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Every HVAC company I've talked to in Houston has advised me against heat pumps. Mainly, natural gas is so cheap in Texas that the cost benefit analysis doesn't

by rohan_ 4y ago

Every HVAC company I've talked to in Houston has advised me against heat pumps. Mainly, natural gas is so cheap in Texas that the cost benefit analysis doesn't work out.

msandford 4y ago
If you need to replace your AC anyhow it probably makes sense to go for a heat pump unit vs just AC. But it probably doesn't make sense to throw away an otherwise fine AC to upgrade. I say this as a Houstonian myself.
- ilyt 4y ago
  I wonder if there is business to be made refitting old AC units to work in reverse. In theory only difference is some piping/valves.
  - infecto 4y ago
    Highly doubt it. The labor cost would probably exceed any savings and at the end of the day tech changes quick enough that you don't really want to be doing large service repairs on ac units, most likely more cost effective to replace the unit.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    Interesting idea, but they have pretty short lifespans
xt00 4y ago
I would assume you have an AC unit as well as a gas furnace — but the AC unit is super close to just being a heat pump, so it’s worth considering replacing your AC unit with a heat pump at some point and turning off the gas furnace to see how the costs differ. Most likely for fairly long sections of the year in Texas you would easily heat your house with a heat pump at a low power usage since it’s not too cold out.
- adrianmonk 4y ago
  > assume you have an AC unit as well as a gas furnace A typical Texas house has one unit that is both AC and furnace. Most houses built in the last 50 years have central AC. Given that you'll have ducts, the simplest and easiest way to heat the house is to use them. In other words, it's forced air heating. It's really not a great form of heating, but it's adequate for relatively short, mild winters. So if you replace your one AC/furnace unit with a heat pump unit, you probably won't have a gas furnace anymore to do the comparison. (Apparently, there is such a thing as a "dual fuel heat pump", though, which can heat with gas or heat pump. I'm not sure how much those cost.) Another factor is that AC is the bigger concern for energy usage because AC is used much more of the year. So when replacing your system, whatever money you can spend on an upgrade, you're probably better off putting it toward improving AC efficiency rather than heat efficiency. Or toward something that will help with both, like insulation.
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    > Another factor is that AC is the bigger concern for energy usage because AC is used much more of the year. So when replacing your system, whatever money you can spend on an upgrade, you're probably better off putting it toward improving AC efficiency rather than heat efficiency. Given that an AC is just heat pump, but with the hot bit outside, and the only thing needed to swap the hot and cold bits is a reversing valve. A high efficiency heat pump is also a high efficiency AC (that’s a very tautological statement). So investing in improved heat pump for heating, naturally means investing in an improved heat pump for cooling.
    - oakwhiz 4y ago
      The outside coil and fan also has to be sized for the worst case load that will be demanded based on seasonal climate. In some places this may influence the decision a bit.
nemo44x 4y ago
I don’t know why this is down voted. HVAC companies would actually LOVE to sell you heat pumps. But they don’t want callbacks and they don’t want word getting around they sell more expensive to install and run systems. But in Texas, a heat pump wound probably be great. But yeah, natural gas is cheap.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  This hasn't been my experience at all. I'm doing a pretty comprehensive remodel and swapping out 3 furnaces and I've done my own manual J/D/S calculations.. I've compared my cost of electricity & gas and while natural gas may be marginally cheaper if I were to upgrade to high-efficiency units, I've decided to install HPs anyways since our electric costs are much more stable here and our electricity is lower carbon. I literally can't find a company to install them. It has nothing to do with callbacks or expense, it's just that most of these companies are staffed/run by older guys who want to install the same massively oversized low efficiency furnaces and SEER 15 AC units they've been installing for the past 30 years. The only people willing to install heatpumps are from an hour away and who spend their time building luxury homes. It's crazy to me that the rest of these guys aren't out there working with those Federal IRA funds and installing heat pumps left and right. We're climate zone 4 with a design temp of 6ºF, just about every modern HP will spend 99.9% of its time working at full BTU here.
  - linuxftw 4y ago
    I inquired about a higher seer unit when I had my system refreshed recently (I'm not in TX). The company I went with had the opinion that the higher SEER units are harder to diagnose and fix if you end up having a problem. With the way supply chains are right now, getting a less common unit means if you have a problem, and you will because half the components are imported now, you're going to be sweating it out while you wait 3-6 months for a part, and that's if you can find a tech to come out and diagnose it properly. If I lived in the deep south, I'd get whatever the standard equipment is and spend the difference on extra solar panels.
  - fmitga 4y ago
    I ran into the same thing when I built my house, where I couldn't find anyone local to take care of installing my split mini units without a wait of six weeks or more. I ultimately ended up purchasing a 25lb refrigerant tank, guage set, and vacuum pump to commission the units. I wasn't trying to DIY or save money per se, but this seemed to be the path of least resistance. Five years later all five heat pumps are going strong, this market dynamic doesn't seem to have changed much (here in Virginia USA) as I helped my neighbor bring her two heat pump units online in October 2022 after she couldn't get any of the local installers to schedule her either. I'm still puzzled why heat pumps are not dominant in the US market and why natural gas furnaces of any efficiency are still being installed, given that you can't power them from rooftop PV which is everywhere these days.
