Now that we (hopefully) agree that\h it’s time for more pumping more now,\h\h
I’d like to finish off this arc of heat pumps with\h a discussion on some of the many varieties there\hare out there,
what the parts that make\hup those machines are and where they go,
and what’s involved in getting a building\h from no pumping to yes pumping.
That includes not only the physical infrastructure, equipment\h and the challenges certain buildings will face,
but also a discussion on some of the\h barriers there are to heat pump adoption.
Some real, and some, let’s just say... inflated.
That particular wrinkle varies a LOT depending on where you are on the planet.
New technologies\hleave lots of room for misunderstandings -
and this one is particularly fun because heat pumps\h are not new tech at all!
They’re a refinement of long-established tech used a little differently.
*whispers* Your refrigerator is a heat pump.
In case you’re here without seeing the video this\h is following, well first
- ding -
that’ll take you there, but the cliffsnotes version is this;
Heat pumps\hmove heat rather than create it.
Although it may be colder outside than inside, unless we’re\h at absolute zero there is heat energy to be collected out there.
And except in really cold\hambient conditions,
as in below -13° Celsius or 5° Fahrenheit,
modern heat pumps are able to move\hat least 2.5 times as much energy as they consume in the process,
making them the most efficient\h way to use any source of energy for the purpose of heating a building
in the vast majority of cases.
That means they lessen the need for fossil fuels in the short term, which is good for many reasons,
and in the long-term they make electrification and decarbonization easier because…
well we can\hdo more with less. Pretty straightforward.
A small note before we continue:
I’m\hfocusing today on residential and light commercial stuff.
When you get\hinto really big commercial systems, well, things are pretty different.
Also,\hthis is by no means a complete picture.
My goal with this video is to give you a\h basic overview of common system designs,
talk about some pros and cons of each particularly\h when it comes to retrofitting existing buildings,
and then I’ll talk about whatever other\hstuff comes up as we go along.
Strap in!
The first thing we need to talk about actually\h has nothing to do with heat pumps whatsoever.\h\h
And fair warning, this section\hmight get some folks a little…\h\h
heated.
The wisest thing we can do in the short\h term can be expressed in these three simple words:
insulate, insulate, and insulate.
No matter what\htechnology is used to heat a building,
the faster heat makes it out of the building through walls\h and windows,
the more heat you need to produce to keep the building warm.
If you live in a\hhome that was built in the last 20 or 30 years, odds are you’re probably in a decent place\halready,
depending on where you are of course.
But in older buildings?
Well, heat\hloss is often a major problem.
Adding insulation to existing buildings (which\halso, by the way, includes things like new windows and general weatherizing)
is a complicated\hand often spicy topic.
Some of this is because buildings are different and techniques suitable\hfor one type of construction
aren’t necessarily suitable for others.
And sometimes it makes more\hsense to demolish energy-intensive buildings and simply start over -
but that course of action\hhas lots of baggage attached to it so for now let’s just…
ignore it and talk about improving\hexisting buildings.
In general, it’s not easy.
But it’s definitely worth doing.
Indisputably.
A problem, though.
It generally takes a long time to see a return on insulation investments.
And when you’re an individual simply being asked nicely to do it, well that puts you off.
After\hall, if you won’t see savings for 5 or 10 years and you aren’t even sure you’ll stay living where\hyou do by that time,
it’s a hard sell.
Worse, if you’re a landlord who is putting the cost of\h energy on your tenants,
you just don’t care!
Which I, for the record, think is real bad.
Shoutout to\hcountries that do energy audits on rental units and publish efficiency scores
so that potential\htenants can see what they’re getting into before signing a lease
and so that the landlords have\ha reason to do actually better.
I like that a lot.
Uh, anyway, incentives to insulate\h - or as I like to call them,\h\h
insulentives - are probably something we\h should be doing, like, a lot more and faster.\h\h
In fact, I’ll go beyond just\hinsulentives - we should,
dare I say it?
Just start paying folks to insulate\holder buildings.
Maybe create some sort of energy-de-intensification agency?
I know.\hWhat is this, Energy Policy Connections?
Well, right now it is.
The only way to equitably solve\hthis problem is with public policy,
and while I’m not here to tell you what exactly that should look\h like,
I’m certain something needs to happen.
And, if I were in charge, I would make sure this\h isn’t some financialized scheme
where people get, like, loans tacked onto property tax bills.
But\hyou can have fun arguing about that down below.
The key problem is that right now, many of the\h buildings which are most in need of insulation\hupgrades
house families who would greatly\h benefit from them but who cannot afford the investment -
or may simply have no say in\hit at all.
We should fix this.
The fact is, unless something’s gone horribly wrong,
every\hinsulation upgrade will pay for itself in time.
And I’m just talking about the money part,
include the externalities like energy supply stability and reduced carbon emissions
and you’re\hgetting even more bang for that buck.
