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Heat pumps suffer from some issues that I believe can be solved from a policy point's of view. Heat pumps aren't that powerful. To enjoy it to its fullest you

Heat pumps suffer from some issues that I believe can be solved from a policy point's of view. Heat pumps aren't that powerful. To enjoy it to its fullest you must have a well-insulated house, and ideally low-temperature floor heating. That way the insulation and floor's volume provide the buffer for when your heat pump is defrosting. So getting a heat pump without insulation is not smart. Then there's the cost. A gas heater is 3 times as cheap, and for that price, 3 times as expensive. Lastly, there's the issue of when it's really cold and the heat pump cannot extract heat from the outside air (this is much less a problem when you have an water to water heat pump, but they are significantly more expensive). Then the thing just runs on electricity. And that can be VERY expensive in certain parts of the worlds. So we need incentives for insulation first. Then heat pumps. And probably electricity plans that a cold month isn't insanely more expensive.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Maybe I am wrong, but I thought colder climates already had legal requirements for insulation. Warm climates seem to be the ones with a more lassiez faire attitude. Which is not ideal, but mostly fine? The temperate gradient of 10f to 70f is significantly worse than 90f to 70f.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  Those requirements tend to be present for new construction, but old buildings get "grandfathered in" and are exempt. The apartment I currently rent has essentially no insulation. There's the outer (wood) cladding, an air gap, then the lath & plaster inner walls. Single-pane windows. In Buffalo, NY.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    How old is that old building? My wooden house in Norway was built in 1952 in a time of relative poverty not long after the war yet it had insulation (wood wool) and double windows from the very beginning.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  There are likely code requirements in most colder regions for minimum R-values for ceiling and wall insulation. Of course code isn't retroactive, so there are still a ton of houses with very poor insulation. There are often reimbursements from the government or energy companies for improving insulation as well. Part of the Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits for improving energy efficiency as well. https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home-improvement-credit https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home...
Maxion 3y ago
> Heat pumps aren't that powerful. Is 18 kW not enough? https://thermia.com/products/ground-source-heat-pumps/thermia-atlas/ https://thermia.com/products/ground-source-heat-pumps/thermi... Air-water heatpumps are available in ~9kW > Then there's the cost. A gas heater is 3 times as cheap, and for that price, 3 times as expensive. Only really a thing if there's a local gas network and subsised gas. > Lastly, there's the issue of when it's really cold and the heat pump cannot extract heat from the outside air (this is much less a problem when you have an water to water heat pump, but they are significantly more expensive). Then the thing just runs on electricity. And that can be VERY expensive in certain parts of the worlds. They work fine in -25c. Few people in the world live in places that are regularly colder than that for significant chunks of time.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  > Is 18 kW not enough? Depends on the rest of your system. Our gas combi outputs 36kw on demand. We use high temperature rads and need no water storage. To get premium performance from heat pumps you need buffet tanks to heat up water over the day and a low temperature central heating system. All achievable, but it turns a £10k boiler installation into a £30k house-wide replumb. Well before you factor in actually making the house perform better. It takes a big run up to make the sums work.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Your high temperature radiators are likely throwing away 20% of your heat, so you probably need to include that in your sums: https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/why-our-condensing-boilers-do-not-condense https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/why-our-condensing-boilers-d... > The boiler does not reach 90%+ efficiencies until the return temperatures are around 45°C. This means water must exit the boiler at a maximum of 65°C, impart 20°C of heat to the room via the radiators, and return at 45°C. edit: and if you read further they suggest that oversized boilers like yours have further efficiency losses: > When boilers fire up, they automatically ramp up to 70% of their maximum output. For a 21kW boiler (common is most homes) this would be around 15kW. Given that only 6kW is needed on a very cold day, the boiler is always going to overheat the system. When the radiators cannot get rid of enough heat the return temperatures to the boiler are too high for it to condense.
reaperman 3y ago
> Heat pumps aren't that powerful. What's the limiting parameter here? Obviously heat pumps can be scaled up to arbitrary sizes - I've used unimaginably large ones in the chemical industry. Do you mean power vs cost compared to other options? Power vs volume? Power vs. weight? Stockholm has a couple 40 megawatt heat pumps as part of a set of just seven heat pumps which provide building heat to an entire district of the city, pumping heat through 3000 kilometers of pipes. The only limiting factor I'm aware of for most commercially-available home heat pumps is that they tend not to work well below a certain temperature. This minimum temperature can be lowered by increasing the size of the outdoor radiator and adjusting the pump and coolant pressures to match.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
A 2 kW air to air heat pump with a SCOP of 4 is about 2.2 kUSD installed here in Norway (Samsung Nordic Extreme 09 varmepumpe AR09BXFYDWKEE). This is reckoned to be big enough to heat room of 170 m2. Quite a lot of people here have one air to air heat pump on the ground floor and another for the upper floor. Even down at -30°C it has a heat transfer capacity of 2.5 kW. You didn't say how much your has heater costs so I have no idea how this compares but it seems reasonably priced to me.
- octacat 3y ago
  Installation of anything gas related could be pretty expensive in some parts of the world too.
- earleybird 3y ago
  When you say 2.2 kUSD do you mean $2,200.00 or $22,000.00? In my locale, the installed figure is at or above $22,000 for a heat pump that is about $3,000 for the unit itself. On the other hand, an electric (no heat pump) hot water tank is $900 for the tank and $900 for the install. I'd really like to have a plumber be able to install a mono block heat pump since the labour costs to install a heat pump look like highway robbery.
  - rasz 3y ago
    You are kidding right? I could sent you whole crew from Europe (>$1K per person for flights alone) and make couple of grand doing it at half cost.
    - voisin 3y ago
      Same here, the prices I’ve been quoted for a heat pump are $25-$30,000 Canadian. And the installers will spend the entire meeting trying to talk you out of it and into a natural gas unit. We need more Europeans to come open businesses here installing these!
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      And that probably includes a unit from Samsung, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, or Dakin that has already almost circled the globe.
stabbles 3y ago
Their fans also rather noisy. Although you shouldn't be able to hear your neighbors heat pump, I've experienced a rather annoying issue where the fans hit the exact eigenfrequency of the walls, only amplifying the noise inside.
- trashtester 3y ago
  If your house actually has significant eigenfrequencies built in, I would think you could get those issues at many different fan frequencies, or even from other sources of vibration, like a washing machine's dryer program. Or by watching a movie or listening to music. I would think someone with the right math skills would be able to build something like a base trap to absorb most of the energy in those frequency bands, though.
richij 3y ago
2013 called. It wants its anecdata back.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

