Norwegian here. Live in a «log cabin» from 1750`s. Installed heatpump 5 years ago. A godsend durring the heatwave in summer, and a fairly good improvement in tempratures in winter… But,,, replaced all windows last year, and the difference was HUGE… Now the heatpump can allmost be the sole heatsourse in winter. So it can`t be stressed enough INSULATION is the biggest key. But then again the windows cost 24k €, while the heatpump only cost 3k €…
We had a heatpump installed after replacing our windows. We don’t have good insulation yet, but the windows have made heating and cooling workable. Need to save up for insulation.
they are good if you have the differential for it to work , but the cheap ones being fitted by land lords in uk dont work well. also when the temperature crashes really low, they can actually use more electricity than they provide direct heating for. i would rather use an oil boiler , and a decobon filter , than can be emptied
Pardon the length, and the rant. I was a mechanical contractor/engineer for 30 yrs in the SE USA. Starting just when heat pumps were starting to gain a foothold. I see several inadequacies in this vid and in the several studies therein referenced. And they ALL seem to be related to the most common failings that I found within my industry over the years. Dissatisfaction with heat pumps can almost always be traced to an improper installation. Not just the act of physically placing components and hooking them together. Installation begins with the design of the system. 99.9% of all residential HVAC sales start with some "sales" effort that typically begins with an off-the cuff or rule-of-thumb estimate of how much of a system is required. Usually something like "well, you've got a 1200 square-foot area, and at 400 square feet per ton, ( a TON is 12,000 BTUs per hour), you'll need a 3-ton (36,000 BTU) unit to properly heat it. But this does NOT account for the REAL heat loss/heat gain of the structure. In my experience, and speaking with contractors around the country, the only time heat loss/gain is actually calculated is when an architect designs a structure and hires an engineer to actually design the HVAC. This failing to account for the actual needs of the structure can result in a significant under-sizing of the system, and that results in poor performance and customer satisfaction. Point Two: Customer education. You touched on this briefly in your vid. Customers are used to their fossil fuel-fired system (whether it is forced air or static radiator or under-floor) delivering much warmer outlet temps. Often on the order of 130 -160° F (54.4 - 71.1° C), which is much higher than body temp and therefore FEELS warm. Heat pumps operate on a basic 20-30°F (-6.6 to -1.1°C) rise across the indoor coil. Meaning if the air in the house is 70°F (21.1°C) , then the heat pump can add about 30°F (-6.6°C) to that, for an output temp of about 100°F (37.7°C). Only 2°F ( -16.6°C) above body temp. This feels cool to the skin. BUT - it IS putting the required 36,000 BTU/hr (or whatever) into the structure. This is before the auxiliary heat strips are called in to play. THEN the heat pump can deliver you 130°F (54.4°C) output air. But at a huge cost. And even most contractors do not realize that heat pumps are very charge sensitive, Put in too much or too little freon and the efficiency goes to hell. I could write a book about how to get a satisfactory heat-pump installation, but the point is, I feel that NO discussion of heat pumps should be undertaken without a thorough exploration of what makes them work or fail.
Went from the Greater Northeast to the Hot Southeast, and what you have observed about skin temperature surprised me, but the overall 'heating' with a heat pump is VERY EASY to live with when you factor in full house AC in Summer and things like 'abnormal' gas backup. I have some 'cooler/hotter rooms', but NOTHING like the ice-on-the-windows attic I grew up in from an oil/radiator house. Thanks for the practical insights, because there is such a lack of such experience in RUclips!!
Which ultimately means that many people will not have a properly sized or maintained heat pump and they will be disappointed. In addition to paying more than if they just used a gas furnace.
We are building single family homes in Ontario, heat pumps are amazing, but it’s a whole design thing. Something as simple as awnings on south facing windows can drastically alter demand on the system
Our house is in the middle of the Rhine plain near Karlsruhe/Germany. It was built in 1954/1967 and energy-efficiently improved in 1983. The standard outside temperature for the design of the heating is minus 10°C. The oil heating is 30 years old and still works fine. The only weak point is the high consumption of 4000 liters of heating oil per year. After switching to heat pump technology, there are now around 150 liters of heating oil and around 5500 kWh of electricity left per year. The old oil heating helps the heat pump out in the event of permanent frost below 0°C. The SCOP of the heat pump is around 4.5. The house and the radiators remained unchanged. The heating costs have halved.
Hi, you must also have added some insulation in the process because your old consumption of 4000 liters amounts to 40.000 KWh ( lets say 35.000KWh with 88% efficiency) and now you generate 1500KWh + 5500KWh *4.5 = 26000KWh
@@micheljansens4643 I did not add any insulation to the house. But I separated heating and hot water and removed the hot water circulation. So energy consumption for hot water in the summer went from 70 Liters of oil per month down to 30 kWh electricity by switching to the new heatpump boiler. SCOP of the 30 years oil heating was not 88% but below 70%.