Plus!
If you can save someone $50 or $100\ha month on their energy bills,\h\h
you’ve greatly enhanced their financial security.
Which is also good for society!
The trouble has always been it’s a big upfront cost which many\h simply cannot afford.
Rather than engage in the national pastime of “well, sucks to be you!”
I\hwould rather we help those folks.
Radical, I know.
And by the way, this problem goes\hbeyond just those who cannot afford it.
Sometimes, sorely-needed upgrades get deferred\h because incentives to do them just don’t line up in any sensible way.
For instance, I used to\hlive in an older apartment building where all occupants shared a single gas bill
and paid for\hit collectively in a fixed, budgeted monthly cost.
The building was new enough to be pretty-well\h insulated, but the windows were awful!
They badly needed replacing.
But our energy cost-sharing\hscheme meant that there wasn’t a reason for me to bother replacing my four windows.
My\hgas use represented maybe 2% of the bill,
so even if I somehow never needed heat\h again, 98% of my heating costs would remain.
However, if we had gone in together as a\h building to replace all of the windows,\h\h
we would almost certainly have seen our gas bill\h drop dramatically
and suddenly the windows would actually pay for themselves, and pretty quickly\hI’d imagine.
Getting everyone to agree to it is, of course, the hard part.
It’s really\hfrustrating when stuff like this incentivizes us to remain in less-sustainable\hscenarios.
And the less fortunate among us often have no choice but to take\hthe worse
- or even worst - option.
Anyway, I’ll get off my soap box.
Regardless of how we get there, the better a building can retain heat
the less heating capacity is needed,
and this also means the performance challenges\h heat pumps currently encounter at very cold temperatures
just become less of an issue - which of course means\h well-insulated homes
are better prepared for a heat pump.
So, insulate, insulate, insulate.
Heat pumps are great, but nothing’s better than helping a building hold in heat in\hthe winter
and keep it out in the summer.
OK, so let’s move on.
Finally.
You’ve got a nicely\hinsulated home and are looking at replacing your whatever with a heat pump.
What does that look\hlike?
The equipment in a heat pump consists broadly of three parts:
the outside unit\hwhich absorbs heat from the outside air,
the inside unit or units which then put that\h heat where we want it,
and the refrigerant lineset or sets that connect them together and\hactually carry the refrigerant and thus its heat energy
from place to place.
Sometimes\hthis is all packaged into a single device, and we’ll look at some of those later on,
but\hmore often than not they’re split systems.
Part of why I’m so excited about heat pumps\h is that they’re incredibly flexible
and also quite straightforward - which a lot\h of people don’t seem to be aware of.\h\h
I showed you this heat pump in the original videos.
This is a single-head ductless mini-split heat pump, and is the simplest possible split\hsystem,
despite that mouthful of a name.
Now, I’m doing a fairly deep dive on this style\h of system first because, well for one thing
I have experience with it, but also because in my\h opinion it has a lot of advantages.
I don’t expect it to become that popular here in the US outside\h of certain cases
since so many homes are already set up for ducted heat distribution.
As you’ll\hsee later, that’s a fantastic opportunity for us.
But in places which aren’t, this\hoption presents a lot of opportunities.
This style of system employs simple versions\h of those three basic heat pump components;\h\h
the outside unit,
the inside unit - here\hit’s called the head and is mounted on the wall -
and the refrigerant lineset.
In this\hcase that includes not only the insulated copper tubing which carries the refrigerant,
but also a power and communications cable.
Now, the reason I think this style\h of heat pump has a lot of potential\h\h
is that it’s frankly ridiculously easy to deploy!
And I don’t think that’s hyperbole. Let me explain why;
All it took to get this unit functional was\h determining where to mount the components,\h\h
running a new electrical circuit to the outside\h unit through a disconnect switch
(which I recognize isn’t nothing),
drilling a hole in the\hwall to run the lineset and com wire through,
actually mounting the indoor and outdoor\hunits,
and then connecting them together with flare fittings on the refrigerant lines
and terminated wiring on the electrical side.
This was so simple I did it myself over\ha day -
the most complicated part was evacuating the lineset using a vacuum\hpump and manifold gauges.
Otherwise,
no special tools were required.
Just\ha drill and some wrenches, basically.
Real quick, I’m not suggesting that you follow my\h example and go all DIY here.
In many places it’s not even legal to work on refrigeration equipment\hyourself
because if you mess up you can let the refrigerant out and we generally don’t want that.
That’s why people get licensed for this.
I’m telling you that I did this myself to point out\h this ain’t complicated or particularly difficult.
One concern many people have especially in\h locations where air conditioning is rare\h\h
is that there aren’t enough technicians qualified\h to install this equipment.
That is a problem, yes, but I hope you can see through this example\h\h
that it’s not actually that difficult to get\h folks up to speed.
