217: Heat Pump Teamwork - Are They Worth It?

Matt and Sean talk about whether or not networked, cascading heat pumps are viable for home use. Are they worth it?
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00:00 - Intro & Feedback
14:29 - Cascade Heat Pumps Discussion

[@axdsc]

Had a good friend who is a DIY enthusiast, but still always says "I can make more money, I can't make more time" when discussing choosing what to DIY.

[@samuelfeguer]

This is why a tv show like This Old House(which broadcasts on free public television) is so crucial because they present information in such a way that is so understandable by the general public. They do a great job between cutaways, visual aids, and use laymans terms to help people understand how homes work and how they are built.

[@jmr]

I accept the fact Matt will blather on about something I already know and don't care about because someone else is new to the subject.

[@charoleawood]

"Bad rap" --- from R A P meaning "record of arrests and prosecutions" for those who are curious. i usually take to saying "rep" as in reputation, but now that i know that "rap" isn't just a weird misspelling of "rep" i may use it more.

[@ForTheBirbs]

Thanks again for a great podcast. I'm in Sydney, Australia, and in a 12 unit (apartment) 1970's block. We have a failing instantaneous gas heater and 315 litre storage tank central hot water system. The cost to upgrade like for like and bring it up to code is AU$33k. The cost for two C02 heat pumps with a COP of 6 and two 400 litre tanks plus 50 litre mixer tank is around $16k. Federal and state government rebates reduce the cost to around AU$11k. A no brainer. Down the track we can add solar. I'll message Matt a great chart that show the comparative running costs here. Cheers, Jim

[@sagetmaster4]

Wow tou brought me back to MY childhood in CNY in a house with heating through floor grates

[@Babarudra]

I've really been paying attention to the heating options recently. This last winter was our first in RI. It wasn't horrible compared to NJ, but it was my first winter ever with oil heat. Holy crap it's expensive! We went from a house with gas forced air, that ran about $120/month, to this relatively new oil furnace with hot water radiators that was $450-500/month. I'd like to keep the radiators or go to baseboards, but this oil needs to go. We'll be doing some insulating and tightening up of the house too. Thanks for the great content on both channels!

[@steve32627]

I'm a mechanical contractor (HVAC) and live in the US climate zone 3. This is part of the country that even older technology heat pumps worked well in. My current house has one from 2007 and it doesnt switch to aux heat until +18F. This covers our heating needs all but a few days per year. Even with 17 years of personal testimony about their performance, i still run across people that have a twisted sense that somehow heatpump are a shadowy political issue. It's literally just a handfull of extra parts added to an air conditioner system. We're building a new, high efficiency house and will definitely be putting a variable capacity heatpump in. The amazing thing is our new house is over double the size of our current house and has basically the same heating/cooling needs as the mid 1960s house we currently occupy.

[@JohnBoen]

Sanderson's Laws... I am Bridge 4!

[@davidabineri908]

Don't forget that there are better ways to heat one's house than with hot air moving all the dust through your house. There are air-to-water heat pumps also that can feed into a hydronic system using baseboard radiators and under floor heating that are the ultimate in "cozy".

[@ericmaclaurin8525]

I hate how often info is limited to make sure everyone on the planet can understand.

[@erniecolussy1705]

I moved from Pittsburgh PA to Seattle WA in 1997. At that time it was common to hear "heat pumps don't work here due to the weather." I would call that out as a lie since they worked in Pittsburgh (with auxiliary heat) which gets much colder. (Even at that time with technology of that time in Seattle there would have been little or no need for auxiliary heat.) I think that a large part of the lack of adoption of heat pumps at that time was that most houses then didn't have air conditioning. Due to climate change (and other factors) air conditioning has become more common. And so have heat pumps. I feel that the need for air conditioning has driven the adoption of heat pumps. (Note, that changes in climate have not changed the heating design day requirements. It is mostly an attitude change.)

[@jaymacpherson8167]

Virginia has highly varied temperatures given the east side has an ocean and the west side has mountains. While temperatures from decade to decade differ, from the time I lived near DC from 1960 to 1984, I experienced temperatures as low as -20 F to as high as 105 F with high humidity. While it may be a temperate zone by definition, I sure appreciated AC in summer and a good furnace in winter.

[@James_R_]

The door to door salesmen try to sell solar come by every few months. When I ask for the numbers, they want $45-60k! Then they say, don't worry it is a write off. Crazy scam imo.

[@andreycham4797]

This is what he pays for solar. According to him his hourly pay must be around $500 to justify that reap off

[@williamblue9996]

i have Solar panels, home battery, hot water heat pump, eclectic car, After up front costs power bill in credit car costing next to nothing to run. Each time a new item is added to the system this seems to add to the savings or value of all items in the system and I haven't really got my head a round this retro saving flow loop thing. My question is how does the across system saving work and the best way to set a system up take advantage of it. I enjoy listening to your show

[@FGM013]

Loved Matt’s comment on the perception of the heated air with a heat pump. I’ve had heat pumps all my adult like and my main complaint was the “cold” air coming out. Of course the low temperatures in my area have been rising steadily and I haven’t used the heat pump in the winter for over ten years.