Installed a heat pump in an 1915-build house and it works fine in winter. Main confusion is that it's not a like for like replacement of a gas/oil system. You can't return to a cold house, crank up to max and expect the same level of almost instant heating you can achieve with a fossil system - heat pumps love (i.e. work most efficiently at) 24/7 lower level output and from experience the bills are just fine. Used in this mode the 'radiators' become 'convectors' so you lose that feeling of being in front of a radiant heat source, to be replaced with a bath of warm air throughout the house. Heat pumps also appear to suffer more from bad installs than fossil systems - the quality and experience of the team doing the installation makes a HUGE difference.
Fossil fuels have always had the bad problem of being terribly inefficient hence why people like all that wasted fuel turned into a face full of hot air blasting you. A heat pump is different and humans hate change so it will take time to adjust but this will slowly happen at some point. It also feels wrong to have your furnace on 24/7 since we are all taught that you should turn things off to save power but that is not always the case as seen here with heat pumps. What a lot of people are not discussing is how quit heat pumps are; less forced air sound inside can lead to less hearing loss long term and also the outside fan is so much quieter that you are not forced to put it next to your neighbor to blast them out too.
I think you hit on a thing though. Radiant heat is much more comfortable than increased air temperature. People like sitting in front of a firepit, even though 90% of the heat goes up to the sky.
@@grantmcinnes1176 A very good point - even to the 'near infrared' health movement. Our relationship to heating and cooling appears more subtle than many realise - a lot of the appeal of air con is down to humidity control, and not just temp - perhaps a reason the cooling in the Paris 24 Olympic village has been criticised as it controls for temp only.
ASHP are the new double glazing in the UK. Nothing wrong with the product but given the BUS grant, many are being attracted to the market by the money that can be made. There also appears to be no low temperature design element to current apprentice/learner courses, which is quite shocking (sure Heat Geek referenced this at some point). And turning stats to what you want them to say has been perfectly demonstrated in this vid. ASHP can heat any building *in theory*. You just need a suitable sized ASHP. BUT you may not have space, you may need a massive one which would be deemed inefficient. BUT it would heat the space. We need to stop thinking about this being a binary can/can't, and more how we can make it work. If climate scientists are correct, then we'd be far better off with an inefficient ASHP on a green grid, saving the planet, than saying 'MEH too hard, lets burn more gas and to hell with the world'.
If the environment and/or lower heating costs is the goal then the first step should always be to fix the insulation. It doesn't really matter what type of heating or cooling you have, a well insulated house will need less energy to heat/cool, no matter if you are burning coal or gas or moving heat with electricity; fixing the insulation lowers them all. Then you can think about changing to a heat pump or stick with what you have.
That's not generally true. It depends on how much carbon dioxide is emitted, while producing your electricity. If that's close to zero (as it is for example in norway) the investment in a heat pump is more environment friendly than insulating your home and burning gas or oil.
@@ellsworthm.toohey7657 you should fix your caps lock key and your reading skills. Try to understand what "it depends on how much carbon dioxide is emitted" means. No co2, no problem.
@@oasntet what's your point here? The heating costs depend on how much the energy costs. Since a heat pump is very efficient, it's well plausible that you reduce your heating costs just by installing one of these, especially if electricity is cheap. Apart from that is 'fixing the insulation ' a too broad statement. When insulating you always have a number of options which will have different economical and/or environmental impact.
I think the main problem between the two groups is cost. To the poor 'just install better insulation' or 'just buy an electric car' etc is impossible and grossly ignorant. To the rich they think the poor dont care about the planet. If you're worried about the next bill then the planet can wait. These groups aren't talking.
World emissions are going to be driven by the understandable aspirations of the poor in China, India and other places. Affluent Westerners being good isn't going to solve the problem.
The average UK salary is £30,000 a year and minimum wage is £17,000 ( a state pension is £11,000 pa). I doubt Sabine has any idea of those sort of facts at all.
People shouldn't be so wasteful and pampered. When I was poor, I put on a sweater. Summers I let the inside get 15+ degrees warmer than pampered people do. Winters I let the inside get 15+ degrees cooler than pampered people do. I bought my first car for $400. I would buy bulk dry goods at the grocer instead of going to restaurants and convenience stores. The world's problems comes from 8 billion poor people trying to live like they're the rich and they will externalize as much cost as they can, often in the form of CO2 pollution. At least when the 1% flies their private jets, it's not multiplied by 8 billion.
@@thorr18BEM "The world's problems comes from 8 billion poor people trying to live like they're the rich" Not it does not. The problem comes from a couple million people that have thousands of times the emissions of normal people, and a couple billion people that do not have access to anything coming even close to modern technology. "At least when the 1% flies their private jets, it's not multiplied by 8 billion." No, it is just multiplied by a couple thousands - they fly more and with no other people that need to travel. So even if we would grand you your delusional numbers: if the 1% often fly with their private jets than that is more than the lower 90% combined.