I barely know what I’m doing but simply by following the instructions
I managed to get this up and running, and after three winter seasons it’s still working just\hfine
so I think I can say I didn’t screw it up!
Aside from who installs it and how hard it is,
let’s look at other options.
If you want or need the indoor unit somewhere other than literally\hon the other side of the wall,
that’s definitely doable.
Generally you can run up to 30 meters or\h 100 feet of line between the units,
though you may need to adjust the refrigerant charge in that\hcase.
Which again is what actual professionals are for.
And what if you need more than one indoor\hunit (which you probably do)?
Well, here’s where mini-split heat pumps get really interesting.
The\hAsian manufacturers have for quite a while now been building these sorta like Lego sets.
They\hare very modular - outdoor units are available in many different capacities and with connections to\hmultiple indoor units,
and thanks to clever stuff like electronic expansion valves and on-the-fly\hload calculation,
one of these bad boys might have 5 or more linesets connected to it, all going\hto different heat exchangers in different rooms.
That not only gives you individual\h room control which is pretty neat,\h\h
but greatly simplifies the installation process.
You only\hneed electrical power run to one outdoor unit,
and it will send power to all the indoor\h units through cables run with the linesets.
That’s actually something I want to focus on for a\hbeat.
I was unaware of this and was expecting that the indoor head would need its own power source.
As a matter of fact I didn’t even consider a unit like this because of that false assumption.
It seemed like far too much of a pain.
But once I knew that the outside unit is in control\h of everything,
shoutout to Aging Wheels for his video on how he installed these,
I realized\hthis was way more flexible than I assumed.
And as a matter of fact, it became far and away\h the easiest option in my specific scenario.
Now, when you have a more complicated system\h with multiple heads in multiple rooms,\h\h
this does add the difficulty of dealing with the\h spaghetti that is a ton of refrigerant lines.\h\h
But they can be run in various ways.
They\hcan go through attics or wall cavities,
they can be run alongside or up exterior walls in\h concealing chases,
it’s really up to you!
And, it should be noted, the indoor units don’t have to be\h these wall-mounted things.
There are options which get concealed in ceilings,
they can be floor-mounted devices akin\hto radiators,
and there are more options, too like air handlers or surface-mounted ceiling thingies which look\hlike something out of a starship.
The really cool😎thing about refrigeration technology
is that\hit’s quite flexible so the sky’s the limit.
And perhaps the biggest advantage of systems\hlike this
is that they are cooling-capable out of the box.
One thing you always have to deal\h with when cooling the air is water.
Water vapor in the air condenses on cold surfaces,
and so\hwhen cooling the air this condensate collects and needs to be dealt with.
A standard ductless head like\h this has a water pan at the bottom
and a little drain hose directs water that collects in it…
elsewhere.
The simplest setup is to mount the head on an exterior wall and drill a small hole\hfor the drain hose,
or just run it out with the refrigerant lines if they came in from outside,
thus letting it just sorta pee out as it collects.
But if that’s not an option there are other\hsolutions, too, like condensate pumps.
But what if you currently heat your home\h with a boiler that circulates hot water\h\h
through some pipes and releases heat in\hradiators?
Well, there is a heat pump for you - and it can often also produce domestic\hhot water if you use such a combined system.\h\h
Before I get into it, though, I do just want to\hsay that unless you’re firmly committed to the\hidea of hydronic heating
- which in fairness I\hknow many people are -
I really really think you ought to consider a ductless system.
I know it\htakes some adjustment getting used to warm air being pushed around, but these heads\hare very very quiet and it’s really not that bad.
I recognize that in many cases ductless systems\h are not a perfect fit.
Like, for instance, in bathrooms.
There's no sense running a lineset to a head in\hsuch a small space,
but if it’s on an outside wall there’s probably already a radiator in there\h because it needs heat.
Also, let’s face it,
these aren’t the prettiest things.
So I get it,\hI’m just saying - don’t rule these out right away,
particularly since they offer cooling which\h might be increasingly necessary as time goes on.
If you’re on team radiator, though,
(and/or on team in-floor heating I suppose)
air-to-water heat pumps are pretty common.
These will effectively replace a boiler by running a refrigerant lineset from an outside\hheat-collecting unit much like this one
into a refrigerant-to-water heat exchanger which replaces\hyour boiler.
This can be a more turn-key solution,
however these units generally don’t produce\h water as hot as a conventional boiler does.
Depending on the radiators you currently have,\h this could be an issue.
The solution is pretty simple in that case - just replacing radiators as\hnecessary -
but if it comes up, well then that’s more work and more cost.
Also an option are\hhigh-temperature air-to-water heat pumps that eliminate that potential hiccup,
but those tend\hto be less efficient particularly in cold climates so there is definitely a trade-off.
As\his the case with pretty much everything…
But anyway, one thing that I want to stress is\h that all a heat pump does
is collect heat from outside and move it, one might say "pump" it, indoors.