ikt 4y ago
Cheaper than free electricity from your solar panels? Heat pump + timer seems like the cheapest
- bawolff 4y ago
  Solar panels aint free
  - bruce511 4y ago
    True, but solar panels are a capital cost (ie a one-time cost) whereas electricity/gas is a consumable. There are lots of variables, but return on investment in solar is around 14% annually for me. It'll vary from place to place, so you need to do your own math.
    - twothamendment 4y ago
      14%, not bad! It is interesting how the numbers work out in different places. Where I'm at it doesn't make sense at all. So much of my bill is just to have a meter and the per kilowatt rate is crazy low. Because of the high fee just to be hooked up the only way solar wins here is to get off grid - but winter kills that idea.
ars 4y ago
I wish heat pumps that were powered by natural gas were more common. (I know everyone is expecting the entire grid to be 100% renewable on electric but it's going to take decades and by that time people can switch to new heat pumps. In the meantime we can save energy that way.)
bryanlarsen 4y ago
That'll change quickly. Texas is well suited for both solar and wind power, and the regulatory climate means they are being widely installed and will drive the price of electricity down significantly.
SamBam 4y ago
Does the cost-benefit analysis really not work out even with the new 2023 incentives created as pay of the Insulation Reduction Act? (Also, which is more likely in ten years: that natural gas will be cheaper than today, or that electricity will be? I think with the huge new investments in renewables, the latter is more likely.)
admax88qqq 4y ago
Natural gas isn't that cheap everywhere. Texas is a big producer of natural gas so it's probably extra cheap there. Where I live electricity has been getting cheaper faster than natural gas, so at some point it makes more sense to do a heat pump. Plus if natural gas is cheap it can also be used to generate electricity without having to run and maintain natural gas lines to every house as well as electrical lines.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  Where in the country is electricity actually getting cheaper? Everywhere I’ve lived along the west coast electricity prices have only gone up.
  - heyoni 4y ago
    The east coast? Electricity is super cheap here
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      Not in Massachusetts. National Grid has basically doubled since last year. However a lot of towns have some kind of municipal service for a much lower price.
    - thebiss 4y ago
      Residential electricity in New England is currently twice the national average. See: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices... It's recently become so high, I wonder if it's more economical to run hybrid cars on gas instead of charging them.
  - dd36 4y ago
    Anywhere with solar.
    - ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Aloha 4y ago
I'm up in DFW, I'd highly recommend a heat pump, gas is at an all time high, and not likely to come down soon. Running a gas fireplace a couple hours a month costs me 60+ dollars, I'd hate to think what a furnace would cost.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  US natural gas is at lowest since 2020, and price is way below 5, 10 or 25 year average.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    Retail pricing does not seem to reflect that, neither does my power bill frankly. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010tx3M.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010tx3M.htm
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      This data is from November, before the over 70% price decrease.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ahelwer 4y ago
I'm surprised that nobody here has yet pointed out that if you have the money for the alternatives, installing new long-lived infrastructure or appliances that directly generate emissions by burning natural gas is unconscionable. Adding new renewable energy sources to an electricity grid is significantly easier than replacing ten million natural gas appliances scattered around the country. And removing all of those natural gas appliances will unambiguously have to happen in a world that takes climate change seriously. This holds true even if your current electricity mix involves coal or other things worse than natural gas. Those plants will have to be shut down within the lifetime of your appliance or neither thing matters very much.
- c22 4y ago
  You could replace the gas at the source with a renewble biogas [0] and leave all the existing appliances in place. [0]: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_renewable.html https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_renewable.html
  - hommelix 4y ago
    I doubt biomethane will scale up to replace natural gas. Currently it represents 0.1% of the natural gas consumption according to this study: https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-biogas-and-biomethane-prospects-for-organic-growth/an-introduction-to-biogas-and-biomethane https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-biogas-and-biomethan...
elcomet 4y ago
It's not just about cost... It's also about the planet
microtonal 4y ago
We got a heat pump last year and the heat pump + installation was around 14,000 Euro (minus ~2000 subsidy). Even with the current gas/electricity prices in West-Europe it currently doesn't work out last time we calculated, I think we'll break even when we are lucky. The price delta between gas central heating and a heat pump is still too large. (Though having a heat pump will probably improve the energy label, increasing the property value.) However, our main motivation was to stop destroying the planet. Also within ~25 years, the government will require every building to be disconnected from gas (to achieve CO2 reduction goals). And from 2026 onwards, gas heating can still be installed, but it it'll be required to install a hybrid heat pump as well (a lower-capacity heat pump, where the gas furnace is a backup).
hgomersall 4y ago
Well it depends what your optimising for. If you just want to heat your house in the cheapest way possible, maybe gas is better in some situations. If OTOH you want to signal to the market that you give a damn about climate change and act as an early adopter of technology that's going to be crucial part of net zero, then perhaps the equation is different. The benefits aren't just "a warm house".