Over here in America, where heat pumps are pretty common, nobody I know of is installing the kind of system Dr. Hossenfelder is talking about, where you hook up the heat pump to existing radiators that are supposed to cool via radiant heat. What people mostly do here is either hook their heat pumps up to an existing central *forced air* heat or A/C system, or they install mini-splits or multi-splits with head units that circulate moderately warmed air in the room. Mini-splits and multi-splits in fact do work really well, even in old houses. I've even seen them installed in historic homes that are over two hundred years old. Using your existing radiators seems like a bad idea for the very reason Dr. Hossenfelder states: the radiator isn't warm enough. But there is no particular reason to confine yourself to such a system.
@grumpynerd forced air heating was never popular in UK homes it was tried and almost all of the systems were replaced with gas boilers . There is not normally the room for ducts in uk homes , domestic air con is not realy a thing and in fact to get a gov grant for a heat pump, the system is not allowed to operate in cooling mode .
Central forced air heating is pretty much non-existent in northern Europe. Air-to-air (is that same as mini-splits, we don't use the term?) is common as complementary to other heating systems, but ground source heat pumps as a single source is increasingly popular in northernmost parts (I have a ground source heat pump).
What you call heat pump in America is called split system aircon elsewhere in the world. The real heat pump system has heat exchanger buried deep underground and usually provides hot water too.
@@samuelchamberlain2584 Forced air has the advantage that the same system is used as air conditioning which, AIUI, isn't common on your side of the pond. If radiant heat is used, two completely separate systems have to be installed, and maintained.
My daughter here in U.S. lives in a 1935 cottage. The house has been rewired, new plumbing and re-roofed . I've insulated under the house, in the attic and in the walls. Put in new heat pump system. Takes forever to change yep. On cold days (15-19° in PNW) the unit can't even begin to do the job. Fortunately we kept the little natural gas fireplace otherwise she would freeze
Heat pump temperature rise is limited by the refrigerant thermodynamics. 15°F is about 20° outside their capabilities. Some larger units have resistance heaters that kick in when the temperature is really low. Needless to say, the operating cost is insane.
@@MrKentaroMotoPI That's the case with R22 which hasn't been installed in over a decade. Modern "Cold climate" certified heat pumps produce 70% of their rated output at 5F outdoor temp without aux heat.
My house was built with electric baseboard heat and poor insulation. It cost over $200 per month to heat in the winter here in Ohio. Over time I upgraded the insulation and installed a heat pump. My monthly bill was cut in half until COVID inflated the cost. I shudder to think what might have been had I done nothing. Yes, I am satisfied with my heat pump, thank you very much.
Heat pumps are a no brainer with houses that were built with resistance baseboards near the floor and AC in the ceiling, as many were in the 1960s and 1970s. The ductwork is already there, and these houses are often well insulated, so very little rework is involved. It would be more complicated in a place like mine, with district heating from a central boiler, solid masonry walls and not much room to run any ductwork. What we have works and trying to change anything in a condominium is like pulling teeth.
Yeah I stupidly did that when moving into a house with a furnace. Took out the registers because I was one of those idiots who believed that 'when it was off it wasnt actually off' and I took them out. Immediately regretted it because teh insane design had the vents go into the attic then blow the hot air DOWN from the ceiling. In winter it was IMPOSSIBLE to heat the upstairs. On the other hand, the upstairs were bedrooms that were only used for sleeping so it ultimately saved us money, but it was impossible to have a warm room up there.
Sometimes that's not a compatible option. In the UK where boilers are used which heat water to be circulated to radiators which heat rooms, those are designed to just have one boiler and circulation system. Adding a mini-split would work, but this research was about retrofitting homes with existing heating systems with heat pumps. It does show that the hydronic heating approach has limitations- many would be better off with a multi-split system, but that's more expensive still.
Seems today, to get many grants (Canada), you must remove your old system. Things are going to get very interesting for the regions serviced by natural gas infrastructure.
@@jaymemaurice There is never a requirement to remove a system. Grants cover installation and equipment, and obviously there is only so much space but no grants require removal of anything. We had natural gas in southern ontario, when we moved in gas was expernsive so we had thought of switching to hydro, but then gas got cheaper, the big kicker was when the government sold most of Ontario hydro and prices skyrocketed, maybe thats intentional.
One of the most significant issues is that people just ignore reversible mini-split AC units. Their efficiency is comparable to (or even better since they don't need to get nearly as hot) central units and they circumvent the issue of preexisting small surface area radiators by having active ventilation, so lots of the retrofitting work isn't necessary. They can also be used as an AC in the summer, which is a huge quality of life improvement. It also allows people to slowly transition to heat pumps, since you can install them one unit at a time, gradually replacing your existing boiler's tasks. Having multiple heat pumps like that also means that in case one breaks, you still have heat because you can just open doors to heat the room with the broken unit with the units in adjacent rooms. If you only have one central heating unit, be it a heat pump or a fossil burner, you're just kinda screwed if it breaks during winter.
Air-conditioner, heat pump, refrigerator - they're all the same thing under different names: It's a phase change fluid circulated by electric pump, flowing through an evaporator (cold end) and a condenser (hot end). So I agree with you that heat-pump enthusiasts dismissing "mini-split AC units" is like Instant Pot enthusiasts dismissing pressure cookers. In twenty years we should sell these people on an amazing new "climate control tech" we call "phase transformation".