The equipment\hwhich accomplishes this might seem a little strange if you’re not used to it,
and it\hdefinitely feels weird to be getting heat from colder air.
But the end goal is the same as\hit always has been -
release heat where we want it so our homes stay warm.
Air-to-water\hheat pumps allow you to use pretty much the same heat-distribution system you already\hhave which has value,
especially since there’s typically only one lineset to run in that case so the\hinstallation is less intensive.
Plus of course there is value in familiarity, too.
I would\hsuggest, however, that you make a deep assessment before committing to one or\hthe other,
assuming you have the choice.
Now I’d like to focus on the challenges to heat\h pump adoption,
with a particular emphasis on the situation here in United States.
As I said in an\hearlier video, the immensely frustrating thing about the way heat pumps have been deployed here
is that the vast majority of single-family homes already have excellent infrastructure in place\hfor a heat pump.
Many other housing types are well-prepared, too,
but homes with central\hair conditioning are basically already set.
There is already an outside unit with\h a decent electrical supply run to it.
There is already an inside unit in the form of\h an evaporator coil.
Someone has already planned a path for a lineset to go - and even went so\h far as to put it there!
And there is already an air handler and ductwork to work with it all.
And of course that means a lot of boxes - in fact, pretty much all of them! - are already\hchecked for many people over here.
Because, once again, air conditioners ARE heat\hpumps!
We just tend to not bother with the reversing valves because “but sometimes!” thinking\his rampant.
The good news of widespread use of air conditioning is that we already have trained\htechnicians
who know how to install and service heat pumps.
They’re doing it all the time even if\hwe haven’t realized it.
And that is an advantage compared to other parts of the world.
The less\hgood news for us is that, so far anyway,
systems which could best take advantage of all that\h existing infrastructure...
just aren’t very good.
I’m not just saying that, by the way, I can\hback this up with data.
A fantastic resource I was pointed to by Ian on Twitter is the list\hof air source heat pumps maintained by NEEP,
the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships.
They\htrack, among other things, the COP at 5 degrees,
and we can simply sort by that figure\hand see who’s making the best stuff.
Right now, I want you to look at the ducting\hconfiguration column.
The best performers are overwhelmingly non-ducted configurations.
These\hare mini-split systems.
When you see multizone mix of non-ducted and ducted,
those are the\hlego-like systems I was talking about earlier.
Those can connect to both a ductless head\h and a ducted air handler at the same time.
Which is pretty neat.
Hello! Voiceover me is here to tell you that,
well, this section of the video has become a bit of a disaster.
I’ll explain, but first, these\hexcellent systems at the very top of the list aren’t just mini-splits,
some are what are\hknown as VRF systems, and that stands for variable refrigerant flow.
This tech is really neat\hbecause, when some rooms are too warm but others are too cold,
it allows the system to move\hheat within the building.
It does this by pumping the refrigerant between rooms, taking energy out of\hone room to cool it,
and dumping it in another to warm it up.
That tech is pretty unlikely\hto see use in the home,
although apartment buildings are likely to deploy it.
This excellent\hFujitsu machine, for example, can actually have 15 heads connected to it,
and since any head can\hheat while the others are cooling or vice versa,
it’s ideal for multifamily setups.
Best of all its\hperformance is amazing.
Its COP is a stellar 3.54 even at 5 Fahrenheit / -13 celsius,
and it retains\hnearly all of its capacity at that temperature.
The performance of this machine is so good that\h even here in Chicago,
so long as you had decent insulation there would almost never be a need\hfor an alternate heat source which is fantastic.
Anyway, I was about to say “to see the machines\h that American homes can best take advantage of,\h\h
we need to filter for single-zone, centrally\h ducted systems”
and then I would have shown you how there’s basically only one decent\hproduct line from Carrier,
and nothing else.
This is still kinda close to the case,
and the American giants of the industry should absolutely be ashamed of themselves for continuing\hto pump out the same mediocre equipment -
ancient 13 SEER air conditioners,
which is a horrible\hefficiency in 2022,
are still getting made unfortunately -
while various companies in Asia\hare actually innovating.
However, I can happily report that the situation is at least a bit better than\hthat.
For whatever reason, when I first wrote this section I couldn’t see any of these units;
those\hwith the brands Allied, Ducane, Comfort-Aire, Concord and Century.
Maybe these just got added to\hthe list, maybe something was wonky when I looked it up, I don’t know,
but these have a very good COP at 5 Fahrenheit,
and retain a decent chunk of\htheir capacity in that cold.
It could be better, yes, but roughly ⅔ is still pretty good.
That’ll\hkeep your backup system from kicking on unless it gets frightfully cold.
And these are your typical,\hwhat I call “barrel-style” American outdoor units and evaporator coils.
This is the exact sort of\hequipment that gets installed here all the time.