Maybe I am wrong, but I thought colder climates already had legal requirements for insulation. Warm climates seem to be the ones with a more lassiez faire attitude. Which is not ideal, but mostly fine? The temperate gradient of 10f to 70f is significantly worse than 90f to 70f.

SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
Those requirements tend to be present for new construction, but old buildings get "grandfathered in" and are exempt. The apartment I currently rent has essentially no insulation. There's the outer (wood) cladding, an air gap, then the lath & plaster inner walls. Single-pane windows. In Buffalo, NY.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  How old is that old building? My wooden house in Norway was built in 1952 in a time of relative poverty not long after the war yet it had insulation (wood wool) and double windows from the very beginning.
tstrimple 3y ago
There are likely code requirements in most colder regions for minimum R-values for ceiling and wall insulation. Of course code isn't retroactive, so there are still a ton of houses with very poor insulation. There are often reimbursements from the government or energy companies for improving insulation as well. Part of the Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits for improving energy efficiency as well. https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home-improvement-credit https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home...

Maxion 3y ago

> Heat pumps aren't that powerful. Is 18 kW not enough? https://thermia.com/products/ground-source-heat-pumps/thermia-atlas/ https://thermia.com/products/ground-source-heat-pumps/thermi... Air-water heatpumps are available in ~9kW > Then there's the cost. A gas heater is 3 times as cheap, and for that price, 3 times as expensive. Only really a thing if there's a local gas network and subsised gas. > Lastly, there's the issue of when it's really cold and the heat pump cannot extract heat from the outside air (this is much less a problem when you have an water to water heat pump, but they are significantly more expensive). Then the thing just runs on electricity. And that can be VERY expensive in certain parts of the worlds. They work fine in -25c. Few people in the world live in places that are regularly colder than that for significant chunks of time.

