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The hunt for the most efficient heat pump in the world
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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"These installers are reaching astounding levels of efficiency by taking extra care to design low-temperature heating systems that warm rooms without using excess energy."
I'd at first really like to find a plumber that does not look at me as if I was an alien creeping out of mud when I tellem that if the central gas heater breaks down completely I want a heat pump. There's really hard conservativism in that business here.
I live in a progressive state in the US and currently renovating a house. Holy crap they all fight me tooth and nail telling me what a horrible idea they are. Nothing but problems, always break, oh my goodness what if the power goes out, the grid cannot handle the load so don't do it. These old timers need to go away.
...then your gas or oil heater doesn't work, either...
Their point is use a small generator to power the gas heater where as a heat pump is 'impossible'.I mention a whole house battery is in my 5 year plan to which they laugh and say your house will burn down. I don't have the patience. I told them I'm an electrical engineer specialized in battery systems and to let me worry about the lithium fires. That shut him up fast.
I designed my heating system around a fairly efficient non-condensing NG boiler that takes 40W for the fan. I can run it and the circulators off my battery bank no problem, and handle a sustained power failure. But only because of the natural gas.
I've been integrating a water-water GSHP into it to provide summer cooling and a supplemental heat source from my solar panels. It works well, but in my climate (Rural Canada) I would be insane to completely remove my gas boiler IMO. Heating demand is just way too high on the sort of days where the power goes out. I've been working on plans for a wood boiler but insurance has put their foot right down on anything that burns wood in the last couple years.
Here in Canada we can't get lithium at a reasonable price so I have 10kWh of lead-acid (which as you know is actually 5). Doesn't go very far on a cold winter day with 4 hours of sun and snow on the panels!
On the upside I haven't had to hook my generator to my house in years, I'm really happy with my "grid-independent" system.
During last winter gas heater servicing I told the plumber to set the unit to 50°C heating water output so I could check if the heaters would get warm enough with a heat pump. 1,5 hours of discussion about old buildings and heat pumps resulted till he complied.
It was just a test setup that could be reverted any time.
Are you in my state? HVAC peeps had little to no idea about heat pumps and claimed they were $20,000 to install and only rich people had them.
I ended up figuring out how to do mine myself with a Mr Cool kit when the furnace died due to the fact that every hvac guy believed a 4th gen heat pump would be useless in the northeast us. It gets down to about 0F here once or twice a winter and the heat pump starts struggling to keep up around those temps but it still does its job.
Whoa, that's f* cold, but with your feedback I'm quite positive all this doomsday feedback I got can be ignored. Problem here is I'll be respnsible for uninterrupted heat and warm water for my tenants, too, so doing these calculations alone, for myself, would not bother me. But there's a ton of responsibility to care for the tenants, and I'd like a professional up for the challenge.
Why care? You say "a heat pump is going in here." There's nothing else
I would like to have someone installing the thing who is motivated like the folks in the article. Motivation=good work=probably an efficient system. But these seem to be hard to come by here.