The fact is there’s really nothing fundamentally\h different between one of these and a mini split.\h\h
They’re the same parts, in fact the same\hmachines, just in different form factors.\h\h
It seems that the tech which gets put into\hcommodity mini-splits as a matter of course -
basically variable-speed compressors and more intelligent\h control logic -
is finally making its way into at least a few American-style machines.
Now, the other\hthing I want to talk about here is the HSPF, or heating seasonal performance factor.
This is a\hmetric which attempts to give an overall average efficiency throughout a heating season.
These\hunits all have pretty mediocre HSPF ratings.
Which is very weird because an HSPF of 9\h should indicate an average COP of only 2.63,
but here on the NEEP list it bests\h that even at 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
I do not know the reason for this discrepancy,\h and if you do by all means please share.
Now, although the situation is improving for us,\h\h
it’s still pretty bad and there are some other\h complications which I’ll get to in a bit.
But now, to set the stage for the next section,
pretend\hthat you didn’t know about the units we just saw
and that there was only one decent product line\havailable in the US.
You’d probably want to ask;
Why is this?
Well, I’d be happy to speculate.
I\hthink a number of factors have combined to make the American manufacturers largely...
just not really care.
First, the historically cheap cost of natural gas means that there’s been little reason\hfrom the consumer’s point of view
to go with a heat pump if they have access to the gas grid.
And since most really cold places have gas grids,
at least where there’s the density to make it\h work, it’s rational from a consumer’s perspective
to not bother with a heat pump.
Because\henergy is energy, you can convert the units your natural gas is billed in (here\hthat’s the therm)
to the kilowatt hour and and make an apples-to-apples cost comparison.
Here in Chicagoland, at least until recently gas has cost about a quarter what electricity\hdoes for the same amount of delivered energy.
That has meant that heat pumps basically never\h made any sense here.
Locally we need a consistent COP of 4 just to break even with the cost of\hgas, and attaining that is, frankly, hard.\h\h
Even now.
But especially 20+ years ago.
Around\hhere, people just wanted air conditioning in the summer and already had some sort of cheap\hheat
which a heat pump couldn’t touch on cost.
And so the typical air conditioning system in\hmy climate is super basic.
In most cases it’s a single-capacity, single-speed\h system that is either on or off.\h\h
And, of course, it’s tacked on to the gas-fired\h heating system made by the same manufacturer.\h\h
Makes you wonder if they don’t want to\h cannibalize their furnace sales, doesn't it?
Now, most all of these manufacturers do\hmake reversible air conditioners
and have for many years.
But in general, they’re the\hsame basic, one-speed, one-capacity condensing units that we install here,
but equipped with a\hreversing valve and some sort of defrost timers.
As a matter of fact, if you’ve ever wondered why a\h thermostat terminal board has so many connections,
well the O terminal tells the condenser to reverse\hflow for heating.
Now, those heat pumps, although they’re mediocre,
work well-enough in the regions\h of the US with milder climates,
and those regions typically don’t have widespread gas infrastructure\h so many homes are all-electric from the start.
These factors have combined to create little\h reason for American HVAC manufacturers
to develop their air conditioners into\hcompetent, cold-climate heat pumps.
And the lasting effect of all this is that we are\h currently in a place
where getting a cold-climate heat pump is just… not easy here.
Even though\hwe are pumping out heat pumps right and left.
We make loads of air conditioners,
but relatively few are made reversible and fewer still are equipped with the tech to make\hthem heat
when it gets Chicago-levels of cold.
This limited supply, combined with the sudden\hinterest in heat pumps,
has led to many suppliers and installers charging rather absurd premiums\hfor these systems -
if you can even get them to give you a quote.
Let me tell you a story.
A\hfriend of mine had their AC unit die last summer.
Their heat source is propane which, while\hcheaper than electricity, isn’t that much\hcheaper.
I suggested that they should look into\h getting a Mitsubishi hyper heat unit,
and I helped arrange quotes from the local HVAC company who\his one of Mitsubishi’s authorized contractors.
A basic replacement of the air conditioner,
including a new evaporator coil and lineset,
was quoted at $3,000.
This option would\hcontinue to use the existing furnace as the air handler - and thus propane for heat.
A\hthree-head ductless system from Mitsubishi—
a perfect solution for their small home in a number of ways!
—would\hcost…
more than $12,000.
That’s a gigantic price difference!
And if we dig a little into it, we\hfind what can only be described as greed.
Yes, the equipment from Mitsubishi is expensive compared to\h the commodity grade Carrier equipment in the other quote.
But it’s not $9000 more expensive.
This\honline wholesaler would sell me similar equipment for about $5,500 shipped.
Let’s say that with\hthe linesets and a few other ancillary things the equipment cost is $6500.
Now I know that mounting\hwall units and drilling holes for them is more and different work than what is required to replace\ha condenser and lineset,
but I can’t see it being $6000 worth of work.
