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submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Heat pumps can't take the cold? Nordics debunk the myth::By installing a heat pump in his house in the hills of Oslo, Oyvind Solstad killed three birds with one stone, improving his comfort, finances and climate footprint.

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[-] Pretzilla@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I want to understand what happens when it's too cold out. And just running in pure air sourced HP mode, without supplemental heat.

Does it keep running at 100% but produces no heat? Limited heat? Does the house get colder and colder until everyone turns into a popsicle?

Or does it only heat the house to 18c instead of 20c?

In a climate where the low is -10c, how well does it work?

[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 5 points 9 months ago

A heat pump will always generate a small amount of heat just from the compressor running, but most of the time that's a lot less energy than is being moved. As the outdoor temperature drops the delta between input and output air temp will decrease until the difference is entirely from generated heat in the compressor. Most designs would turn on extra resistive heating once the output temperature drops below your set target though. Modern designs are capable of moving a reasonable amount of heat even down to at least -25°C / -13°F now though.

[-] BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev 4 points 9 months ago

It gets less effective, down to running at 100% and not moving heat. Heat pumps work by expanding a gas, which cools it. Since it's cold, the "heat" outside was the gas. Then the gas is taken inside and compressed, the gas heats up from the compression (since all the energy is squeezed into a smaller space, effectively speaking). Now that heat can be transferred to the colder air inside. So long as the expanded gas turns colder than the outside, it can absorb heat.

From a Google, common ones can go as low as - 25C, which means they are able to cool a gas to lower temps than that when expanded. There is still heat to get, even in -25C.

[-] Player2@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 months ago

One thing that happens is that the defrost cycle takes a longer time, so it spends less time heating the building

[-] MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

I have an air sourced heat pump and it gets to -35C for a few weeks at time here. When it's that cold it does produce heat but your breath is hotter. There's no point in running it as it just doesn't make any kind of useful heat. Below -10C the amount of heat it produces noticeably tapers off.

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[-] RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

So my question with heat pumps is more how much does humidity effect the efficiency? Where I live is high elevation, has cold winters, but the air is dry as fuck. Single digit humidity for a month wouldn't be unusual.

My understanding is that heat pumps work best with humidity since moving moisture is part of how the heat is produced. When does a reasonably priced heat pump start falling off in efficiency?

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[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

No that's just my shitty heat pump. Sigh...

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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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