5 ms·

I think the biggest ask the article is making in an unreasonable way is to somehow find millions of contractors who can actually go home by home and refit the h

by munk-a 5y ago

I think the biggest ask the article is making in an unreasonable way is to somehow find millions of contractors who can actually go home by home and refit the heating systems in a timescale that'd actually be relevant for the war in ukraine. If Germany wanted to switch everyone over to a different kind of lightbulb they'd need to ensure the production capacity to make the new bulb exists and set up logistics to actually distribute it. You'd have a fair amount of non-compliance due to paranoia and other factors but I think you could probably get it done with a year or two of warning... Once you hand the household the lightbulbs they just go through and replace them all and dispose of the old bulbs... To change out a heating system you need to remove large appliances, install other large appliances, fiddle around with gas lines and the breaker panel (probably you'd need to replace a fair number of breaker panels in older houses to handle the higher throughput), deal with the wiring which might be unsafe for the power you'll be sending over them... then you'd need to actually install the radiators, that involves tearing up floors to do it right (floor radiation can be extremely efficient and generally creates a higher apparent heat than traditional radiators placed next to windows for fire hazard reasons), or else popping in some other more module style of radiator. Those radiators might use direct electric generation or you might opt for additional boiler capacity (much more sane for efficient stand-radiators) which comes with piping requirements along with a lot more wiring work. All of that is in addition to all the problems I mentioned around lightbulbs - you're still going to need to actually produce and distribute all the material needed to execute this change. If you, as a person, want to swap out the heating in your house it'll be a weeks (maybe if you're lucky) or months long renovation - imagine trying to do that on the scale of a country, the only way it'd be even plausible is if you essentially drafted large portions of the population and trained them up on trades - that might not be a terrible economic investment, but it certainly isn't going to happen fast.

diordiderot 5y ago
This was a great answer and well thought out! Thanks for taking the time. My only rebuttal is heat pumps can heat the air directly. No need for a radiator or plumbing.
- namibj 5y ago
  Germany basically didn't have central air heating. There is no way to deliver that to each room in a simple retrofit. You can't even do widow AC style units.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    That is, in fact, one of the neat facts about Strassburg/Strasbourg - the Neustadt (lit. New Town) built during the German occupation of Alsace Lorraine between the Franco-Prussian War and WWI was designed specifically as a capital of the west and outfitted with the latest technologies - as a result it's one of the oldest european city districts constructed entirely with in-building heating via distributed radiators connected to central boilers. This isn't at all a counter to your statement, just an interest fact nugget.
  - hedora 5y ago
    Minisplit heat pumps solve this problem. You run compressor lines from shared outdoor compressors to each room, and each room gets its own thermostat / blower. They're relatively affordable and extremely popular in places where retrofits of buildings without central air are common.
    - ajmurmann 5y ago
      German homes already have pipes that go to every room for heating and already have pipes in the floor or radiators installed. Most people wouldn't want air to be blow around and wouldn't want a compressor outside. This would totally clash with German housing standards.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  That's a disadvantage. Radiative heating using radiators or floor heating actually enables you to have a lower temperature because it feels warmer. That said you can run heatpumps with radiative heaters, still moving to heatpumps from on day to the other is completely unrealistic, that's sort of like saying we should switch over all cars to electric immediately to get rid of the dependency on Russian oil.
seoaeu 5y ago
In some buildings, installing a heat pump is "only" a matter of swapping out one large appliance with another (since you're able to reuse the ducts, etc.) but that's still widely expensive and logistically complicated to do on scale of a country.
- Tomte 5y ago
  In America. Heating/cooling ducts and "outdoor units" that could be swapped are very rare in Germany. We use mostly radiators, and in newer buildings in-floor heating. Both are based on warm water pipes.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    Well, at least for single apartments/houses (cannot really say for huge multi-apartments buildings) heat pumps that exchange with water exist and are very well suited to in-floor heating (but not suitable for radiators). The generic issue with heat pumps AFAIK is that they have only a relatively small range of temperatures (outside) in which they are actually efficient, in the sense that (with old prices of energy) they are competitive with gas in costs, I believe that Germany is a bit too cold.
    - Tomte 5y ago
      Sure they exist. But it's more than just "swap one unit with another" which was the claim above. Heat pumps are actually pretty efficient, down to low temperatures. Have a look at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZdR-KC-LFdOVqi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZd... where Alec discusses that. Around Chicago you can expect to have only a few days in winter where the COP is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI&list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZdR-KC-LFdOVqi&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI&list=PLv0jwu7G_D...
      - jaclaz 5y ago
        Not really, of course it depends, but IF the actual heat diffusion system is compatible (fan-coils or under floor) it can be pretty much "swap one unit with another", at least for single units. Still, to give you a single datapoint, I just replaced on a unit a small gas heater with a heat pump and it was really a "swap one unit with the other", still a few issues came out: 1) the cost of the unit, even considering that it doubles as air conditioning/refreshing was only affordable because of some government subsidies (think of 6-7,000 Euro compared to 2,000 Euro for a gas heater and 2,500 Euro for a more traditional conditioning unit) 2) for some reasons, the heat pump is much slower in heating, the net result (in my specific case) is that the unit needs to be kept slightly heated on weekends (it is a small shop that closes saturday and sunday) otherwise when it opens on monday it will take forever to reach a suitable temperature. Besides, from an infrastructure point of view, if many people change from gas to electrical (though gas powered heat pumps do exist, BTW) the local increase of consumption from the grid needs to be taken into account.