Especially when I did it\hmyself that one time in a day, learning as I went.
Actually, when you consider that the technician\h who ended up replacing the air conditioner
needed torches for brazing,
had to run copper lines\hthrough utility spaces rather than the exterior of the building as they would have for the ductless\hinstall,
and needed to fit a new evaporator coil into a cramped space above the furnace which\hended up taking pretty much an entire work day\hto complete,
I can honestly say that I feel like\hinstalling the three head system would have been easier for an experienced technician.
And, by the\hway, there was already sufficient electrical power at the location for the outside unit.
I will admit I’m not in the HVAC business,
but my gut tells me the company could have made\h more money on that job in the end if they quoted it at $9000
- a much easier-to-swallow price that\h made the payback period reasonable -
but trying to get another $3000 out of it lost them the sale.
If I were to guess, that company puts a fixed percentage markup on all the equipment they sell
which I would not call savvy, but that’s just me.
Now if you think that’s bad, here’s a real head\hscratcher.
My brother lives in San Diego.
If you don’t know, San Diego… really doesn’t get cold.
And for some silly reason, his home has central AC with a gas furnace - pretty much the\hsame system you’d find here in Illinois.
Electricity is very expensive there, yes, but\h there’s just hardly a need for heating.
He tells me he and his partner used the furnace for just\h four days this winter.
He wanted to get quotes to replace his aging AC with a heat pump, and the\hfirst company that came out?
First, they said he’d probably want an expensive hybrid fuel system\h so he could keep using gas for backup which…\h\h
no.
No.
And second, the quote they gave him for a Lennox heat\hpump and air handler?
It came in at over $16,000.
And that was the cheap option from this company.
I know that’s California, maybe there are some\h weird permitting costs, but c’mon.
My brother would be perfectly served with a reversible 2-ton\h system, maybe three at most.
He does not need a hybrid system, and he certainly doesn’t need a\htrue cold-climate heat pump.
And thanks to the Internet, we know that the equipment cost for a 16\hSEER 2.5 ton system
is probably less than $3000 - I mean, these people are making their money, too.
Plus the lineset and whatever other miscellaneous stuff.
I cannot see the quote he got as anything\h but a dishonest company
taking advantage of someone looking to install a “trendy” heat pump,\h and just hoping they don’t know what that is.
This is probably happening all across\hthe country, and indeed the world,\hand it sucks.
Heat pumps are not miracle\hmachines, they’re not even new tech!
And installing one is either much the same\h process as the air conditioners we’ve been\hinstalling for many decades
or potentially easier\has is the case for mini-splits.
I mean, I would not go out and buy a torch, some gas bottles,\h and learn how to braze copper piping on my own,
but I was pretty confident I could tackle\h a few pre-formed flare fittings.
And I did!
Hi, it’s me again.
I gotta cover a few more things\hin voiceover before the end.
First, to make the last few minutes more explicit,
the obfuscation\hof equipment pricing by installers is a serious problem and one that, well,
I couldn’t tell you\hhow to solve.
Businesses are gonna business, but a real danger here that’s worth a hard look\hinto
is that many of the incentives we currently use to push people towards better equipment such\has rebates for installing it
are ripe for abuse by these installers.
Whatever savings the rebate\hmight bring can simply evaporate if the installer builds it into the quote,
and when they’re\hinventing their own markups on equipment cost, anything goes.
It would be great if everyone\h could simply purchase their own equipment directly
and then hire installers for their labor only,
but\ha lot of rebate programs make this impossible and of course few people have the expertise\hto determine the equipment they need.
The best thing I can do is remind everybody that\h heat pumps are just air conditioners and are not\hactually special.
Hopefully the more people\h that know this, the less gouging will occur.
Alright, and the other thing I need to talk about\h is the wrinkle that is subpar ductwork.
Thanks to the operational limits of heat pumps, airflow may\h become a challenge in existing homes
thanks to ductwork restrictions.
As amazing as refrigeration\his, the refrigerant can only get so hot - it’s a function of the system pressure.
And that means\hyou need a greater volume of air moving over the heat exchanger to get all that heat out.
Ductless\hsystems don’t pose a challenge here because the heads are designed to attain a certain heat output
and the heat exchanger is huge compared to the air it needs to move.
But when you’re dealing with a\hrelatively small coil shoved into some ductwork, you need as much airflow as you can get -
and\hregrettably often, the ductwork wasn’t designed with that in mind.
A furnace which heats with\hfire can make the air leaving it extremely hot,
so the ducts didn’t need to be designed for the\h same volume of air as is ideal with a heat pump.
It's the same problem with undersized radiators in countries that don't use ducting.
But, to be clear, this is a situational problem.
Your ductwork could be just fine for a heat pump without any reconfiguration.
One possibility is to\hsimply force more air through them with a stronger blower,
but that has limitations and can get noisy.
