it through a 300L boiler (for hot water) and the fan-assisted convection radiators around the house + towel rails in the bathrooms, it works great and is quite economical. The pump heats up water only up to 50C (some models go up to 70C), but at -10 / -15C outside temperature, 45C water is enough to keep the house at 23C. Per sq.m., my heating/cooling bills are lower than anyone I know without a central heat pump, whether their heating is on gas, electricity, wood pellets, or central city supply (a local thermal power plant supplies some neighbourhoods with hot water for radiators and taps). As an added benefit, I can run the pump in cooling mode in the summer. That being said, I do have 28 vacuum solar tubes on the roof that help heat up the boiler and thus increase the efficiency of the pump during the day, and they ensure we have very cheap hot water in the summer when the pump is in cooling mode. The boiler's built-in 9kW heater is basically obsolete, we never use it. My only regret is that the house doesn't have underfloor heating but it was all built and furnished before we bought it.
PS For anyone considering a heat pump - keep in mind the fancy big brands have expensive maintenance too. Recetnly a water flow sensor died on mine, new one is 400 euros (without labour)... for a tiny sensor in a plastic housing, absurd. The main board is 3k euro, the small plastic control unit which is just a low resolution display and a few buttons is like 200 euro... If this Daikin dies, I'm considering buying a cheaper model from local brands. Although marginally less efficient, considering the high maintenance costs of the big brands (plus, waiting for parts to arrive), it might work out cheaper even in the long run to have a cheaper local brand.
I just had top of the line Bosh heat pumps installed in my New England home. I will say one thing that has become clear to me is that if your house isn't well insolated, you're heat pumps will not be able to keep up on the really cold days like a traditional furnace. Something I wish I knew before installing my new system. Heat pumps lose efficiency and BTU output the colder it gets, unlike an oil furnace that pretty much stays the same. So it is relying on the fact that your home is well insolated so that it's not competing with both cold from the outside and inside. I don't regret my decision and I'm excited to see how well my system works once my home is insolated better.
I suggest you differentiate between air source and ground source heat pumps. Ground source are much less susceptible to loss of efficiency during extreme cold than are air source although, as you point out, air source units are improving significantly in recent years.
Ground source heat pumps also have a huge additional up front cost. It’s like solar panels. You need to have it for decades for it to make sense (will vary based on your cost of electricity and gas).
Yeah, it's pretty odd to talk about how heat pumps work fine in cold climates and then mention drilling a 400ft hole for his heat pump installation without explaining why.
@@adamhero459Well, it depends... If you have chilly weather, like here in northern Sweden with -20 to -40C, then it still has a really high COP since the whole is very warm compared to outside air temp. And this means a lot less electricity used for the same heat.
For those of us in rural areas who already use septic systems, could the geothermal coils be placed under the drainage bed at the time of development? Septic systems are inherently designed to not freeze and are even warmed by water runoff. Seems like an efficient use of space if they could be done together. Of course it would be a nightmare if there was a leak.
Very cool idea. It would be interesting if anyone has tried it.
I wish more people would talk about co-existing infrastructure, like what you are suggesting.
Solar, batteries, geothermal… all just feels like a rich man’s set of toys to me, to make people on the high end of the income spectrum feel better about themselves, while normal people go about their ever increasing normal energy usage.
They produce heat by fermentation and also produce methane that you can burn to heat water. But the amount may not be large.
@@janami-dharmam it doesn’t need to be large. The heat from unfrozen ground is enough. Any extra heat in winter would be a bonus. I was thinking purely about needing to dig up a yard to put down the piping *twice*.
@@wolfeb99 not quite so; the soil is a poor conductor of heat and the heat stored in 1 m3 of soil is perhaps good enough to heat your home for a day. If the cold persists for a few days continuously, the heat pump will not work. You need one that is spread over a larger area
We have used Panasonic air to air heat pump since 2003. Changed the old one in 2021, and are now using a Panasonic HZ25UKE as the only heat source for our living room, kitchen and hall (around 75 square meters).
We had temperatures of -15 celcius this winter, and had no problem keeping the heat.
Cost of heatpump + installatin, about 2200 dollar.
I'm nearly 70, and back in the 80's my parents did the heat pump in the lake shore home here in Minnesota. Both ends of the HVAC was done with forced air. 1 simple unit for heating and cooling. We only had 1 issue that was eventually a bad plan. The outlet line was not well enough insolated or... We had to do a heat tape in that outlet line for those occasional -35F and lower temps. To clarify they dug a well, it was an artesian flow type, 15 psi initially when capped at nearly 20 feet above ground. Years later the psi dropped to 7-1/2 lbs. It was recapped at 8-9 feet. At 15 psi there was enough water flow that kept the water outlet flowing during those rare cold snaps of that North wind blowing on this south shore lake home build, a walk out 2 story home. Anyway, with that higher flow rate the water never got cold enough via flow rate and pipe elbow cavitation and related temperature creating flow details. So when the flow rate dropped via the PSI volume pressure change, the pipe would freeze up internally over the length of time of the killing North wind freezes. We had both electric baseboard heat and wood fireplace installed for that accidental issues. Yea it was a bit brutal to thaw that frozen water line (wind & torches problems in snowmobile suits and more). And then heat taping it and re-insulate covering repairs. Yea a few years it has dipped to that -60 degree F. There was no issues after that other than doing the yearly pre-inspection of everything. As far as I know the home is still using the same HVAC system as of a little more than 1+ years ago. One can see the over flow pipe opening as an open water flow back to the lake on the shoreline.. Oh, there were days the 90's & 2000's when the roads could not be plowed for the snow removal. You can't leave! It was on a cul-de-sac road and even V snow plows could not break through the 6+ feet tall snow drifts, much less do anything with a little 36" wide snow blower being able to do any dent in the snow pack and those drifts. I got stuck in one of those over nights and was there for days.