Sure, air blowing systems like common split systems will work but not everyone likes circulation of air, especially people who suffer on house dust allergies. Most people I know in Germany prefer low air movement systems for heating.
We use our split system for 10 month a year for heating/cooling. Our gas heater is reserved for the coldest 2 months. This concept more than halved our gas consumption and saves more than 30% in total cost for heating.
@@matneu27 cleaning helps with the house dust :). I have both reversible A/C units and a central heat pump for warm water and floor heating. Quite happy with it.
Keeping my oil burner heating system and installing a 36K btu mini slit on one side of house, mainly for AC. If the heating is adequate for Fall and Spring (North of Boston) I'll add another 36K btu unit to other side of house if the first system works out well.
All of Australia: What's a radiator? Installing heat pumps here costs about $500USD and takes about 2 hrs with zero modifications to the house (except for one 2-inch hole through the wall).
That's a mini-split, which is a type of heat pump. But a heat pump large enough to heat an entire house in a North American or northern European winter is of an entirely different scale.
I heard Sabine say something about “old houses,” and I thought “uh oh.” But then I realized I live in America, on the west coast, where “old” means something very different than just about anywhere else on earth. I live in a 72 y.o. house, and our heat pump works just fine. But 72 years isn’t old if you’re a European house.
I had that same realization when I went to Scotland to visit my uncle.. he was asking where I lived and what life was like in Canada and during that I said something about buying an old house from the 50's and he started laughing and told me his house was nearly 300 hundred years old, it has just been remodeled.
from my experience it's not the years but the kind of heating system you have in the house, current heat pumps aren't just suitable for houses with radiators, I guess you use other medium to convert electricity to heat?
Haha, oh yes 72 years is old in Europe too. But of course we also have houses who are centuries old. They normally are monument protected and unable to get insulated. all the best🙂
Nice. My House here in Germany is from 1860 and is made of clay and wood. I have a gas boiler and a fireplace. Works fine but I will invest in infrared as 3rd option while keeping the rest.
I live in a large 400 yr old granite stone house that was very cold our first 3 winters. Feeding the four fireplaces took half my waking hours and barely made a dent in the cold more than 2 or 3 meters from the fire. I had to dress indoors as though I was going skiing. My options were pellet boiler, diesel fuel boiler, resistance electric, or heat pumps. We got heat pumps, and had an insulated new roof installed. It took half a year of construction for both. Every window was replaced with thermal double glazed windows. This would have been an unsuitable house, with 60cm thick granite walls. All new piping was needed. In short, the heat pump system works. It uses a lot of electricity but it is very effective and was life changing. It is a large system,. It was also quite expensive, complex, a long installation, and requires a lot of knowledge and skill to optimize it. It works very different than a heat on demand gas boiler common in the UK or US. It is far far more efficient. I get a COP of about 3 to 4, which means for every kw of electricity I get 3 to 4 kw of heat. A diesel boiler system would’ve been about 25 percent less in cost, but likely more in fuel. A PV system with batteries offsets some of the electric consumption but in cloudy winter it is almost nonexistent which is when it is needed most. After 18 months I am probably halfway to technician qualification for heat pumps.
@@DschinghissRight, but that is what it takes in a cold climate. Over time that investment will pay off. And even if they'd installed a gas boiler, they'd have still had a very inefficient dwelling. So it would have still felt cold because heating the air inside a leaky building is a losing battle. Staying warm in a cold climate has everything to do with economics. Even when gas was cheap it was the rich that stayed warm and the poor that shivered, unable to afford a shilling to put in the gas meter. So that hasn't changed with the transition from gas boilers to heat pumps. Except now the general population is much wealthier and more people can afford the upgrades. Bottom line - if you can afford it, do it. If not then no one is forcing you to put in a heat pump but be aware - it might cost you more over time.
@@Dschinghissa couple of mini split air to air systems would have taken care of the place without spending on insulation. Insulation always helps, but 15 kW from gas is the same as 15 kW from a heat pump, except that with an air to air heat pump you'll be paying 1/3 for the energy. The only reason insulation is *needed* is because of installing air to water heat pumps which are inherently *vastly* less efficient.
You're comparing apples to oranges. My fire was rubbish. Once I rebuilt my house the heat pump was much better at keeping me warm. I'd go out into a limb and say your fire will be far better now too after rebuilding an entire house.
PS, I live in a completely uninsulated house. Single pane windows, no roof or wall insulation at all, no seals around doors and one mini split *air to air* kept the place toasty warm when it was below zero outside. We had 2 units but rarely turned on the second one. Only if we wanted to warm the place up quickly. Both units were 25 years old when we replaced them with a ducted air to air which is complete overkill. To put in two 7kW inverter mini splits you're only looking at 2-3000 pounds which is less than an air to water after the subsidy, plus you get air conditioning, and installation is just a small hole in an exterior wall, an outdoor single phase power supply and hanging a bracket inside.