But even if it is a problem in your case,
the good news is that a situational problem can be dealt\hwith situationally.
It might be that to match the output of your current heating system, you’d need\hto have a much larger heat pump than your existing air conditioner.
I saw someone on Twitter bring up that they were told they’d need a 5 ton heat pump
(which is 60,000 BTU/hr or 17.5 kW by the way)
but their ducts were sized only for a 3 ton air conditioner.
So, they were told the only path\h to a heat pump was expensive ducting upgrades.
But I say - don’t let “but sometimes” thinking\hstop you!
The fact is you rarely need the full output of a heating system anyway.
Around here\hthey all seem to be oversized by a factor of about 2.
So it could be that even if you’ll\honly be able to have a 3 ton heat pump,
that's gonna be all you need for the majority of\hthe winter anyway.
I can tell you that this is exactly the boat that I’m.
My 70 thousand\hBTU furnace only runs about half the time even when it’s well below zero outside, so, a\hthree ton heat pump
- which is 36,000 BTU - would actually be more than enough almost all the time.
And by the way, this problem might very well be temporary.
With new refrigerants and technologies\h on the horizon, who knows what’s possible.
From what I can tell, there’s regrettably a lot of\h old-school thinking permeating the trade.
Some of it is understandable - it’s hard to explain\h to customers all the nuances involved here,\h\h
and they just want an HVAC system that\hworks.
But some of it is also... just weird!
My friend’s quote for a three-head mini split\h seems absolutely bonkers to me,
but it’s become clear from conversations I’ve\h had that lots of HVAC companies are charging similar amounts.
They’re seemingly allergic to\hmini-splits for some reason,\h\h
which is a real shame since they’re a great option\h when you have limitations like poor ductwork.\h\h
We’re entering a strange new phase of indoor\h comfort - much of it is the same, but refined.\h\h
And yet there are also entirely new opportunities to be found.
We\hjust need equipment to get a little bit better, easier to obtain,
and for companies to sell\hit to you and to do the work for a fair price.
OK, I’m starting to run out of hot air.
So I want\hto talk about a couple more things before the jazz hits.
First, ambient noise.
Heat pumps, unfortunately,\hmake noise and this has some people worried.
Now, for the record, and I know this\h doesn’t make it right or anything,\h\h
we’re surrounded by pretty loud heat pumps\hin the summer and we’re…
mostly alright.
However, modern heat pumps are so much quieter\h than the air conditioners we’re used to now.
Some of that is simply because they\hdon’t do the whole
[imitates A/C starting]
thing old-fashioned AC units do when they startup.
That’s when you notice an air conditioner the most - once it’s running, you tend to just\hfilter it out.
Inverter-driven compressors have a slow ramp-up in speed,
and you basically\hdon’t even notice it.
Plus, aside from the whole hard start thing,
they’re just much quieter in\hgeneral.
Mostly because unless it’s so cold or so hot that it needs to give it all it’s got,
it’s running at a slow, barely-audible speed.
Like this. This is me talking to\hyou in my normal speaking voice right next to a heat pump.
And this one\his actually working pretty hard right now.
Let’s wait ‘til it gets to temperature and see\h how much quieter it gets.
OK, so now the indoor temperature is at the set point and the heat\hpump has slowed down to basically an idle speed.\h\h
The great thing about the inverter compressor\h technology that you find
even in pretty cheap heat pumps like this is that they will\h operate at whatever capacity
they need to for the given load.
Rather than run for 10 minutes\hand stay off for 30,
this can actually run at 25% output.
That means it’s less disruptive because\h you don’t hear it starting and stopping.
But it also just means it’s quieter from the start.
This\his the ambient noise level that this heat pump operates at for the vast majority of the time.
The only thing you notice in the winter is when it defrosts you hear it stop, start, stop, and start\hagain.
So, while I [clunk as compressor stops]...
Oh it just stopped [laughs].
So while I understand\hthat people are concerned about the outdoor ambient environment and the additional noise,
it’s honestly not as bad as you might think.
I saw a Tweet about someone looking to install a\h heat pump in Seattle
but they were told it would be illegal thanks to strict noise ordinances.
Uh, guys, ya gotta update those.
I mean, for one, I kinda doubt a good mini-split\h would actually violate that ordinance, but if it does -
well, looks like there’s an\hordinance we gotta toss out!
Not only are they just not that loud anymore, but if slightly louder\houtdoor environments
are the price we have to pay to help reduce carbon emissions and increase\henergy independence,
I think it’s worth it, don’t you?
If NIMBYs get in the way of installing\h heat pumps, may god have mercy on our souls…
Lastly, let’s talk about packaged heat pumps.
They\hexist, but right now seem to have some performance challenges which, well I’m not surprised by.
One\hvery common packaged heating and cooling thingy is the PTAC, which stands for packaged terminal\hair conditioner.