By me cooling is the much more important thing, but as a heat pump is pretty much the same price as a cooling only unit I went with the heat pump, as in the smaller sizes the cooling only is actually rare and expensive. 1 extra wire in the cable set is all you have, to control the valve, and thus easy to do. Actually used it for a whole 2 days this last winter, because it was unseasonably cold for the sub tropics, dropping below 10C on a day or two in the morning, so the warmth was a nice thing to have for an hour or so, before it was turned off again, and natural air was better. Summer time it was needed, keeping the inside cool and dry, as it was hot and humid outside, so well worth it. $350 for the unit was well worth it.
I have been in a similar position. Cooling is more important than heating but I have seen one Achilles heel when used for heating. If the humidity is high and the air is cold icing is a substantial problem. The heat used to keep the unit ice free is too much. Luckily those days are not too common. But a frozen fog really does prevent it from working.
One very nice feature that a lot of heat pumps include is a back up heating system. This is a basic resistive heater built into the air handler portion of a central air system, and is intended to supplement heating for those freakishly cold days. (The heat pump might cover someone in Minnesota for 360 days of the year, but there's that one week of -40 degree cold that it's just not up to - that's the kind of thing the backup is for.)
The really nice thing is the backup doesn't care what the temperature outside is, it just recognizes that the heat pump is lagging behind. So, if your heat pump breaks (as everything will, if you have it long enough - who here has a 50 year old furnace that's never needed repairs?), you still have heating. It's massively more expensive because resistive heating is merely 100% efficient rather than the heat pump's seemingly physics-defying 250%+, but you're not sitting there freezing to death and having all your pipes freeze while the maintenance guy tells you it'll be 2 weeks before he can come and check out your broken heating system.
(Side note: there's a reason why electrical heating is 100% efficient: electrical efficiency is basically the percentage of electricity that was used to do something useful rather than heating things up that don't need to be hot. Incandescent light bulbs are very low efficiency because the useful thing is the 2% of the electricity being converted into light and the 98% of it that is made into heat is considered waste. But when you're running a heater, making things hot is literally the point, and literally all of the electricity you use winds up becoming heat energy at some point. One could also make the argument that an electrical heater is 0% efficient because it doesn't do anything other than generate heat, and that would also be kinda true...but misses the point of the heater's heat being useful.)
In essence...a regular heater is doing the heating, not pump. Lol
Upstate, NY and I recently finished my 1100 square foot garage and I am using a 24K MrCool mini-split to heat/cool. It has been amazing producing heat in temps down to -5° before it starts to struggle. I am talking temps in the garage close to 70°.
Matt a liquid cannot be compressed. The liquid refrigerant evaporates in a coil (strangely called an evaporator) thus absorbing heat. That low pressure gas is compressed into a high pressure gas by the ummm compressor. The high pressure gas is then fed into a condenser coil where it gives off heat as it changes phase (that is condenses) into to a liquid. That liquid is then metered by a thermal expansion valve, or capillary tube before it re-enters the evaporator coil, where it once again evaporates. This process is the same in a refrigerator or an air conditioner. The only unique part in a heat pump is the 4 way or reversing valve which determines the role of the indoor and outdoor coils, that is making the indoor coil a condenser in winter so it can give off heat, or an evaporator in summer so it can absorb heat.
We added LG mini splits to our home 2 years ago, hoping to heat & cool for less. They did drop our cooling bill by 20% but heating with them last year (Massachusetts) was more expensive than using gas. Our gas furnace is only 87% efficient. We didn't run them much this winter. I'm pretty disappointed because they weren't cheap to install.
I live in mass as well and have Mitsubishi 4 zone. It’s not the hi-heat version. Around 10 deg F it stops putting out much heat. I have a power monitor on that circuit and it rises to around 2KW when running full tilt in the cold, very inefficient. I use pellets to heat the house and a gas furnace as a backup to the backup. I have a cooper and hunter in my off grid cabin that works to -13 degree F and that seems to still put out heat in that cold -25 degree F weekend we had a few weeks ago and was a little more efficient, but again it was running full tilt and I don’t think it was good for it. I have some resistive wall mount heating in the off grid cabin to offset when it gets that cold. Fortunately this winter has been somewhat mild in Massachusetts as compared to other years.
Natural gas is almost always cheaper than electricity by a huge margin. That's why it's so popular. However, I pay more just to have a gas hookup than for the quantity of gas usage. If I can ditch gas entirely, I might see savings. (Utility companies really know how to rip you off)
I hate to rub it in but did you do your own research with heating calculators before the install? The numbers returned by the calculator were almost exact for this heating season when I used a COP of 2 and my electric rate as parameters
@@jimmyg6215 2kW to heat your entire home in -10degC conditions? That's pretty damn good, you'll find you're using significantly more energy on your wood to get the same amount of heating
So it might be cheaper to use wood/gas in that scenario but it certainly isn't more energy efficient
@@jimmyg6215 2kW? Typo?