Swede here - Installed a heatpump for around 3k Euro, no need for new radiators as I don't have any at home anymore, the house is 90 years old. The type of the heatpump is air-to-air so no need for radiators, air gets warm within minutes and it works as AC at summer (and that's amazing!!). The type you were talking about is air-to-water but there are other solutions and those are still heatpumps.
@@heikoguckes5693 Sure, one unit ( I have a preatu open house. The internal part is installed on the first floor. I was afraid that the upper floor would be cold but since the air blows under the ceiling it's actually quite ok. I have two bedrooms upstairs. The pump is mitsubishi ln35 hero.
@@heikoguckes5693 Slightly more "typical" (non-open floor plan) layout here. The heat pump that was installed took the place of using a fireplace to supplement an oil-fired boiler (forced hot water baseboard heating), but with a little planning (and bothering to use the scheduling feature) it takes care of more than half of the heating needs. The unit is a Samsung Max Heat 2.0 12k BTU (roughly 3.52 kW nominal capacity, heating & cooling) model and has an effective minimum outdoor temperature of -25°C (which thankfully doesn't happen extremely often here-I have definitely been outside during colder weather than that within the last five years).
This is what Sabine missed in her video here. She is only talking about air-water-heatpumps, not air-air-heatpumps (or more commonly known as AC). As she correctly notes, air-water-heatpumps have a problem working with old radiators, but the indoor units of AC put out easily the same amount of heat as normal radiators.
Thanks for all the answers. This means that practically every building can at least be augmented by an AC unit, also known as air-to-air heat-pump. Costs are about 3k€ per unit including installation. They work down to -25°. Main disadvantage is the need for opened doors or additional devices. A backup plan for very cold weather might be a good idea.
Not great reasoning though. People who stick with old technology also are biased. I'm sure if you polled people who still have rotary wall phones they would have a high satisfaction rate but that doesn't mean they are better than smartphones.
I am living in Sweden. We have air to air heatpumps here. Air does not need to be warmer than 40C. No piped heating system needed. Our home is old and poorly insulated but with two new heatpumps we make massive reduced heating bills. The ratio between bought electricity and provided heat is 1:6 in optimal conditions 1:4 during -20C. Pay back period for the two pumps were ca 2-3 years.
I live in Finland and can confirm this. Sabine is way too quick on disregarding the Nordic countries on the basis of insulation. 1) there are poorly insulated houses here too, that uses heat pumps. 2) she completely ignores the option with air-based heat pumps, which is very common here, as it mitigates those costs Sabine is talking about. 3) the cold climate does to a certain extent mitigate the benefits of good insulation. One should consider energy use needed for heating a house to 20 degrees during winter. The energy needed in north Sweden/Finland might be similar to Germany/UkK One can definitely benefit from heat pumps without a big investment in insulation or radiators.
Poorly isulated in Sweden is good isulation for the "never seen -20C" rest of the world. The efficient temperature rage of sigle stage heat pums is very narrow and the lower the temperature outside the lower the heating capacity. At -20C a normal heatpump has the same efficiency as a electric or diesel furnace
@@nigelliam153 They aren't modified, ground source heat pumps are a separate technology. They cost about ten times as much and require a tailored heating system, heated floors, air ducting or something else. Air heat pump you just install the indoor unit near the ceiling in one room, drill a hole through the wall and install the outdoor unit somewhere nearby the hole. Ground source heat pumps are so expensive they are mostly practical in large houses with lot of heating requirement.
Oh yes, the famous "But sometimes". Technology connection has some things to say about that. Heat pumps aren't great as the only source of heat in old, poorly insulated buildings. They work wonderfully for 350 days a year, but then a cold snap comes and they turn into expensive resistive heaters. However, it just so happens that these old buildings tend to already have some kind of heating already in place, that can easily be fired when the weather becomes a little to much for the heat pump, and also as a backup. So you can have this super efficient heat source for most of the year, and you don't have to blow through most of what you saved in a cold snap. A well designed pump will need this kind of help over 5-10 days a year. That being said, ALWAYS insulate the building first if it is at all possible. You will save on the heat pump probably half of what you invest into insulation, and it can slash your heating bill by 2/3 regardless of the method used.
Bingo. My air-to-air heat pump works wonderfully ~11.5 months out of 12 where I live in Norway. I also have backup electric heating (the bathroom floor heating being the most frequently used indulgence) and a modern, very effective wood-burning fireplace/stove. I especially appreciate the stove because it functions as a backup for any interruptions in the power supply. It's not designed to cook on but I could boil water on it at a pinch, so I'd be fine using just that in winter for a week, potentially a couple weeks, in the event of a grid issue.
@@katrinabryce The latitude doesn't tell nearly the whole story. Europe gets help from the Gulf Stream. Chicago is inland far enough that it only gets help from Canada.
You seem to mix apples and oranges. Heat pumps are excellent for older houses. But if you are going to replace a boiler, it's not that great or very expensive. Here in Norway, we are always referring to air-air heat pumps unless something else is specified. Ditch the radiators that rely on high input temperatures, and rather get a mini-split system, preferably with several indoor units.