If you’ve ever stayed in a low-to-medium tier hotel in the US,
you’re\hprobably familiar with the beige lump of cooling sitting below the window - that’s a PTAC.
They’re\halso kinda common in certain residential settings, too.
Luckily, the PTAC has been developed\hinto the PTHP, or packaged terminal heat pump.
Right now, NEEP barely has any data on these and\h what they do have isn’t… great…
the PTAC is a design optimized more for ease-of-installation by\hway of standardization than objective performance.
Hotels love them because they can be swapped\h out in minutes
and just by keeping a few spares on-hand, out-of-order rooms due to heating and\hcooling issues can be largely avoided.
Until recently these provided heat via resistive heating\helements,
but lately the refrigeration circuits are becoming reversible.
I suspect these are going\hto have some upper performance boundaries because,
well, their design is quite a compromise.
If you\hactually were to remove the PTAC from its sleeve,
you’d discover that the PTAC is the\honly thing separating the inside from the outside -
that vent you see from the\houtside of a building that utilizes PTACs
is literally a large hole in the\hwall.
PTACs are really more like…
the guts of a window unit made to slide into\h a standard sleeve, with strip heaters, too.
It's likely the case that buildings which currently\h use PTACs would be better off to de-PTAC.\h\h
Hotels might consider replacing banks of 10 or\h 15 rooms with a large roof-mounted VRF system,\h\h
and apartments might want to\hconvert to ductless mini-splits.\h\h
Actually, my old apartment building would\hbe much better served by ductless heat pumps.
With the bathrooms on interior walls,\h I would only have needed a three-head system for my two-bedroom apartment.
Two small heads for the bedrooms,
and a large one for the living room, kitchen,\hand dining area.
Speaking of my old apartment…
Another less-common packaged system is the…
well\hactually I don’t know what its non-trade-name is but the MagicPack.
This thing is a packaged\hfurnace and AC system.
Kind of a clever idea, but anyone who has to replace one of these -\hyou have my sympathies.
They’re not made by many manufacturers and you’re pretty much stuck with a\hsingle option.
But apartment buildings in my area are still getting built to use them -
it’s\hobvious from the outside because they have a very particular vent arrangement.
I imagine\hthese will have the same airflow issues as PTHPs,
so again, buildings which use these\h might be best served by mini-splits.
And then of course, there’s the venerable window\h unit.
These… actually could probably be turned into pretty decent heat pumps.
The bigger\hissue there is that window units, as a rule,
aren’t making a good seal between inside\hand outside.
So while a window unit-esque cold-climate heat pump can certainly be built,
it would probably be better if it were put through a wall and sealed up with expanding foam.
And I suppose\hat that point you’re just re-inventing the PTAC, but with perhaps better outside airflow.
This is why mini-splits are pretty cool.
Oh, and\hyes I’ve seen that neat-looking low-profile heat pump thingy.
I’ll be interested in its performance\hnumbers, because assuming they’re good and you can seal it and the window up well-enough,
that could be a very powerful idea for certain places.
But for now, I think we can leave it here.
Remember, heat pumps aren’t some miracle tech we’ve never played with before.
We’ve been\husing the technology for ages, and there are many directions we can take it from here.
One fun one\hthat so far hasn’t been seen much outside of Japan is the use of supercritical carbon dioxide as\h a refrigerant.
Over there it’s called EcoCute,
and I’m not kidding.
Even now, though,\hwe’ve got incredibly powerful and relatively easy-to-deploy options sitting at our feet.
We may disagree on how best to move forward.
And however we do it, it will\htake time and a lot of effort to get us where we need to go.
But when has\hthat ever stopped us?
Thanks for watching.
♫ egregiously smooth jazz ♫
I’m certain something needs to…
why’d I emphasize “should” like that?
Well, we went a while without needing retakes and\h now we’re at this line which is taking forEVER.\h
Working on refrigeration equipment\h yourself… ooooowhat?
You can’t change the wording on the fly, you know that.
But you can argue about…. Ugh.
Yeah.
That was a decent take. But I still wanna do another one.
Finally.
Ugghhhhh
don’t do that. Don’t do that.
[a series of really strange noises]
[whoop… whoop …. whoop]
[snorts]
As a matter of fact, I didn’t even consider a uni…
They can go through attics or wall cavities, they\hcan be rung al....
I just… did it a gain. Run! Not rung.
Rung…. is on a ladder!
A couple of caveats. First, I have…
FURST!
Is that, was that weird?\h Probably would’ve been OK.
Did you like how I put stock footage of ducks over the part where I was talking about ductwork?
If you didn't think that was deliberate you were sorely mistaken.
In fact, I almost decided to try and make every piece of stock footage some kinda pun on whatever I was talking about, but I couldn't be bothered.
This video really was a slog at times.
Next, something that isn't heat pumps!