by munk-a 5y ago

diordiderot 5y ago

This was a great answer and well thought out! Thanks for taking the time. My only rebuttal is heat pumps can heat the air directly. No need for a radiator or plumbing.

namibj 5y ago
Germany basically didn't have central air heating. There is no way to deliver that to each room in a simple retrofit. You can't even do widow AC style units.
- munk-a 5y ago
  That is, in fact, one of the neat facts about Strassburg/Strasbourg - the Neustadt (lit. New Town) built during the German occupation of Alsace Lorraine between the Franco-Prussian War and WWI was designed specifically as a capital of the west and outfitted with the latest technologies - as a result it's one of the oldest european city districts constructed entirely with in-building heating via distributed radiators connected to central boilers. This isn't at all a counter to your statement, just an interest fact nugget.
- hedora 5y ago
  Minisplit heat pumps solve this problem. You run compressor lines from shared outdoor compressors to each room, and each room gets its own thermostat / blower. They're relatively affordable and extremely popular in places where retrofits of buildings without central air are common.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    German homes already have pipes that go to every room for heating and already have pipes in the floor or radiators installed. Most people wouldn't want air to be blow around and wouldn't want a compressor outside. This would totally clash with German housing standards.
cycomanic 5y ago
That's a disadvantage. Radiative heating using radiators or floor heating actually enables you to have a lower temperature because it feels warmer. That said you can run heatpumps with radiative heaters, still moving to heatpumps from on day to the other is completely unrealistic, that's sort of like saying we should switch over all cars to electric immediately to get rid of the dependency on Russian oil.

seoaeu 5y ago

In some buildings, installing a heat pump is "only" a matter of swapping out one large appliance with another (since you're able to reuse the ducts, etc.) but that's still widely expensive and logistically complicated to do on scale of a country.

Tomte 5y ago
In America. Heating/cooling ducts and "outdoor units" that could be swapped are very rare in Germany. We use mostly radiators, and in newer buildings in-floor heating. Both are based on warm water pipes.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  Well, at least for single apartments/houses (cannot really say for huge multi-apartments buildings) heat pumps that exchange with water exist and are very well suited to in-floor heating (but not suitable for radiators). The generic issue with heat pumps AFAIK is that they have only a relatively small range of temperatures (outside) in which they are actually efficient, in the sense that (with old prices of energy) they are competitive with gas in costs, I believe that Germany is a bit too cold.
  - Tomte 5y ago
    Sure they exist. But it's more than just "swap one unit with another" which was the claim above. Heat pumps are actually pretty efficient, down to low temperatures. Have a look at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZdR-KC-LFdOVqi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZd... where Alec discusses that. Around Chicago you can expect to have only a few days in winter where the COP is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI&list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZdR-KC-LFdOVqi&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI&list=PLv0jwu7G_D...
    - jaclaz 5y ago
      Not really, of course it depends, but IF the actual heat diffusion system is compatible (fan-coils or under floor) it can be pretty much "swap one unit with another", at least for single units. Still, to give you a single datapoint, I just replaced on a unit a small gas heater with a heat pump and it was really a "swap one unit with the other", still a few issues came out: 1) the cost of the unit, even considering that it doubles as air conditioning/refreshing was only affordable because of some government subsidies (think of 6-7,000 Euro compared to 2,000 Euro for a gas heater and 2,500 Euro for a more traditional conditioning unit) 2) for some reasons, the heat pump is much slower in heating, the net result (in my specific case) is that the unit needs to be kept slightly heated on weekends (it is a small shop that closes saturday and sunday) otherwise when it opens on monday it will take forever to reach a suitable temperature. Besides, from an infrastructure point of view, if many people change from gas to electrical (though gas powered heat pumps do exist, BTW) the local increase of consumption from the grid needs to be taken into account.