Matt, Congratulations and thank you for the work of your Channel. Informative, entertaining, and most importantly, an accurate presentation on a wide variety of engineering and enviro-science topics. Keep up the good work.. Cheers
In 2017 I had a Mitsubishi H2 (Hyper heat) style heat pump installed with traditional forced air system. The contractor put in an electric heat pack in the air handler for backup heating. We live near Columbus, OH. Here it seldom gets below 0 F, but at times it has gone as low as -20 F at night. The heat pump has worked flawlessly, I clean the outdoor unit by vacuuming the dust and dirt off the coils in the spring and the fall, and of course the indoor air filter every 3 months, but that's it. I found out by accident after two years, that the electrical breaker for the backup heat had never been turned on. This winter it got down to about -20 F at night, in the morning the house was 2 degrees lower than the thermostat and so the backup heat should have turned on but didn't. I need to find out why it didn't turn on. I am very pleased with the system.
A place where I previously worked had a number of Mitsubishi "Mr. Slim" split units. They all worked great for many years, even in weather as low as -5F but when the broke, and were "repaired" by the local dealer, they never worked as good again. I think this was because the repair technicians treated them like ordinary air conditioners and didn't have training to work on high performance units.
I have been working for a refrigeration wholesaler for 13 years now all of the companies in this video are suppliers or customers with us. We sell now for one year Midea heatpumps at 5/6C its still a cop of 4. Love these videos. Here in Holland almost every one wants a heatpump.
Matt, heat pumps have a reverse-cycle deforst (same as summer cooling mode, but the inside fan is in off or run at very low speed) to clear the outside coil when it ices up, just make sure to allow enogh ground clearance or soakaway for the defrost water. BTW, nearly all modern AC condenser units (the compressor and coil outside) run on power inverters, which changes the compressor pressure dynamically, by changing its speed, and so increase its efficiency. Japanese AC units have had this tech for decades. To make some power out the the unit, Introduce a thermal generator to the condensor in the summer, which converts the excess heat to electricity that can be fed to your power wall, making it even more efficient.
Only the most expensive units have variable speed compressors using DC. Mid-range units may be two speed, but aren't using inverters. One of the other challenges of the inverters is cooling them, especially in extreme heat. Trane uses the cold-side refrigerant to cool the inverter, but repeatedly has startup problems during extreme heat, when there is no cold refrigerant for a while after startup.
@@johnhaller5851
Depends.. here in northern europe inverter HP's are quite common. As we don't need to cool the system itself (+35C outside is way beyond normal) a bit more complicated electronics is no problem. And its fun to see HP reversing itself for defrosting at minus C - all the heat that was pumped to ~100 m2 concrete floor reversed for few minutes. BIG cloud of steam :)
@@johnhaller5851 I think you need to do more research... Mitsubishi and Daikin have been using PCM inverters (not DC) for at least 15 years.
@@michaelmurray2595 I didn't say there were no inverter heat pumps, but they they are not common in the US. Most people buy the cheapest unit they can find, as they only replace it when the old unit is condemned, and the cheapest will be a 240V single stage unit. This is almost always a poor choice, as a single-stage heat pump sized to heat a home will be too big to effectively dehumidify a house in the summer. And if they will not pay for a variable speed compressor, they certainly won't pay for a whole house dehumidifier.
Here in Sweden, I have a ground source heat pump. It saves me approx 4000 USD a year at current electricity prices compared to resistive heating this building had before. We went from 35-40MWh/year to 16MWh/year. Just hot water heating with it saves 3MWh per year.
Lots of people here have air source heat pumps as well, if you drive around, most houses have one, and they've been used for 15-20 years.
How many amps/watts does your system use at full power?
I have always had the idea of a heat pump and then a fireplace in case it gets very cold. I have always liked the crackle and smell of a fire inside. It just makes it so cozy.
Our efficient house In Massachusetts has 0.7 ACH air sealing, 6 inches of dense pack cellulose in the walls, 4 inches of exterior Gutex insulation, and triple pane glazing. Over the first 1.5 years we have lived here so far, setting winter temp to 70F and 77F in summer, we are considerably net positive with a 15 kW solar array. The HVAC consists of two ducted LG air-sourced heat pumps and a Zehnder ERV. Our system had no problem handling the recent cold snap with low temp of 4F. Thanks to net metering we haven’t owed money to the electric utility in any month so far. This was an expensive system but is on track to pay for itself far faster than we expected.
I LOVE this channel. Another detailed and thorough dive into the science and facts - excellent! People should know that when you are checking out Heat Pumps, if you live in a cold climate you can specifically look for "Cold Climate Heat Pumps" - as they are designed specifically to handle outside air temps below zero (Fahrenheit). My next home will be ICF walls, radiant floor heat, with either geothermal or air sourced Cold Climate Heat Pump. You can also find electric hot water heaters that are basically a high efficiency heat pump, and are excellent for providing hot water, with great efficiency. Come on folks, lets get rid of the carbon dioxide from our air, and leave this Earth a little cleaner for our kids and Grandkids!
Matt thanks for the info. You always provide clear and useful information.
I do have a question. With regard to your ground source heat pump, how did you decide to go with a vertical well rather than horizontal especially if you had the space? What was the trade off that made the higher price of the vertical well worth it?