oliwarner 3y ago
> Is 18 kW not enough? Depends on the rest of your system. Our gas combi outputs 36kw on demand. We use high temperature rads and need no water storage. To get premium performance from heat pumps you need buffet tanks to heat up water over the day and a low temperature central heating system. All achievable, but it turns a £10k boiler installation into a £30k house-wide replumb. Well before you factor in actually making the house perform better. It takes a big run up to make the sums work.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Your high temperature radiators are likely throwing away 20% of your heat, so you probably need to include that in your sums: https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/why-our-condensing-boilers-do-not-condense https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/why-our-condensing-boilers-d... > The boiler does not reach 90%+ efficiencies until the return temperatures are around 45°C. This means water must exit the boiler at a maximum of 65°C, impart 20°C of heat to the room via the radiators, and return at 45°C. edit: and if you read further they suggest that oversized boilers like yours have further efficiency losses: > When boilers fire up, they automatically ramp up to 70% of their maximum output. For a 21kW boiler (common is most homes) this would be around 15kW. Given that only 6kW is needed on a very cold day, the boiler is always going to overheat the system. When the radiators cannot get rid of enough heat the return temperatures to the boiler are too high for it to condense.

reaperman 3y ago

> Heat pumps aren't that powerful. What's the limiting parameter here? Obviously heat pumps can be scaled up to arbitrary sizes - I've used unimaginably large ones in the chemical industry. Do you mean power vs cost compared to other options? Power vs volume? Power vs. weight? Stockholm has a couple 40 megawatt heat pumps as part of a set of just seven heat pumps which provide building heat to an entire district of the city, pumping heat through 3000 kilometers of pipes. The only limiting factor I'm aware of for most commercially-available home heat pumps is that they tend not to work well below a certain temperature. This minimum temperature can be lowered by increasing the size of the outdoor radiator and adjusting the pump and coolant pressures to match.

kwhitefoot 3y ago

A 2 kW air to air heat pump with a SCOP of 4 is about 2.2 kUSD installed here in Norway (Samsung Nordic Extreme 09 varmepumpe AR09BXFYDWKEE). This is reckoned to be big enough to heat room of 170 m2. Quite a lot of people here have one air to air heat pump on the ground floor and another for the upper floor. Even down at -30°C it has a heat transfer capacity of 2.5 kW. You didn't say how much your has heater costs so I have no idea how this compares but it seems reasonably priced to me.

octacat 3y ago
Installation of anything gas related could be pretty expensive in some parts of the world too.
earleybird 3y ago
When you say 2.2 kUSD do you mean $2,200.00 or $22,000.00? In my locale, the installed figure is at or above $22,000 for a heat pump that is about $3,000 for the unit itself. On the other hand, an electric (no heat pump) hot water tank is $900 for the tank and $900 for the install. I'd really like to have a plumber be able to install a mono block heat pump since the labour costs to install a heat pump look like highway robbery.
- rasz 3y ago
  You are kidding right? I could sent you whole crew from Europe (>$1K per person for flights alone) and make couple of grand doing it at half cost.
  - voisin 3y ago
    Same here, the prices I’ve been quoted for a heat pump are $25-$30,000 Canadian. And the installers will spend the entire meeting trying to talk you out of it and into a natural gas unit. We need more Europeans to come open businesses here installing these!
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    And that probably includes a unit from Samsung, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, or Dakin that has already almost circled the globe.

stabbles 3y ago

Their fans also rather noisy. Although you shouldn't be able to hear your neighbors heat pump, I've experienced a rather annoying issue where the fans hit the exact eigenfrequency of the walls, only amplifying the noise inside.

trashtester 3y ago
If your house actually has significant eigenfrequencies built in, I would think you could get those issues at many different fan frequencies, or even from other sources of vibration, like a washing machine's dryer program. Or by watching a movie or listening to music. I would think someone with the right math skills would be able to build something like a base trap to absorb most of the energy in those frequency bands, though.

richij 3y ago

2013 called. It wants its anecdata back.