Heat pumps?

[POWERMAN]

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I suspected this may have already been mentioned somewhere - sure enough the keywords popped up in a recent thread:

What did you do in your garage today..?

I think the lift is the best motorcycle related money I have ever spent!

www.gtamotorcycle.com

Didnt want to derail the other thread - figured I'd ask here to see what general consensus was on this topic. I was looking to get my entire HVAC unit replaced along with a new tankless water heater and came across the following comments from @Bobo , @Lash and @Mad Mike :

There’s a 2 page article on heat pumps in today’s Toronto Star. New heat pumps are actually outselling new furnaces in the U.S but Canada is way behind. Apparently the newer ones work in cold climates and are becoming feasible due to soaring natural gas prices.

Someone on here suggested a heat pump/ac unit from Sennville. Checked with my hvac guy and he raved about them.

Heat pumps as a sole heating supply are not viable for most of Canada as their heating efficiency drops with the temperature. You might be OK in lower BC, but even the warmest parts of Ontario require supplemental heat for an air source heat pump for sub -10 days (actual or windchill). I have 2 little rental houses in Porcupine, both are about 900sq' bungalows. I reno'd one and put in a new 2 ton Senville 2 head HVAC unit it replaced a 45,000BTU Williams gas heater.

Last year gas cost was $1500 for the year (heat only) for each place -- they are pretty equal. Electricity for this heat pump house was $2400 this winter -- $1500 for the gas house. I did a fist pump in Oct and Nov as the heat pump was saving about 1/2 on gas -- then wham! Dec thru Mid march it got too cold and he heat pump wouldn't make heat, the resistance heater kicked in and it's up to 4x costlier to run. $400 for Dec and March, $800/mo for Jan and Feb.

In the GTA it wouldn't be that drastic, but I'm guessing the heat pump and gas would cost about the same to run. The big decision comes around supplemental heat... fireplace? resistance coils? leave old gas furnace in place?

I'm going to find out soon, I'm replacing resistance heating with a minisplit heat/AC pump into the garage at my house. It cost about $1000 to heat this winter (500sq' upstairs maintained at 18C, 900sq' downstairs heated only when I was in there (8 hrs/week). I'll report the cost this time next year.

I got a quote from a few places and on paper the heat pump setup looks super appealing - especially since some of the units come with 18+ seer ratings (e.g. Daikin, Carrier, GoodMan etc ). To be honest I thought they were blowing smoke up my ass when they said the heat pumps can extract heat from the cold winter air in order to heat a home lol.

The links @Bobo mentioned were helpful as well:

Canada News - National Canadian News | The Star

The most compelling stories from across Canada. Read national news coverage on thestar.com.

www.thestar.com

Decarbonizing home heating means looking at all options

In a paper Pollution Probe published, we argued we need to look beyond electrification. District heating, which is already used in Toronto, is one.

www.thestar.com

How a downtown Toronto condo defied the odds to save energy and money

Large-scale heat pumps at first presented a huge logistical challenge. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong … but we solved those problems.”

www.thestar.com

Granted - it is a bit strange how there were three articles about this topic in the span of a month and a half....!

However my biggest concern was the electricity usage year round. Reliance mentioned that the newer heat pump unit integrate into the furnace and have a dual fuel source setup i.e. it functions as an air-to-air heat pump down to around -10C after which it switches over to the gas supply using the furnace as a backup to heat the home. However with the ever increasing price of natural gas and the carbon tax pricing on top of that, this heat pump setup seems to be more appealing.

That aside, I'm wondering what are the odds of the cost of heating/cooling with electricity far outpacing the cost of natural gas on an annual basis.

Long story short, how many of you use air-to-air heatpumps at your place of residence? Has it been reliable with no icing/freezing up during winter (since the unit sits outdoors 24/7) For those of you that do, are you happy with the performance during winter and summer? And are you seeing savings overall when you compare your electricity and natural gas use vs when you didn't have a heat pump in place?

 

[sburns]

Timely thread, I was thinking to do some more research on this as it seems the tech is making it more viable. Also some users around here have successfully installed some units and are quite happy about it. Costs have come down, plus rebates from the gov make it appealing. Also curious about long term electricity rates etc.

Hope this turns into a good discussion.

 

[Hardwrkr13]

We have a split system with a Bosch BOVA 2.0 with a propane secondary. Condenser motor on our HP died after the first month and again this Spring (units just over 2yrs old). We had a better tech do the warranty replacement the second time and he said Bosch had a bad batch of motors and ours likely came from the factory with a bad one and was also replaced first time with the same bad batch and this time should be very reliable. He said he's installed hundreds like ours and even recently installed the same one at his mothers house so he's confident it's reliable.
We burn through about $500 a month of propane in cool weather if only using propane and if using the HP in those temps we'll use $80-100 of extra electricity cost while using no propane. The new technician confirmed our HP wasn't setup for the best efficiency from the original installer and our electricity usage will now be lower as well as work in lower temps (claimed it will pull heat down to -20c now with some propane supplementing at those temps whereas we were pretty much only running propane at -6 and lower before).
An electric heat exchanger would likely be much cheaper than propane/nat-gas furnace which is what we should have done.

 

[gsxr guy]

I have been installing heat pumps in mobile offices for 20 years. My home has 2 and they have worked in -28c. And I get cheaper house insurance as there is no flame in my house. No need for a co2 detector. No monthly gas fees etc. And cheap AC in summer.

 

[GreyGhost]

Don't forget that one of JT's dumpster fires gives you $5K if you install a whole home heat pump (subject to some conditions).

Finding a competent hvac contractor to set up a dual-fuel hvac system properly is almost impossible. It depends on the COP curve of your specific heat pump, cost of gas and cost of electricity. At best you will find a contractor that picks a half reasonable changeover temp that they use for all jobs. Commonly you will get a a stupid installer that switches over at 10C two avoid complaints about slow temp changes. That also avoids almost all cost savings.

In preparation for doing this, I ran more thermostat wires. Four or six wires aren't going to cut it except in a few special circumstances. I recommend at least 10 wires to be better able to control staging.

 

[POWERMAN]

Don't forget that one of JT's dumpster fires gives you $5K if you install a whole home heat pump (subject to some conditions).

Yup - Enbridge's site helps provide a breakdown of eligible rebates after a brief questionnaire as well.



Only issue is one it is time to replace the unit after 10-15 years, you are on your own again lol. Then again - who knows what the price of gas vs electricity would be then.

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