You can usually add a basic air-to-air heat pump system as an addon to your home. It won't even cost all that much and, while it won't remove the need for central heating at least due to needing hot water, it will reduce your heating bill by quite a bit.
@@Hans-Yolo There are several kinds, it can collect heat from the ground, water, outside air, or even inside air. The ground/water ones will be more efficient, but also more costly. I think the outside air is the most common one. It's a bit more expensive than the regular air-air, but not too expensive, and a good solution for hot water - especially if you use water for heating the house(in floor or radiators). I think this is the one Sabrina focused on. It will (likely) not manage alone in the winter, and also needs backup heat from another source. Lastly there is the indoor air water boilers that I do not know much about except that they sit on top of the boiler and sucks heat from the room. Sounds like a great thing in a hot area where you still want hot water.
@@Hans-Yolo Assuming you mean water boiler with built in heat pump - Those seem like a solid choice if you live in a hot climate, since they take the heat from the room they are in and act like a secondary AC. In a cooler area, they might still make sense, it the room they are pulling the heat from are heated by a heat-pump. Otherwise you'd have to basically use the same amount of electricity as a resistance boiler but in a more roundabout way if you want the room to keep its temperature.
Shout out to all those scientifically litterate people that are able to understand (and actually take the time to read) a proper study and then present the findings honestly. We need more people in the world like you Sabine. Keep it up =)
I designed and built a two room recording studio in the UK 25 years ago. It was designed to reduce sound transfer, but the thermal performance was astonishing. I ran a couple of hundred watts of background heating on a thermostat, and the heat from a computer could bring it up to warm in 5 minutes. I think other comments are touching on this: our faces feel the average temperature of surrounding surfaces. If there are cold window surfaces, it may be more comfortable to have a hot area adjacent to them to bring the average temperature up. There's an obvious issue with heat pumps not being able to generate sufficiently hot areas. Hence with single-glazed windows and a heat pump which is putting out enough energy to achieve the required air temperature, people may still feel uncomfortable. Finally, I had previously designed and installed a gas-fired heating system for a 1938 house which was still just using coal fires. That included creating a full thermal model of the house, not using "rules of thumb". There was a problem with a step rise in boiler costs with capacity, but an extra layer of insulation in the loft reduced heat loss enough to enable me to avoid that step in capital cost. When insulation is displacing not just fuel cost but capital cost, its payback becomes much more rapid. My suspicion is that commercial installers would not have modelled the house but would have used rules of thumb, resulting in a system at its heating limits. Converting that to a heat pump would then have been a failure. That may be what is behind much of the dissatisfaction. I would have liked to design and build a house based on the studio construction, that would have been cheap and easy to heat.
You're exactly right: talk to a plumber and more often than not they think you're lucky to get a CoP of >2.5 and have likely no idea what a SCoP is. They think you can just swap out a 30kW combi boiler for a 15kW heat pump and call it a day. That's not how it works. As you said: they need to do a full thermal survey to spec and design the system to work efficiently for that specific house. And often the changes that help the heat pump help the boiler, so invest in thermal insulation before the heat pump.
@@SloverOfTeuth you are so stuck on your radiators. Get a air-to-air heat pump and it can replicate the feeling when you get out of the plane in Mallorca.
@@Leo99929 very common and just to add the amount of houses that have been converted from solid fuel back boilers or gas boilers or fired with balanced flues then to modern power flue combi boilers and have never had the ventilation adjusted to suit is astounding.
@@kimmono You're right, however air to air can't do your domestic hot water too, so you'd need a separate system for that or keep a non heat pump water heater.
@@stephenfanthorpe2708 My house had multiple air bricks in every room because it's a requirement for carbon monoxide levels produced by the open fire back boiler it no longer has. Literally see day light through a hole in the wall. you can feel the cold gushing through it in winter.
Our land lord installed a heat pump. We discovered cold air coming in around the windows and base boards. Once this was fixed our heating/cooling costs are about half of what they were when we were using an oil furnace.
@@johansvideor It's never a miss. It's a hit that's 3 times the size of the target. IOW Forget doing a heat loss, just install 2 sizes bigger than the last guy so you don't get a callback.
My house is 100 years old this year. When it was built in 1924 drywall had not yet been invented. Instead for the interior walls the builders nailed narrow strips of wood (called "lathe") between the vertical supports and then plastered over the lathe. The space between the exterior and interior walls was left open. This left a huge gap for heat to escape, but in 1924 this was probably not a problem - coal was cheap and plentiful, and when the house got cold in winter you simply added more coal to the boiler. The coal furnace was eventually replaced by a gas boiler before I moved in. One of the first things I did after I bought the house was to insulate the walls. It was expensive, but it was worth every penny. What was a drafty old house in winter is now comfortable. For old buildings, I think it makes better sense to insulate them first to the extent that it's possible before changing the heating system.
All this time, I've been wholly unaware that Europeans were basically grafting heat pumps into radiator heated houses. In the US, heat pumps are almoat invariably used in a forced air system, and are used to provide cooling in the summer as well as heat in the winter.