If you have the space and the means to dig (eg at site development time) there's no competition. A horizontal loop at the right depth is a lot less expensive than boreholes and performance is much the same unless you live in a very extreme climate with enough solar incidence to cause a problem in Summer and very cold Winters leading to permafrost.
Living in eastern Canada most homes were heated with oil, and I used to have an oil fired boiler supplying hot water to an "in floor" heating system. After a couple of years of research I purchased a 50,000 btu Arctic heat pump. The unit has an inverter driven compressor, a 50 gal/12kw buffer tank and backup, and also preheats my domestic hot water. After two winters I am very impressed and the only time the backup heater cut in was on a stormy night in January with minus 24 degree C. At this point I am very impressed and glad I went down that road.
As a Canadian builder, I can say that air source heat pumps are perfect here for up to 9 months per year, if you get the best air source heat pump. In the winter backup heating is necessary. Ground source and water sourced heat pumps are brilliant though.
I heat with firewood though, it reduces the fuel load around my home for the next time a forest fire comes near. Burning firewood from standing dead, dry wood is the best fuel source where I live. It will burn one way or another, I prefer that slow burn warmth throughout the winter to summer wildfires
I had a home with a heat pump in the 90s and not only did it work well to heat our home, in Virginia, during times when the temps got down below 20 degrees F, but it also didn't consume a lot of energy in doing so. Our electric bill was never bad in that home. There was also little maintenance cost like there typically is with a natural gas system. You don't need it inspected on a regular basis, and if you don't do that with a natural gas system bad things can happen.
I have been thinking, why just get a heat pump for HVAC? Why not have the whole house integrated into one system. You have heat pump water heaters, freezers and refirgrators, and heat pump dryers. Connect them all together, with a solar pre-heating water tank, and solar heat rejection, and a thermal battery, and you could do everything for very little energy in life time costs.
the only down side I could think of is single point of failure. lose your compressor and you lose everything.
Complexity, risks of leaks, and heat loss during the fluid transfer. It is a nice idea but not practical.
System complexity and lack of modularity. In order for complex, multi point systems to work, they are best all from one company and product line. I deal with these types of things in the commercial/industrial world, and there's a point that it's just not worth it. The other issue is qualified service personnel. It's hard enough to find personnel that specialize in one particular area. The thought of getting personnel that are fully qualified in that many systems is just shy of a miracle. Having stand-alone heat pump systems (for now) is your best bet to keep everything working.
We have all those heat pumps and will be adding the hvac portion soon. The hot water booster tank will drop the hot water heating costs even more than the heat pump water heater already has. In a way, they are all connected- by the electrical supply lines.
Modular sealed compressor systems built in a factory setting will always be more reliable than a custom loop of any sort. I will stick with what I have for the modularity as noted in the other replies.
Here in Europe, or at least in Germany it is common these days to install one heat pump for the whole house. The heat pump handles heating (mostly underfloor or radiator water heating) and hot water. No problems. Thousands and thousands of these systems are online here. I myself get one this year. It replaces my old gas boiler which also produced the heat for heating and warm water.
Just found this presentation and found it very interesting.
May I add? I live in a large raised ranch (2600 sq.ft.). The home was built in '79. Still has a perfectly functioning Heil forced air furnace original to the home, yes, the model with a 150,000 btu burner!
Since in my town here in MA., we have our own hydro plant, I started to investigate split heat pump systems and wanted to go electric. I decided to go with Mitsubishi. Now, a raised ranch is really a two story home, and it was sized with one 30k btu NON HyperHeat ODU and 3 top of the line air handlers. Two on the second floor (one at each end of the home), and one on the first floor in the large living room.
I did NOT account for the two bedrooms and bath on the first floor at the opposite end and so...............NO HEAT! (had to run little space heaters) After just short of 1.5 years with new system, running as it should now in it's second winter, I can say, it really does make warm air close to it's +5 degree rating. To continue.........
I decided to contact my HVAC guys once again a few weeks ago as of this writing, and had them come back to size the remainder of the first floor and it's long hallway to those rooms mentioned. They added another 12k btu (single ODU). This one is rated down to -5 and is a standard model NOT Hyper heat. So, improvements in tech right there.
It was 12 degrees the other morning, and this new additional Mitsu unit was coasting along with warm air keeping it nice and compfy. I decided to push it to see if it could out perform my 30k btu system. Set the fan on 4th speed, and thermostat to 80! In about 3 minutes time, the warm output turned to bordering on HOT when I held my hand in front of the output, and was right up there where my gas furnace ducts feel in temp.
When we have short cold snaps that go into the single numbers and below zero, I DO run the gas furnace for a short bit to give the heat pumps a 'jump start' until out door temps get around 10 degrees, then the heat pumps take over.
Thanks for reading my experiences with an 'extended' mini-split system which is my PRIMARY heat source. My rebate request just got excepted and because the new addition has a SEER of 23.1 and 12.5 HSPF, I am hoping for a good return. (O:
We had our 15 year old heat pumps replaced last year. Before the replacement, I had auxiliary heat locked out down to 26 deg F. After installing the 2-stage 20 SEER Trane replacements, I was having to call aux heat much sooner and was very unsatisfied. After I figured out that the unit controlled by a zone controller was wired wrong (it ran on fan only anytime aux heat was being called for) I locked aux heat out on that unit completely until a tech could show up and it started heating on stage 1 even though the outside temp was only 13 deg F.
