5 ms·

I don't know if anyone else is following this as an issue, and maybe in the grand scheme of our housing "demographics" it's a small thing. But if you live in a

I don't know if anyone else is following this as an issue, and maybe in the grand scheme of our housing "demographics" it's a small thing. But if you live in a medium or large sized condo or apartment building, it is extremely hard to get legacy systems like gas furnaces or hot water boilers replaced by a new technology like this. Not because of lack of desire, but because it involves incredible amounts of: -- legal questions on whether you're allowed to do such things as an entity (will the owners agree to do it) -- who will pay for the new costs of the thing itself, as well as the ongoing maintenance, any changes to insurance costs, etc. (how will current people who have to pay shoulder the costs of future benefits) -- (sometimes) how to divide up or give up space from existing ownership stakes to fit the new hardware into what was never expected to be modified in the building ever again -- electrical, plumbing, power, heat, requirements that may change the performance or costs of your building (how will you swap a 300 pound furnace with 1200 pounds of condenser units and not have the roof collapse?) Technical feasibility not matching the policy goals. And then on top of this all, the local city wants their say to block or make it very expensive for you to do all this. (yet at the same time their city councils are charging forward in requiring the phase out of natural gas while not fully understanding the inability or cost to real people of not having the ability to affordably implement those mandates) For some kinds of buildings, this is a very big problem stopping people from being able to change things. There needs to be some enabling legislation to cut out these roadblocks, or somehow make things easier. Contractors know this so well they apply probably a 10x discount factor in the number of calls they receive to the number of projects that actually proceed to being started. Single family / single owner homes have a much easier time just getting it done. And new build. It can be really very difficult to displace existing technology, for very real and legitimate reasons.

rcme 4y ago
Heat pumps have the same footprint as, and can replace, AC condensers. So if you already have central air, you should be able to retrofit a heat pump. You might need a new air handler, however.
- supernova87a 4y ago
  Yes, that's true. I was just focused on another case of for example, trying to turn a large building's hot water boiler into an electrical / heat pump one. That is where the set of huge new condensers comes in, replacing like 1 previously dishwasher sized boiler.
  - rcme 4y ago
    If you don't already have central AC, you likely use window units. Mini-splits can be good in these situations. They can be mounted on the exterior wall and the heat pump can be mounted in many different places.
ttul 4y ago
Never mind being a renter. There isn’t much incentive for landlords to previous feeding cost for their tenants.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  My previous apartment was built in the 80s and used only electric resistive hot water heating in an apartment with quite literally gaps in the windows and outside door sealing, in a climate that is below freezing for at least a month of every year. That shit should be considered criminal. But noooooo landlords provide so much value! Think of the poor struggling landlords! The landlord is a company in boston running hundreds of the units in this city, across multiple companies.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    It is the well-known "split incentive". The only solution is regulatory. A governmental agency needs to step in to either mandate the efficiency investments or require that the landlord pays the energy costs. http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/ http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/
    - ttul 4y ago
      Agreed. Where I live, the government has a very progressive approach on climate change. There is a large carbon tax. Home owners can get a large credit to retrofit their home with a heat pump. Yet in this market, there is a shortage of rental housing, so landlords have little incentive to renovate in any way, let alone to reduce heating costs for tenants. Like Boston, renters suffer with leaky windows and exorbitant heating bills while home owners tap climate change refit incentives and reap the considerable rewards. Need I also remind everyone that, during the pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage, whereas there was no such abatement for renters.
      - irq 4y ago
        > Need I also remind everyone that, during the pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage This is patently untrue
tootie 4y ago
Contrast this to cities like NYC that are explicitly phasing out gas infrastructure. New buildings will be banned from installing gas hookups in units and will require electric stoves (induction or otherwise). They haven't banned gas for central heating but the incentives may start to nudge that direction.
- ars 4y ago
  NYC has not thought this through. You still need gas for heat and for hot water. NYC is cold, heat pump versions of those work, but not very well (especially not well for hot water). And for apartment centralized heat and hot water? That would be really hard - these units are much later than the centralized ones they replace. The amount of electricity it would take to do this though.... I hope they plan for this to take decades, because that's what it would take for them to upgrade their wires.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    80% of buildings in NYC are heated by steam, not gas, generated by a boiler in the basement. I assume most of those boilers are themselves gas-burning, but I also assume that any refit to these buildings would just replace the gas-powered boiler with an electric one. When it comes to boiling water, induction stoves are already more efficient than gas stoves, so it doesn't seem infeasible.
    - jakevoytko 4y ago
      My NYC co-op is going through this now. All of your guesses are basically right. We're having separate systems installed for replacing in-unit hot water and in-unit heating and cooling. I believe the new electric hot water system is being installed in the basement and the condensers for the in-unit control panels are being installed on the roof and routed through the pipes used by our old radiator system. Pros: units can control their own heat and will no longer need in-window A/C units. Cons: it's really expensive, even for a building with good finances and access to reasonable financing options. We're only doing this because our boiler is probably a few years away from failing already (it's well over 50 years old), and we're super close to the building size threshold where we would be fined for not complying with the law (so any adjustments to how they calculate building size or dropping the law's fine floor would certainly push us over).