@@TheAngelsHaveThePhoneBox If only there was a type of heat pump that didn't use existing dispersal systems like radiators or forced heat. We could call them...maybe...minisplits. Yeah, I like the sound of that.
I'm working in heat pumps, a propane heatpump at 65°C (which should be enough for most old buildings) would be about 20% more expensive compared to gas heating at German pricing. However, in Germany, Gas is heavily subsidized, without subsidies, the heat pump would be an obvious choice for every last building. Regarding energy efficiency, assuming electricity comes from gas in a power plant, you can expect 50% of efficiency (not considering waste heat usage). According to the physics, at average temperatures in Germany a modern propane heatpump would have an average COP of 3ish which means that you are still producing a third less carbon emissions than gas heating. If you factor in waste heat usage and and renewable energy, the ecological benefit only improves.
Isn't it that electricity is massivly overtaxed to make up losses from dumb governmental desicions (i.e. sutting down nuclear power plants, having wind farms that need to be payed for while they aren't even connected to the grid, having a tax system that makes energy storage not viable etc) ?
@@pholdway5801 that's obviously a different problem and will hopefully be addressed through decentralized electricity generation and stronger grids, however the countries that require the largest amounts of heating have stable power grids
We installed a heatpump in our 1932 house, the building already has radiators (water) so a Air/Water heatpump was used. It makes all of our heat and hot water. We run the hot water at 60 degrees. Power consumption with electric heater dropped from 45000 kWh per year, down with heatpump to 11500 kWh. Then to be blunt during the winter we have increased the indoor temperature from 19 degrees to 23 degrees, simply as we can afford the comfort. We are definitely happy with it. In particular it's fun during the summer with solar panels (18) we have basically no heating cost for months on end. Granted there is an initial investment, the cost of electricity offsets it quickly when power in the socket at home average 30 cents for 2023. Total installation was 10 000 Euros or so, meaning the financial recovery was ONE YEAR. Very happy heatpump owner, encouraging more people to invest in their home and their comfort. In the odd case the temperature drops under -15 degrees C it' switches to electric but so far during three years it happened only a few days a year usually in decent or February. We live in Malmö, Sweden and the house has not been insulated to modern standards. Meaning we have more to save.
"We live in Malmo, Sweden". What a surprise. You will have a totally different level of insulation in your home to myself, for example, who lives in the UK. Whether a heat pump heats your home effectively enough is down to three things: insulation, insulation and insulation. In the UK homes were not built with insulation in mind. The UK is built on coal which we relied on both to run the central heating until North sea Gas came on line in the 1980's, now run out of course, and to burn in the grate during our occasional cold snaps. Most houses built before 2000 will have nothing more than bare slates covering the roof with maybe a thin layer of roofing felt under that assuming it hasn't already rotted away. Very few houses have modern high insulation rating windows and front doors, they have cheap ones with virtually no insulation value at all, they do little more than stop the wind coming in. Otherwise they are typically to all intents and purposes whacking great holes in the walls. To properly insulate the average small terraced house in the UK would cost at least £20-25k to completely replace the front and back doors, the windows and the roof with top of the range high insulation replacements. That's your upfront cost before you even consider paying for a heat pump. Furthermore our roof rafters here are almost always only 75mm in height which means the max thickness of PIR board you can put in the roof is 50mm. I'll bet in Sweden you've got much taller rafters than that.
Thanks for sharing, and glad you've had such a great experience with a heat pump and solar panels. Can you clarify: is 11500 kWh the energy now that you've increased the temperature to 23 C, or before when it was still 19 C?
I lived in a house with a heat pump in Seattle for about 5 years and it was awesome. It heated, it cooled, and it was efficient as hell, as long as you left the thermostat alone. Turn the heat up too much too fast and the aux heater would come on and immediately wipe out all your efficiency gains, but if it was just maintaining a constant temp it was great!
Sure, depending upon the climate of the place you live, though. You don't want an air heat pump in a cold climate. We had one in our house when we bought it, but it was terrible in central Pennsylvania winters. Cost too much. After a couple years we got a high-efficiency condensing gas furnace with AC, and it's still inexpensive and works great. (It helps we have cheap natural gas in our state, since we produce so much of it.)
Sounds like it might have needed a little adjustment, to bring the temperature up more slowly using the pump rather than going for the aux heater without needing to.
Yeah, they work great in a place that goes from 55 degrees to 65 degrees over the course of the year. Absolutely worthless in places that actually get cold and here in the deep South they have to be oversized to keep up with the summer heat. That makes them less efficient the rest of the year.
@@Alboalt Air heat pumps are popular in the Nordics including Norway, where it gets reasonably cold. Mine is rated to -35 C. I haven't had the chance to test it in colder weather than -20 C yet, but it had no trouble whatsoever at that temp. I guess it would struggle in Siberia or Canada.