by rohan_ 4y ago

Every HVAC company I've talked to in Houston has advised me against heat pumps. Mainly, natural gas is so cheap in Texas that the cost benefit analysis doesn't work out.

msandford 4y ago

If you need to replace your AC anyhow it probably makes sense to go for a heat pump unit vs just AC. But it probably doesn't make sense to throw away an otherwise fine AC to upgrade. I say this as a Houstonian myself.

ilyt 4y ago
I wonder if there is business to be made refitting old AC units to work in reverse. In theory only difference is some piping/valves.
- infecto 4y ago
  Highly doubt it. The labor cost would probably exceed any savings and at the end of the day tech changes quick enough that you don't really want to be doing large service repairs on ac units, most likely more cost effective to replace the unit.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Interesting idea, but they have pretty short lifespans

xt00 4y ago

I would assume you have an AC unit as well as a gas furnace — but the AC unit is super close to just being a heat pump, so it’s worth considering replacing your AC unit with a heat pump at some point and turning off the gas furnace to see how the costs differ. Most likely for fairly long sections of the year in Texas you would easily heat your house with a heat pump at a low power usage since it’s not too cold out.

adrianmonk 4y ago
> assume you have an AC unit as well as a gas furnace A typical Texas house has one unit that is both AC and furnace. Most houses built in the last 50 years have central AC. Given that you'll have ducts, the simplest and easiest way to heat the house is to use them. In other words, it's forced air heating. It's really not a great form of heating, but it's adequate for relatively short, mild winters. So if you replace your one AC/furnace unit with a heat pump unit, you probably won't have a gas furnace anymore to do the comparison. (Apparently, there is such a thing as a "dual fuel heat pump", though, which can heat with gas or heat pump. I'm not sure how much those cost.) Another factor is that AC is the bigger concern for energy usage because AC is used much more of the year. So when replacing your system, whatever money you can spend on an upgrade, you're probably better off putting it toward improving AC efficiency rather than heat efficiency. Or toward something that will help with both, like insulation.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  > Another factor is that AC is the bigger concern for energy usage because AC is used much more of the year. So when replacing your system, whatever money you can spend on an upgrade, you're probably better off putting it toward improving AC efficiency rather than heat efficiency. Given that an AC is just heat pump, but with the hot bit outside, and the only thing needed to swap the hot and cold bits is a reversing valve. A high efficiency heat pump is also a high efficiency AC (that’s a very tautological statement). So investing in improved heat pump for heating, naturally means investing in an improved heat pump for cooling.
  - oakwhiz 4y ago
    The outside coil and fan also has to be sized for the worst case load that will be demanded based on seasonal climate. In some places this may influence the decision a bit.