I still have the aux heat enabled for anything below freezing, but it almost never comes on because the inside temp has to deviate 3 deg from the set temp to call aux heat, and that almost never happens unless I manually adjust the set temp up.
Even if you are concerned about cold temps, you can pair the heat pump with a traditional natural gas furnace so that you can either switch to it at a set point or whenever you want to for whatever reason.
Great summary (summery? 🤔😉) of the state of heat pump tech. One aspect that I think could have used more emphasis is radiator sizing. Heat pumps are efficient, but don't generally produce the same hot water temperatures as a boiler. So if you have an older house (like ours) with small radiators that rely on high temperatures to warm the room, you can struggle in the winter. Large surface areas and underfloor heating are ideal.
The US seems to have a lot more central air systems than radiators, so that might explain why his focus isn't really touching upon radiant heat. I think Fully Charged touched on heat pumps for radiant heat though, which was really interesting.
@@stevemulcahy5014 Interesting, I hadn't picked up on that point! I'd chatted about it with the heating technician whilst he was doing the annual service check on ours: he's encountered several households who had switched to heat pump without considering the radiators. Fully Charged is also a great source of info!
I just moved into a 100 yr old house w radiator heating. None of the plumbing worked including the two boilers so I'm ripping it all out & replumbing. I look forward to feeling these radiators in action esp since the house was designed for them during the Spanish Flu pandemic. (Is that racist or only in reference to the Wuhan Flu?)
I live in Romania. We have a mid-European climate - from +35C to -25C (+95F to -13F). I have 2 systems (for redundancy) - a minisplit (1-1) and a multisplit (4-1) from Daikin. Air-to-air heat pumps. 2 quite silent external units, mounted on ground frames (out of the snow/water), plus 5 internal wall-mounted units. Efficiency decreases with cold, but still works very well. Plus I choose which of 5 home areas to heat or cool individually with a range of fully automatic settings, and incorporated air filters/cleaners/ionisers. It is the cheapest, easiest, and least efficient heat pump system, but still a major saving and improvement over any other conventional heating or cooling system, and environmentally friendly. It can be easily installed in most existing structures with minimal invasion. Combined with an adequate solar power system, and either network power exchange (buy-back or swap kWh) OR a battery bank - nett heating/cooling costs per year can easily be ZERO, and capital investment can be recuperated in much less than 10 years (sometimes only 4 years) with a guaranteed equipment life span of 20+ years. No brainer.
I had a heat pump system back in the 80's and I lived in the foothills of western NC. We didn't get extremely hot or cold in this area but there was always a need for cooling or heating in my house. While some people back then didn't like a heat pump because they said the air coming out was too cold in the winter time. I was pleased with mine, however the two units I had didn't last over about 12 years each. The problem with a heat pump is the compressor, while they run inside the flooded refrigerant system in oil (over time like anything mechanical at some point when they get enough run time) something will fail. My system was fairly cheap to operate however we did have a fire place insert that we used when it got very cold just to save on power. Our systems back then also had backup electric heater strips that would come on when the system ran too long and failed to rise above the thermostat setpoint after a predetermined amount of time. At least when you have a gas pack/air conditioner system you limit the run time on the refrigeration compressor because it is not used in the wintertime. You must also remember that unless you have a solid state relay in the unit, every time the compressor kicks on the mechanical contactor will arc and at some point it will fail. I believe that the systems I had were not scroll compressors (they were reciprocating compressors), I don't think that even if they were scroll compressors it would have made a lot of difference in how long they lasted.
Interesting that Matt chose to go with a ground sourced heat pump for his new house. I was under the impression that those units aren't subject to freezing in the winter, and don't lose much, if any efficiency when the air temperature plummets. If this is correct, I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the video. Of course, the installation costs are substantially higher for these type units, but hopefully a new home installation is a bit less.
That is correct - they are less affected, outside of genuinely polar regions.
We installed a Waterfurnace 3 ton system in our current home using a 520' well into bedrock. ClimateMaster coined the explanation, "GSHP don't create heat, or cooling, the merely move heat". That well I mentioned, it's a thermal mass that stores heat in the summer to be used in the winter. It's dirt cheap to run (KWH) and requires virtually no service.
Yeah he focused on air side efficiency improvements. However the math I've been doing for GS is stymied by the continuously climbing electric utility rates which seem even worse than my cost for heating oil increasing since the war. The break-even seems to be around $3.90 per gallon right now. Plus the capital expense of installing not just the GS stuff but retrofitting my A/C system given I'm coming from hot-water radiators. it's seems that without solar (which my utility has all kinds of net metering limitations on) the conversion cost may not be worth it. So there's the reducing CO2 footprint aspect that seems to be the main driver right now.
@@alan31298 can you shop around for your electric supplier? The one we had for 9 years just raised their rate to $0.24/kwh. We switched to one @ $0.16/kwh. We're in northern CT. Dec 485kw and Jan 503kw are $77 and $80 respectively. The are our 2 worst months. Avg heating/mo is 203 kwh ($32). Avg cooling is 10kwh. The other catch phrase is "multiple ways to make electricity, only one way to make oil!".
