Heat pumps

[ShadowsDad]

OK, big reveal here... I'm not getting any younger! Yeah, I know what a surprise, right?

One of the things I did in the past was to install and remove window A/C units 2x a year. They don't get lighter as I age. Also on mornings where we need just a little heat I really dislike having to burn oil because the oil burner is like swatting a fly with a sledge hammer. So we made the decision to have heat pumps installed. Our home required 2 so we went with that suggestion. Too, when the gent came to look things over to give us the estimate he looked at the circuit breaker box and suggested we also get the old one changed out. I mentioned how difficult it was to find breakers to go in it and was told that the reason it was difficult was because they are no longer made. They had a tendency to start fires, but he'd use the existing box if we wanted him to. If made no sense to me to put in heat pumps and have our home burn down around them, so that box got changed too.

Before making the move I did ask around looking for heat pump horror stories and I couldn't find any.

So they've been installed for 5 days now and while I played (tested... note to self, it's called testing!) with all of the functions and they are quiet and appear to work fine, the heat mode is what I've used most often so far. This time of year it's not unusual to wake up to a cold home as our nighttime temp' can be quite cold. But the heat pump in the living area brings it up to a comfortable level quickly and silently. Unlike the oil burner it doesn't keep heating from the residual heat left in the burner that must be cooled off after the burner itself has shut off.

So far I'm liking them. We have a hot and humid spell coming at the end of the week and they'll get put to the A/C test then. We did use the "dry" function which no window mounted A/C unit has, and that might be enough for the coming hot spell. I'll pla... er, uh, <cough> test the units more at that time. With the "dry" function the indoor temp' can be set and the unit does cool, but that isn't the prime function. It cools just enough to remove water from the air. Unlike the window unit it was far more comfortable sleeping with the heat pump running set to dry.

We did discuss things with the office folks at the company we ordered from and one of the ladies heats her home with one here in Maine. Our winters get very cold. She told us that she has a full tank of oil and runs the burner once a year just to make sure it's working. She can't get rid of the oil in the tank. My plan was to use the heat pumps down to maybe 30°F and use the oil and then the wood stove for really cold temps. We'll see how that proves out. I might just use the heat pumps and the wood stove; we'll see. As I wrote, we haven't had them in very long. But so far I'm impressed. Unlike the oil burner there is no feeling of being cold until the burner turns on, then being too warm when it shuts down. The fan on the units ramps up and down as required to smooth out the high and low. That makes it very comfortable for waking hours and also for sleeping. I have never been comfortable with the oil burner due to the up and down temp' spikes.

To help with the move to the heat pumps our state has a rebate incentive. We'll get that $ back in no more than a few months. In the meantime I'm still learning about them as they get used.
FWIW, we got the Fujitsu brand and one is 14k A/C and 18k heating, the other is 9k/12k heating (? I think that's what it is). I think they can be what I consider to be surprisingly small in output because unlike an oil burner it's continuous and variable output. The Fujitsu will heat below -5°F but they begin to lose efficiency. The lady at the office and the owner who installed ours both heat all year long with theirs and our temps go down to -30°F. I don't plan on using ours at those temps though. I light the wood stove at about 20°F if it's going to stay there for awhile.

Maintenance? Clean the filters periodically. That's it.

Down south (USA) I think the use of these would be even more of a no-brainer. Heck, if they work in Maine...

[Jayaruh]

We love out heat pump.

[Wchnu]

Sounds like its going to work great!

[ShadowsDad]

We've only used it very modestly for morning heat soon after they were first installed and I liked the heat quality. But for the past 4 days they've been on non-stop and the quality of the a/c is really good. Sure, I can turn the place into a king size refrigerator if I want to, but that's not the point. We just want to be comfortable and they easily allow that with no temp' swings.

The hallway isn't a/c'ed and that can get warm since the spare bedroom dumps it's heat into it. The wife would look at the thermometer there (between rooms actually) and almost panic. She's learned to ignore the reading and go by what her skin tells her.

We're still learning how to run it to get the best result for us. There's only one way to get that education and that's by experiencing weather extremes and trying this and that. The past few days have been in the 90s, and yesterday the humidity hit. "Auto fan" wasn't working all that well, so I put it into constant fan mode, 3/4 speed, and that worked much better for us. It's a matter of new tricks and old dogs.

[ShadowsDad]

OK, so we've been using the heat pumps for awhile now and the coldest we've seen is 15°F. There has been a learning curve for us, mostly me. The short story is that they work fine. We have yet to burn a drop of oil for heat and heated the place with the wood stove only once due to a power outage.