nemo44x 4y ago

I don’t know why this is down voted. HVAC companies would actually LOVE to sell you heat pumps. But they don’t want callbacks and they don’t want word getting around they sell more expensive to install and run systems. But in Texas, a heat pump wound probably be great. But yeah, natural gas is cheap.

mikeyouse 4y ago
This hasn't been my experience at all. I'm doing a pretty comprehensive remodel and swapping out 3 furnaces and I've done my own manual J/D/S calculations.. I've compared my cost of electricity & gas and while natural gas may be marginally cheaper if I were to upgrade to high-efficiency units, I've decided to install HPs anyways since our electric costs are much more stable here and our electricity is lower carbon. I literally can't find a company to install them. It has nothing to do with callbacks or expense, it's just that most of these companies are staffed/run by older guys who want to install the same massively oversized low efficiency furnaces and SEER 15 AC units they've been installing for the past 30 years. The only people willing to install heatpumps are from an hour away and who spend their time building luxury homes. It's crazy to me that the rest of these guys aren't out there working with those Federal IRA funds and installing heat pumps left and right. We're climate zone 4 with a design temp of 6ºF, just about every modern HP will spend 99.9% of its time working at full BTU here.
- linuxftw 4y ago
  I inquired about a higher seer unit when I had my system refreshed recently (I'm not in TX). The company I went with had the opinion that the higher SEER units are harder to diagnose and fix if you end up having a problem. With the way supply chains are right now, getting a less common unit means if you have a problem, and you will because half the components are imported now, you're going to be sweating it out while you wait 3-6 months for a part, and that's if you can find a tech to come out and diagnose it properly. If I lived in the deep south, I'd get whatever the standard equipment is and spend the difference on extra solar panels.
- fmitga 4y ago
  I ran into the same thing when I built my house, where I couldn't find anyone local to take care of installing my split mini units without a wait of six weeks or more. I ultimately ended up purchasing a 25lb refrigerant tank, guage set, and vacuum pump to commission the units. I wasn't trying to DIY or save money per se, but this seemed to be the path of least resistance. Five years later all five heat pumps are going strong, this market dynamic doesn't seem to have changed much (here in Virginia USA) as I helped my neighbor bring her two heat pump units online in October 2022 after she couldn't get any of the local installers to schedule her either. I'm still puzzled why heat pumps are not dominant in the US market and why natural gas furnaces of any efficiency are still being installed, given that you can't power them from rooftop PV which is everywhere these days.

ikt 4y ago

Cheaper than free electricity from your solar panels? Heat pump + timer seems like the cheapest

bawolff 4y ago
Solar panels aint free
- bruce511 4y ago
  True, but solar panels are a capital cost (ie a one-time cost) whereas electricity/gas is a consumable. There are lots of variables, but return on investment in solar is around 14% annually for me. It'll vary from place to place, so you need to do your own math.
  - twothamendment 4y ago
    14%, not bad! It is interesting how the numbers work out in different places. Where I'm at it doesn't make sense at all. So much of my bill is just to have a meter and the per kilowatt rate is crazy low. Because of the high fee just to be hooked up the only way solar wins here is to get off grid - but winter kills that idea.

ars 4y ago

I wish heat pumps that were powered by natural gas were more common. (I know everyone is expecting the entire grid to be 100% renewable on electric but it's going to take decades and by that time people can switch to new heat pumps. In the meantime we can save energy that way.)

bryanlarsen 4y ago

That'll change quickly. Texas is well suited for both solar and wind power, and the regulatory climate means they are being widely installed and will drive the price of electricity down significantly.