@@alan31298 you have another possibility to consider, radiant heat. Rather than circulating water just shy of boiling, circulate water continuously at 108. Standardly radiant is in-floor but where you already have the plumbing. Warning: nerd alert! Another catch phrase for GSHP is "low and slow". It's low pressure and temp and slow speed. In our case it's "forced" warm air. The temp leaving the "furnace " is mid to high 80s and it's slow enough you literally can't hear the air leaving the ductwork. The return temp is 70. As one can conclude, the blower is on more but, again, it's not hurricane force velocity it's merely circulating the air. The fan speed is strictly a function of delta T. In your case it would be pump speed. Water retains heat way better than air. This would be a terrific research project for Matt! Swap out the oil fired boiler in traditional furnace for high efficiency electric. Also Matt, ASHP water heater! Ours is half the run cost of standard electric water heater. The water is heated to 121°.
It really makes a lot more sense in the cold environment to use dual fuel. It gives you a backup fuel for power outages (generator only needs to run the fans), and it allows you to dramatically downsize your heatpump. If you look at your coldest 10% and choose to do dual fuel for those, you will still be going with 90% heatpump and might knock 30% or more off the size of your heatpump. Cold weather is a double whammy. The colder it is, the more btu's escape your house and thus the more you need your heater to make, but simultaneously, the colder it is, the fewer btu's your heatpump can make. You might need to double the size of your heatpump to handle a small fraction of your heating days, the rest of the time all that investment is useless.
I just installed a new Bradford White high efficiency boiler with a Bradford White indirect water heater. It has an intermittent ignition system with no pilot light. This is an extremely efficient solution for both heating and domestic hot water. In summer, the boiler runs only when there is a call for hot water. I neither need nor do I want a heat pump. I have a Mitsubishi Mr. Slim system for A/C and it works fine. When I replace the Mr. Slim eventually, I certainly will get a Mitsubishi Heat Pump System. I don't really believe in Global Warming and don't care about a few more dollars a month in natural gas for the comfort and reliability of my baseboard system.
Two things people could benefit from knowing:
1 - There are both central heatpumps and mural heatpumps. Mural heatpumps do not need a furnace nor central ducting. They are also VERY efficient.
2 - The models of today make WAY less noise than what people are used to hearing from their neighbour's 10+ year old heatpump
Also, for those Canadians out there, the Feds offer a grant program that you can get up to 5000$ tax-free for a CCHP
it's also very important to keep in mind that most places don't get those extreme colds that decrease efficiency all winter. a heat pump will still save electricity most of the time, and if you have for example a fireplace to supplement through the worst cold snaps of sub -30°C you're golden.
They make for perfect base heaters.
And don't forget your insulation... If you're trying to keep a temp difference, you might as well start with an insulation upgrade...
I’ve been curious on these as I’m going ready to start a new home but I live in northern Canada where -25c is normal and -40 or colder can happen so I’m still not sure it’s a great idea. Thanks for the info though. Love learning about newer cleaner options
If you are using gas, seems to still make sense in your environment.
For your climate it's probably better to have a high efficiency gas furnace for aux heat and a heat pump for heating and cooling when the weather is above -5C.
You can install a heat pump and keep your old gas furnace. Just turn your household thermostat a couple degrees lower than the heat pump thermostat. If a -30 day is too much for your heat pump those few days per year then the gas furnace kicks in.
Just like installing on demand water heating but keep the old gas water heater. Your incoming water may be too cold for the on demand heaters, but you preheat it with the old gas heater set to the lowest temperature.
The negative of this is you cannot go "off grid" for gas so you still have the monthly connection fees from the gas company. But at least your gas consumption will be close to zero.
@@5353Jumper obviously if someone can have a backup of any kind that is pretty cool, but it is expensive to buy two new systems during a build, maintenance increased, and secondary systems that aren’t in use for a long time may fail to start when you need them. Hospitals that have backup generators are supposed to turn them on sometimes and check them too.
@@jsbrads1 yep all true, but it may still be cheaper and better. Each household will have to do their own math on that.
Like the debate if you have a few thousand to spend due to home equity, or some grant/rebate program - Do you invest in windows, or insulation or a heat pump or solar panels?
Each region is different and each house within a region is different.
Just offering one possible solution to plug into the math to see which option is best instead of offering obstruction to every potential solution so nothing changes ever.
My house probably among the first heat pump in the city. we had to import them from Japan because they don't make them here at the time, 2010 actually. It does hydronic heating for the floor, hot water heater for the shower and Heat Recovery unit in the bedroom. Just one machine is needed, the rest are balance valve and thermostat. We removed the gas boiler in 2016 because we realized we don't need that to be there as backup.
I live in Canada in a bungalow and have 2 heat pumps, one in the basement and one in the living area upstairs. Winter temps will reach -35 to -40 for 2 to 3 weeks, my backup is baseboard electric, and a woodstove.
I only use baseboard when vacationing in Florida (set at 58 - 60 F) and occasionally in the bedroom (68 F). My energy bill has reduced by 22% annually, and I now have remarkable AC in the summer, which I did without previously. My payback on initial investment will be recouped in around 6 years, mainly because I now require drastically reduced wood volume.
One benefit that is never mentioned is recovering the space that a conventional furnace takes up in your home when you replace that furnace with a heat pump. I suspect that the average space used by a furnace is in the 30 - 50 square foot range depending on the size of the house / furnace. When we installed our heat pump and removed the old furnace, we recovered about 50 square feet of interior space because the heat pump is installed outside. So, figure out what the $value per square foot of your house and multiply that times the square feet recovered by removing your old furnace to get a ballpark idea of savings when you do your heat pump purchase arithmetic. Of course, this is not a perfect measure - your furnace may be in your in-home garage and you may not attribute much value to that space. In my case, it opened up a key space in my basement to enlarge a guest bedroom and that was very valuable to me. YMMV.
