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Air conditioners nowadays can and should be bought as reversible heat pumps. It adds nothing to the purchase price and it replaces gas heating as a much more ef

Air conditioners nowadays can and should be bought as reversible heat pumps. It adds nothing to the purchase price and it replaces gas heating as a much more efficient way to heat a building. We should be installing heat pumps everywhere. Power consumption may go up in summer but would go way down in winter as efficiency is greatly increased. Unless your point is that poor people don’t deserve heating any more than they deserve cooling…

sokoloff 4y ago
Are there no places in the world without a need for central heating? If your only space conditioning load is air conditioning, you don’t need to have a reversing valve and defroster.
xunn0026 4y ago
Last I checked a heat pump is considerably more expensive than an air conditioner. And a regular air conditioner can probably only heat when the outside is not freezing. I would actually want to get a heat pump but it's basically prohibitive. Would be nice to replace them with a "cheaper" air conditioner unit.
- zionic 4y ago
  The cost increase is marginal, but the benefits are enormous. Modern heat pumps work well down to -20F. If it’s that cold I don’t want to live there.
  - xunn0026 4y ago
    Hm, doesn't look marginal to me. A heat pump is like 5X-10x more costly and requires quite specialist install. An air conditioning unit is pretty easy to install by normal technicians.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      > A heat pump is like 5X-10x more costly and requires quite specialist install. When I shopped heat pumps, the actual unit was about 1.5x the cost of an equivalent air conditioner, and after installation the difference was even less. > requires quite specialist install. It's basically the same exact install.
vanilla_nut 4y ago
> power consumption … would go way down in winter as efficiency is greatly increased Not sure where you live, but in my experience living across the USA, I don’t think switching all heating to heat pumps in winter would reduce electricity usage. Most homes heat with propane, fuel oil, kerosene, or, in places like NYC, steam. There are certainly some homes out there with electric element heating but they are so expensive to run that they’re not very common. It might be better for emissions if we used renewable energy to generate all of that power. But we don’t right now.
seunosewa 4y ago
Heat pumps are less effective when it's freezing cold.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  They are more than 100% efficient until you reach stupidly low temperatures; in which case, then you can break out the furnace or whatever. Or put on a blanket.

sokoloff 4y ago

Are there no places in the world without a need for central heating? If your only space conditioning load is air conditioning, you don’t need to have a reversing valve and defroster.

xunn0026 4y ago

Last I checked a heat pump is considerably more expensive than an air conditioner. And a regular air conditioner can probably only heat when the outside is not freezing. I would actually want to get a heat pump but it's basically prohibitive. Would be nice to replace them with a "cheaper" air conditioner unit.

zionic 4y ago
The cost increase is marginal, but the benefits are enormous. Modern heat pumps work well down to -20F. If it’s that cold I don’t want to live there.
- xunn0026 4y ago
  Hm, doesn't look marginal to me. A heat pump is like 5X-10x more costly and requires quite specialist install. An air conditioning unit is pretty easy to install by normal technicians.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > A heat pump is like 5X-10x more costly and requires quite specialist install. When I shopped heat pumps, the actual unit was about 1.5x the cost of an equivalent air conditioner, and after installation the difference was even less. > requires quite specialist install. It's basically the same exact install.

vanilla_nut 4y ago

> power consumption … would go way down in winter as efficiency is greatly increased Not sure where you live, but in my experience living across the USA, I don’t think switching all heating to heat pumps in winter would reduce electricity usage. Most homes heat with propane, fuel oil, kerosene, or, in places like NYC, steam. There are certainly some homes out there with electric element heating but they are so expensive to run that they’re not very common. It might be better for emissions if we used renewable energy to generate all of that power. But we don’t right now.

seunosewa 4y ago

Heat pumps are less effective when it's freezing cold.

scrollaway 4y ago
They are more than 100% efficient until you reach stupidly low temperatures; in which case, then you can break out the furnace or whatever. Or put on a blanket.