Since our units have the thermostat in the unit near the ceiling the temp' must be set higher than we would normally set the indoor temp. I first tried 74° but upped it to 76°. That satisfies the unit up in the heat near the ceiling and keeps us on the floor happy. A ceiling fan to move the heat down also helps.

There is some single digit cold coming and I intend to use them for that to see how they work. I'll report back. Supposedly they're efficient down to -15° (or is it -20?). It's very likely we'll see some of that too.

Cost... I expected it to cost us $1-$2/day to run them for heat and if I'm figuring right we're on the low end of that at about $1.20/day. If things continue at this rate I expect our winter heat to cost approx' 1/3 what we spent last year heating with oil and wood*. As the cold sets in that will no doubt increase, but so far these things are just amazing. Our weather is still changing from fall to winter and our air mass is still quite humid. The outside unit sucks the heat out of the air and does so with finned coils. Those coils are cold and ice forms on them. That's expected and the units just chug along and when they need to defrost that happens and the ice melts off and runs out of them. Since the air is forced through the coils with a fan snow also clogs the fins and the same thing happens. The unit senses the decreased efficiency and goes into auto defrost mode.

OK, quality of the heat... I like wood heat when we can burn it efficiently (lower than 20°F outside for an extended time) because it's a constant heat with no thermostat that kicks in when the temp' inside drops to a low point and kicks off when it reaches a high point. I'm constantly either cold or too warm with oil heat, it would be the same with propane if it has a thermostat. The heat pumps are a constant heat like the woodstove. I really like them and for me to have no complaints is high praise. Like any non central heating system rooms away from the heat source are colder and the floors are also cold, just like wood heat.

We prefer a cold bedroom for sleeping and that has suffered a bit. We like to pull the heavy blankets up and that is no more. Basically we just use summer covers since the units do NOT like to be turned off. They are not high BTU units and it takes forever for them to catch up on heat lost during the night if they're turned down. I still turn them down slightly and I shut down the ceiling fan to allow the thermostat to be satisfied with heat near the ceiling while keeping the lower air cooler. When I wake up I restart the ceiling fan and bring the temp' back up 2° and that works fine.

As I wrote a cold snap is coming. I'll report back. I think the wife wants to burn wood, but I'm still on the shakedown cruise for the heat pumps, and she just doesn't understand how efficient the heat pumps are. I'll report back. Heat pumps are 300-400% efficient. Our oil burner is in the mid 80% efficient and so is the woodstove. No heat source that burns something can achieve over 100% efficiency and if one achieves 95% that's excellent.

Downside... Obviously during a power outage such as we just had and have quite few of in our heavily wooded state, the heat pumps don't work. But during the recent outage I did run them on our generator. That worked but I found it obscene to burn gas to get the juice to run the heat pumps. I tried it once just to see if I could as part of the shakedown cruise for the heat pumps. If I own something I want to know everything about it and what I can get out of it.

* We finally saw an electric bill that reflected a meter reading and the wife about hit the ceiling. She's accustomed to seeing the bill only reflecting lights, pumping water and such. This time it also contained the juice used for pumping heat. I still don't know if she fully understands that the cost for heating has been transferred to the electric bill. I think what might have thrown her was that I filled the oil tank before the heating season. I don't like to trust new things so I wanted a back up. As I already wrote we have yet to burn a drop of it. Our heat has all come from the heat pumps except for a power outage when I lit the woodstove.

[Wchnu]

I can remember when the house we lived in only had one propane heater to warm it. It was in the kitchen. As I recall it had 4 grates. My Dad would get up early and light it. He used box fans to move the heat around. There is a art to that. I spent many a chilly morning warming up in front of that heater.

[ShadowsDad]

The cold snap had us down to 4°F and the units worked like champs. The outside units were working hard, but they still worked. Supposedly they work down to -20°F but I think 0 will be low enough for me. The wife wants a wood fire in the wood stove when the temp' plummets. We'll see.

Fuzzy, my neighbors growing up had a coal furnace and a huge grate in the floor of their living room. All heat movement was by convection but it worked. Yes, old time methods worked. Two of our heating methods are not central heat and we get creative with moving the heat around too. I really dislike the central heat but the floors do stay warmer.

[Wchnu]

The cold snap had us down to 4°F and the units worked like champs. The outside units were working hard, but they still worked. Supposedly they work down to -20°F but I think 0 will be low enough for me. The wife wants a wood fire in the wood stove when the temp' plummets. We'll see.

Fuzzy, my neighbors growing up had a coal furnace and a huge grate in the floor of their living room. All heat movement was by convection but it worked. Yes, old time methods worked. Two of our heating methods are not central heat and we get creative with moving the heat around too. I really dislike the central heat but the floors do stay warmer.

It seems to amaze younger people that us older people survived. Can’t figure out how they think the country was built.