[@alanwardrop9575]

With a heat recovery ventilation system (such as for Passive House) would it be more efficient to use an air to air heat pump to take heat from the exhaust air than from outside. If the intake is on the internal side of the heat exchanger it will be starting with air at room temperature rather than fighting against the deep cold outside.

[@DanielBoger]

14:19 I just had the realization that a distributor on a car could be considered an analog computer…

[@RayJohnson1980]

at least you have chapters on this video for starters lol

[@ericmaclaurin8525]

A control board failure is insulting. Its a bunch of on off switches. Losing hardware because you can't turn things in and off properly shouldn't be a thing. If companies stopped reinventing everything just to create a proprietary option we could have very reliable and fairly universal system management controllers.

[@Babyblasphemy]

One annoying thing about including The Basics is that either you include it every time to ensure that the audience is educated, or you refer back to a previous video that nobody will actually go watch before continuing the current video. As one of the people that don't need The Basics as much, it can get annoying having to sit through my 93rd explanation of how Fusion reactors work. I am also in the Matt Camp of being too lazy to actually skip those sections.

[@ericmaclaurin8525]

You can take your little heat pump and ... 😂

[@user-xx4yl1hy7f]

Maybe someone could make a praise chart where people can say positive things about a solar installer and others could read them before they hire someone to do their solar installation. Sheila Mink in New Mexico

[@bknesheim]

There was analog computers that calculated the time for the tide coming in already in the 18" hundred.

[@dube7729]

I love all this new that we are coming out with! I was an electrician.

[@mike_realityi]

Last month my bill was -$45 USD. The comment about installers overcharging... SolarSurge and other industry insiders have been talking about how the cost of financing an install that installers have to pay to the bank/lender have gone up due to the number of installers failing and going under. I so wanted a Air to Water Hydronic Heat Pump system for our heat and hot water however I am starting to look at trying to talk the wife into doing mini splits Heat pumps for our 1930s cape. We just got a Heat Pump Hot Water heater installed.

[@GeorgeBP81]

Back in 09 I was trying to convince the 20 apartments in my building to buy an air to water heat pump that in the winter would replace district heating and in the summer it would replace district hot water and provide a central AC as a bonus. The investment would have been recovered in 5-10 years, or if we add solar in 3-5 years. Unfortunately nobody wanted to make the effort of getting this system and all I achieved was that everyone was looking at me as if I was a madman that watched 1 too many episodes of Startrek. They simply didn't understand (and wouldn't believe) how a " fancy airconditioner" would be able to do that without blowing up the electric bill.

[@therookienomore88]

Heat pumps are great, but you already had district heating? They would probably look at the costs of either. Was the district heating from steam/natural gas?

[@16jocko]

How about going to two channels/sites, one for basic and one for the more technical. The sites should have different names.

[@16jocko]

For the solar naysayers- My neighbors and friends in my PGandE area paid 650 a month in the heating season. My charges for the entire 23-24 year will be under 100 a month. 8k solar, 13.5 wk battery this last year. Heat pump for last 7 years. Let’s see 500+, 12 months, 10 years = I could have bought another battery.

[@GeorgeBP81]

​@@therookienomore88 this was happening in Romania. We have an old coal powerplant that got converted to a gas turbine. It was good for electricity and the environment, but the hot water and especially heating for the city they had to burn extra and it became expensive. Like I said I ran the numbers and made a lot of sense. I ended up installing heat pump AC in all my rooms and with the savings I made from heating, it payed for all 5 units in 2 winters. Plus I was able to have heat when the rest of the building didn't have it an aircon plus dehumidifier in the summer. The big unit for the entire building would have made an even bigger impact on our comfort and economies, as we could have made also hot water at the price of cold water.

[@omnijack]

Silly question for Sean: do your tech interests ever bleed into your writing work?

[@therookienomore88]

He writes sci-fi 😊. I bought his book the other day but have yet to get into it.

[@erniecolussy1705]

One thing that disappointed me about your stepped heat pump video was that you didn't explain how their design switched between heating and cooling. Since the steps are either running different refrigerates or operating at different pressures switch between heating and cooling is more complex than a single (or two) reversing valve. The design of these units will likely require two additional coils. But there are other design options. I was wondering what design they were using. The other thing that became obvious by reading the comments is that many viewers didn't understand the difference between the two or multi step heat pump units the video was covering and two or multi stage heat pump/ cooling units that a currently common in commercial units. The viewers were making this mistake because both systems require two or more compressors. But these are very different due to how they are piped together and operated. One increases the range of capacity of the units by not running all the compressors. The other increases the maximum temperature differential and (likely) always runs all the compressors. It's kind of like the difference between two batteries in parallel or in series. I made the two above comments to support this comment. Stop paying attention to those complaining about videos including too much information. Most of those people need the information. They just think they are smarter than they are. Those that already really understand what you are saying wouldn't complain. A comment that someone can skip over the theory part of the video shouldn't be taken as a complaint even if it is worded as a complaint.

[@ericmaclaurin8525]

Automatic disregard for door knockers might be the worst advice you've ever given. Someone comes to your door to give you information and talk about something you want. Your propensity to view groups as 100% anything is problematic at best. Side note - any work done post pandemic is a nightmare. Not just solar.