3 ms·

I hate to bring practical experience with a heat pump to the table but ours is a 3 year old unit and last February in the Texas "blizzard" the heat pump became

I hate to bring practical experience with a heat pump to the table but ours is a 3 year old unit and last February in the Texas "blizzard" the heat pump became a solid block of ice and the system ended up using backup "glow rods" to heat the air. Glow rods are about as efficient as an old coil burner type range- exact same principle. Heat pumps aren't a panacea, they have an appropriate use. Usually in a warm climate but they don't really work well (from my direct experience) in freezing temperatures or below. Something I assume NYC gets rather regularly.

Danieru 5y ago
You're the victim of cost optimization. A old climate optimized heat pump will have logic to run the pump in reverse to melt the accumulated ice. This happens without you noticing but it let's the pump keep going and keeps the net efficiency above a coefficient of 1. If anything America is a victem of HVAC "specialists" who use their skills to install the bare minimum systems. Over in Japan everyone just buys a featurefull mini split and pokes a hole in the way and plugs it in. The net effect is Japan has a competitive market for featureful yet cheap minisplits. While Americians are forced to pay more for less.