rcme 4y ago

Heat pumps have the same footprint as, and can replace, AC condensers. So if you already have central air, you should be able to retrofit a heat pump. You might need a new air handler, however.

supernova87a 4y ago
Yes, that's true. I was just focused on another case of for example, trying to turn a large building's hot water boiler into an electrical / heat pump one. That is where the set of huge new condensers comes in, replacing like 1 previously dishwasher sized boiler.
- rcme 4y ago
  If you don't already have central AC, you likely use window units. Mini-splits can be good in these situations. They can be mounted on the exterior wall and the heat pump can be mounted in many different places.

ttul 4y ago

Never mind being a renter. There isn’t much incentive for landlords to previous feeding cost for their tenants.

mrguyorama 4y ago
My previous apartment was built in the 80s and used only electric resistive hot water heating in an apartment with quite literally gaps in the windows and outside door sealing, in a climate that is below freezing for at least a month of every year. That shit should be considered criminal. But noooooo landlords provide so much value! Think of the poor struggling landlords! The landlord is a company in boston running hundreds of the units in this city, across multiple companies.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  It is the well-known "split incentive". The only solution is regulatory. A governmental agency needs to step in to either mandate the efficiency investments or require that the landlord pays the energy costs. http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/ http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/
  - ttul 4y ago
    Agreed. Where I live, the government has a very progressive approach on climate change. There is a large carbon tax. Home owners can get a large credit to retrofit their home with a heat pump. Yet in this market, there is a shortage of rental housing, so landlords have little incentive to renovate in any way, let alone to reduce heating costs for tenants. Like Boston, renters suffer with leaky windows and exorbitant heating bills while home owners tap climate change refit incentives and reap the considerable rewards. Need I also remind everyone that, during the pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage, whereas there was no such abatement for renters.
    - irq 4y ago
      > Need I also remind everyone that, during the pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage This is patently untrue

tootie 4y ago

Contrast this to cities like NYC that are explicitly phasing out gas infrastructure. New buildings will be banned from installing gas hookups in units and will require electric stoves (induction or otherwise). They haven't banned gas for central heating but the incentives may start to nudge that direction.

ars 4y ago
NYC has not thought this through. You still need gas for heat and for hot water. NYC is cold, heat pump versions of those work, but not very well (especially not well for hot water). And for apartment centralized heat and hot water? That would be really hard - these units are much later than the centralized ones they replace. The amount of electricity it would take to do this though.... I hope they plan for this to take decades, because that's what it would take for them to upgrade their wires.
- kibwen 4y ago
  80% of buildings in NYC are heated by steam, not gas, generated by a boiler in the basement. I assume most of those boilers are themselves gas-burning, but I also assume that any refit to these buildings would just replace the gas-powered boiler with an electric one. When it comes to boiling water, induction stoves are already more efficient than gas stoves, so it doesn't seem infeasible.
  - jakevoytko 4y ago
    My NYC co-op is going through this now. All of your guesses are basically right. We're having separate systems installed for replacing in-unit hot water and in-unit heating and cooling. I believe the new electric hot water system is being installed in the basement and the condensers for the in-unit control panels are being installed on the roof and routed through the pipes used by our old radiator system. Pros: units can control their own heat and will no longer need in-window A/C units. Cons: it's really expensive, even for a building with good finances and access to reasonable financing options. We're only doing this because our boiler is probably a few years away from failing already (it's well over 50 years old), and we're super close to the building size threshold where we would be fined for not complying with the law (so any adjustments to how they calculate building size or dropping the law's fine floor would certainly push us over).