SamBam 4y ago

Does the cost-benefit analysis really not work out even with the new 2023 incentives created as pay of the Insulation Reduction Act? (Also, which is more likely in ten years: that natural gas will be cheaper than today, or that electricity will be? I think with the huge new investments in renewables, the latter is more likely.)

admax88qqq 4y ago

Natural gas isn't that cheap everywhere. Texas is a big producer of natural gas so it's probably extra cheap there. Where I live electricity has been getting cheaper faster than natural gas, so at some point it makes more sense to do a heat pump. Plus if natural gas is cheap it can also be used to generate electricity without having to run and maintain natural gas lines to every house as well as electrical lines.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Where in the country is electricity actually getting cheaper? Everywhere I’ve lived along the west coast electricity prices have only gone up.
- heyoni 4y ago
  The east coast? Electricity is super cheap here
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Not in Massachusetts. National Grid has basically doubled since last year. However a lot of towns have some kind of municipal service for a much lower price.
  - thebiss 4y ago
    Residential electricity in New England is currently twice the national average. See: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices... It's recently become so high, I wonder if it's more economical to run hybrid cars on gas instead of charging them.
- dd36 4y ago
  Anywhere with solar.
  - ed25519FUUU 4y ago

Aloha 4y ago

I'm up in DFW, I'd highly recommend a heat pump, gas is at an all time high, and not likely to come down soon. Running a gas fireplace a couple hours a month costs me 60+ dollars, I'd hate to think what a furnace would cost.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
US natural gas is at lowest since 2020, and price is way below 5, 10 or 25 year average.
- Aloha 4y ago
  Retail pricing does not seem to reflect that, neither does my power bill frankly. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010tx3M.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010tx3M.htm
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    This data is from November, before the over 70% price decrease.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ahelwer 4y ago

I'm surprised that nobody here has yet pointed out that if you have the money for the alternatives, installing new long-lived infrastructure or appliances that directly generate emissions by burning natural gas is unconscionable. Adding new renewable energy sources to an electricity grid is significantly easier than replacing ten million natural gas appliances scattered around the country. And removing all of those natural gas appliances will unambiguously have to happen in a world that takes climate change seriously. This holds true even if your current electricity mix involves coal or other things worse than natural gas. Those plants will have to be shut down within the lifetime of your appliance or neither thing matters very much.

c22 4y ago
You could replace the gas at the source with a renewble biogas [0] and leave all the existing appliances in place. [0]: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_renewable.html https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_renewable.html
- hommelix 4y ago
  I doubt biomethane will scale up to replace natural gas. Currently it represents 0.1% of the natural gas consumption according to this study: https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-biogas-and-biomethane-prospects-for-organic-growth/an-introduction-to-biogas-and-biomethane https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-biogas-and-biomethan...

elcomet 4y ago

It's not just about cost... It's also about the planet

microtonal 4y ago

We got a heat pump last year and the heat pump + installation was around 14,000 Euro (minus ~2000 subsidy). Even with the current gas/electricity prices in West-Europe it currently doesn't work out last time we calculated, I think we'll break even when we are lucky. The price delta between gas central heating and a heat pump is still too large. (Though having a heat pump will probably improve the energy label, increasing the property value.) However, our main motivation was to stop destroying the planet. Also within ~25 years, the government will require every building to be disconnected from gas (to achieve CO2 reduction goals). And from 2026 onwards, gas heating can still be installed, but it it'll be required to install a hybrid heat pump as well (a lower-capacity heat pump, where the gas furnace is a backup).

hgomersall 4y ago

Well it depends what your optimising for. If you just want to heat your house in the cheapest way possible, maybe gas is better in some situations. If OTOH you want to signal to the market that you give a damn about climate change and act as an early adopter of technology that's going to be crucial part of net zero, then perhaps the equation is different. The benefits aren't just "a warm house".