Lolol. Your furnaces are bigger than our English homes.
But you still need something to blow the air through your home?
What was installed in place of the furnace to blow the air through the ducts?
That's 6-7 feet square!. Our furnace is about 2' x4".
@@thehobe150 I think he was referring to the total area required for access. There are some heaters that can be put in a closet with limited clearance, but most require quite a bit of area for access for maintenance etc.
Thanks for the insight. So removing the oil tank from my garage would be an added bonus to removing the boiler from the basement of my small house.
I'm quite surprised at how the US is so behind on heat pump implementation. When I moved to Japan over twenty years ago, heat pumps were really the only choice for heating and cooling. Now you can buy a basic system for around $1000-$2000 at your local electronics store and get it installed for another $400. This across the entire country including the northern Island of Hokkaido! Four years back, I built in Tokyo, and I installed a heat pump powered under floor heating system, it's the best I have ever felt in winter, cheap o run and feels warm from the inside of your body!
Yeah, some HVAC installers are price gouging us for heat pump installations even though we've had air conditioners for decades. It definitely contributes to the idea that you have to be wealthy to afford that.
I wish we had better consumer protections regulations and tradesperson training for these things.
Just an fyi. My house in central PA,was built in 1980 with an air source heatpump. My knowledge is that heat pumps are common in most states.
Matt,
Thanks for the great content about heat pumps. In addition to circulating refrigerant like an air conditioner, the efficiency of the heating cycle benefits from heat of compression, sort of a two for one benefit.
Below are my priorities if solving for highest reduction in residential heating energy use.
1. Low air leakage building envelope.
2. Low overall building envelope heat/gain loss (high performance insulation, windows,etc.)
3. High efficiency heating system, like use of ground source heat pumps
At one point in my career as an HVAC system designer, I provided designs for high end residential properties, including 7 of the 10 wealthiest people in WA state(2000-2008). Energy use was always considered but comfort, noise levels and aesthetics were design priorities.
For these residential applications, use of ground source heat pumps was common, though a few designs used a large deep water lake, called Lake Washington. Some questioned the environmental impact of a residence adding or removing heat from a lake. Just for fun, calculate the amount of BTUs added by the sun in one day, and compare to the net amount of heat exchanged by a house. I digress.
For discrete zones within residences, a combination of air and radiant floor design was common. Radiant offers superior comfort, especially at high ceiling areas, and is also silent. Potable hot water was often integrated by connecting water-water heat pumps to the ground loop heat exchanger.
Keeping all ductwork within the building’s insulation envelope (or insulate to the same R-value), and using air-air hx for indoor ventilation is also important.
A ground loop is a significant expense. Equally true is that a ground loop life cycle is easily 50+ yrs, where compressors or furnaces wear out in 25 yrs or so. HDPE plastic, used in ground loops, is a very robust material. Stainless steel, advised for lake loops where significant wave action is present, also has a very long life cycle.
As you are aware, viewing our country’s residential building stock from a life cycle cost perspective rather than a least first cost perspective is the issue. If a life cycle cost approach is adopted, say 50 years of life before a structure is demolished, then high performance building construction and high efficiency heating systems would be selected based on the merit of being the least expensive systems.
Conversely, if a least first cost approach remains (code minimum), then the value of high performance construction or highly efficient systems is underrepresented or considered excessive by definition.
I applaud content like that serves to educate in these matters.
Best regards,
I have a Mitsubishi hyper heat air source heat pump at my home in Montana. This winter the temps reached as low as -33 C and it kept our house warm. It's definitely not as efficient at those temps, but it still managed to keep up.
Im in upsate NY been heating with a heat pump for 10 years. It was great and much cheaper than oil. My unit is older and stuggles at -10 f . Which rarely. Unfortunately, electricity prices have tripled, so it's cheaper to burn wood, which is what i do now. So basically, NYS has set us back 200 years with its "green " programs.
I hate to kibits but the point of this article was that NEW heat pumps might be an option now and worth to take another look. I will tell you this as a fact ( and making several assumptions) every dollar of improved insulation is usually the first step in making a home more efficient. The return on insulation is several times higher than the return on a better heat source.
what green program?
At ten years, it may be time to upgrade your heat pump. They work better now then they did, and the efficiency is great.
I love burning wood. I chop it down by hand from my own land and allow it to regrow, that's the greenest heating you can get. no fossil fuels or resource mining or logistics involved. just a bit of my time every year.
@@paperburn It certainly does depend on the fuel source and the house and what needs to be done to insulate it safely. Insulation and air sealing done poorly on an older house can cause a lot of moisture problems, and doing it properly can be quite expensive. We have a 200+ year old house with a dirt basement+narrow crawlspace and no moisture barrier under the clapboard siding.
Before any real air sealing can be done the basement needs to be encapsulated so we don't just trap all the humidity in the house and cause mold issues. After that all of our siding would need to be removed to put a house wrap on, which with the age of the siding would probably mean replacing it outright.
Switching fuel sources is a much simpler procedure in comparison. Last winter propane was costing me $3.80 a gallon and electricity was $.26 a kwh. Our heatpump on an average January day is going to cost 25% less to run than our 96% efficient propane furnace, and even cheaper than that during the rest of winter and the shoulder seasons.
Hi Matt, I always enjoy your vids but this one seems a bit too much hype for a system you haven't used and tested yet.
There is a big difference in geothermal and air source heat pumps. Geothermal uses heat from pipes in the ground where the temp stay constant and air source relies on ambient air temp which varies tremendously. Air source work fine in hot temps for an AC but as the temp drops below 40F they lose efficiency and at 0F they lose as much as 50% efficiency.
Some new air source do better BUT they rely on additional heat coils and backup heaters and are very expensive. If your home is not well insulated and sealed an air source heat pump will need a backup heat source in cold climates.
For a ground source you need permits and enough land for the ground pipes so not an option for many people and a lot of additional expense.
Heat pumps still use electricity so if you have a blackout you won't have heat. I recommend propane or wood stove where allowed as backup systems for cold climates.
Vertical well heat pump 100 to 400 feet deep. For a vertical system, holes (approximately four inches in diameter) are drilled about 20 feet apart and 100 to 400 feet deep. Unfortunately, vertical loops are the most expensive type of geothermal system to install, since installation involves deep and wide boring. A vertical loop installation costs between $20,000 and $38,000.
Summary: Air source heat pumps work fine for AC but not more efficient than an Energy Star rated AC unit and in cold temps they lose efficiency and most homes require a backup heat source. Especially in houses that are not well insulated and sealed.
Geothermal ground source heat pumps work better but are also way more expensive, require trenches or drilling and permits and may not work for homes with limited space.
Unless you have a big solar power system installed heat pumps will not work in a blackout so you should still have a backup heat system installed.
Vertical well systems do not require much land.
@@JRP3 100 to 400 feet deep
For a vertical system, holes (approximately four inches in diameter) are drilled about 20 feet apart and 100 to 400 feet deep.
@@solarcabin Yes, so exactly as I said, they do not require much land. 2 wells 20 ft apart would handle most needs.
@@JRP3 between $20,000 and $38,000
Unfortunately, vertical loops are the most expensive type of geothermal system to install, since installation involves deep and wide boring. A vertical loop installation costs between $20,000 and $38,000.
@@solarcabin And that still has nothing to do with my point that vertical systems do not require much land. Unrelated data does nothing to alter my accurate premise.
Just put in a Bosh IDS 2.0 5 ton Air source heat pump with inverter and highly recommend! Live in PA and the winters can be rough but it keeps our house nice and warm!
We use a air to water heatpump for almost 4 years now, for heating, cooling and hot water. We have floor heating (tubes with water in all the floors, each room has thermostat) SCOP heating 4,85 SCOP 3,41Cooling, SCOP 3,14 hot water. It is a Inverter system. The coldest week we had was -13Celsius (8,6 F) and had no problems. We use it with solar and have a net production to the grid of about 3MW to the grid each year
I'm going to watch this video, but before I begin, permit me to comment on the title. My response to any title that begins with "the Truth About" raises my skeptical defenses. Methinks the title doth protest too much!
I almost didn't watch the video (even though I'm a channel fan). This is a very logical, straightforward channel. "The truth about.....xyz" titles are what click bait channels use and not solid, educational channels.
@@steve32627 Sadly, the CZcams algorithm (and human nature really) forces them to do that else their video gets buried. Ultimately they have to decide between keeping a small handful of stubborn people watching or actually having a chance of having many people get to see their video.
Also, it's not really "clickbait" if he actually delivers on the promise, that's just an attention grabbing title.
@@steve32627 But he's wrong on this one, Weve had heat pumps in NZ for 20 years and I can attest they cost a lot to run, wood / coal closed burners with a heat transfer system is cheaper
@Ronny Mcdonald every application is specific. I've run an air source HP for 15 years now and would not go back to a furnace based system. Our gas prices skyrocket in the winter while electrical rates stay reasonably stable.
@Robert Szynal this is why I have little hope for society. Everything has to be sensationalized. People are too lazy to research what works best for their situation and just take in the best marketed information as the right answer. In general, the better hyped, better marketed something is, the lower it's real value is.
Heat pump here in NW PA. For all the fracking we have no NG down our way, and my wife didn't want the huge propane tank outside. Works great until temps get below 20F, then it switches to the coils and the power usage goes way up. I think they work best in a modern, well-insulated house (ours is 2013 construction). I doubt they would work in an older 'leaky' or drafty house because they really don't create massive amounts of heat efficiently.
We are quite happy with ours, as while nearby Lake Erie generates a ton of snow, it also keeps the temperatures moderate compared to someplace like MN or WI. We rarely see
In QLD Australia I was converting my laundry Into a second bathroom. As the old electric hot water system was more than 15 years old, it probably would not have coped with ɓeing relocated to the semi weatherproof patio the rest of the laundry was moving to, so a new hot water system was in order.
The $4000 system cost only $1400 fitted thanks to various rebates.
It saved me at the time about a grand a year in power costs. If I had needed a new heater the same deal was available.
I've since added a 10KW solar system to the house, so not only is the hot water free now, but so is the reverse cycle AC and everything else that runs on electricity.
I even get paid by the electricity company because I put more into the grid than I take out.
All that will change when I start plugging an EV into the system though I guess...