“Boilers” implies hot water home heating, an efficient system itself. Heat pumps in Canada usually replace gas-fired circulating air systems. One less medium makes for excellent performance except in extreme temperatures (>-20c). Heating a tin shed in any winter is pointless.
you can't beat hydronic underfloor heating for comfort and efficiency, there isn't one less medium, its the same number of mediums, what matter is how warm you and the objects in your house are, not how warm the air is.
Over 20 years ago i visited friends homes in Montana and Sierra Nevada CA which were built with very good insulation. Note these are Norway like climates .. cold to colder. Both home owners said the extra insulation was not expensive during the build. Both had total yearly heating costs of less than $100. At that time neither had heat pumps, while both were heated by "stoves" burning only a few cord of wood.
American here. Every house I've lived in had forced air, so I forgot about radiators. I had a radiator only at university for 1 or 2 years, and I don't remember having air conditioning those years. Americans love air conditioning, so there's a lot of forced air here in houses and apartments/flats. My house has a heat pump for heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. I love it. When my previous electric water heater went bad, I replaced it with a heat pump version. I love it. Like anything else, they just need to be sized properly for your usage pattern. I watched this whole video and have to say it's basically for a European target audience.
I also got the impression the video was mostly aimed at a European audience. Where I live, the vast majority of housing stock is less than 50 years old, meaning a pressing need for energy conservation had already reared its ugly head before it was built. The change in temperature over the year is also pretty extreme compared to most places in Europe, and air conditioning is universal because summers would be unbearable without it. As a result, most houses are fairly well insulated.
Aussie here, and same thing. Reverse cycle air conditioner (ie heat pump) for heating the house in winter and straight up heat pump for hot water. Air doesn't need to get anywhere near 50 degrees so helps efficiency, and newish pump for hot water hits 60 degrees easily while retaining 400%+ efficiency. Add in solar and timing the heat pump to draw from solar makes it much cheaper than gas.
@@bobbun9630 I'd say mostly targeting Central Europeans where insulation of buildings are sub-par to Nordic standards. Heat pumps work well even in -20C IF you choose a brand that knows how-to. Most brands have no idea and as such not sold in the Nordics at all.
Really depends where you live in US. I grew up in CA and my experience is with natural gas forced air heating. When I moved to northeast oil radiator heating seems more common. But despite this I ended up with gas forced air with gas water heater. Both are relatively high efficiency. I like gas. I've lived in apartment with heat pump and really didn't like it. To be fair that was back in the early 90s. As for water heaters. Seems to me when I looked at replacing my failing water heater, heat pump ones where more expensive. By HOA bylaws, we are supposed to replace every 10 years. At time, I replaced it, didn't make economic sense to replace with heatpump. Besides in a power outage, only need small battery to have heated water. Having had a number of multiple power outages that were for days, few close to a week, it is nice to have a easy back up.
Heat pumps are the icing on the cake. Just insulate your house! (I worked as an insulator for a time, and it is amazing how leaky most houses are! Some have massive holes where you can feel a large draft blowing through.)
Some insulation code interpretations are wasteful. In my area (typically cold winters, hot summers), I was required to hang ducting above the ceiling insulation, in the uninsulated area, so the (somewhat insulated) ducting is heating and cooling the area with exterior airflow.
@@russbell6418 This is important to avoid humidity/condensation in your ceiling. Otherwise, in winter your ceiling gets warm, and you'll get humidity under your cold roof. Good exterior airflow is essential under your roof, but it's not so much about insulation.
Good point. Though I believe most heat loss comes, not through the side walls, but through the roof. This argues for insulation of the ceilings. In my opinion, insulation in and around rafters is not very effective.
Disclaimer. I am currently working in the energy sector and in the past I did work with installing and designing HVAC systems. There is quite a lot of missing information in this video. Modern fossil heating furnaces (condensation furnaces) also have lower temperatures. This is because higher temperatures have a lot of energy loss. Often the issue is that whoever planned the old heating system didn't properly calculate the size of the heating elements, even to the point of mismatching the size between the rooms. Also, heat pumps are often significantly more expensive than classical systems. As a result, a budget-conscious user will most likely go with a refit with a classical system rather than a more expensive heat pump refit. On the other hand, when the user is already updating the entire heating system, there is a higher chance to install a heat pump since the difference in cost between installing a heat pump rather than a classical system is a lot lower proportionally to the entire cost. Here I am questioning the causality for the correlation that the data in the video showed. About 5 years ago, I was making a calculator for determining the time to recoup the investment when going from an old system to a new one that is more efficient. For heat pumps, a typical value would be about 10 years to recoup an upgrade from oil. Natural gas would take even longer. Still there is another issue that is not mentioned here that is a lot more common with old houses. In old city centers the connected electrical power is often not high enough for heating the house. A heat pump is still always a better option than installing electrical heaters.
TLDR: Temperature differential and too small radiators are also a problem for new more efficient gas, oil and bio-mas furnaces. The video is not talking about the real problems with heat pumps and is pointing out things that are not really issues with heat pumps themselves. Also the video is conflating causation with correlation.
I agree. Note, that I am from the USA. Most of houses built here after WW2 have forced air heating instead of hot water radiant heat. Most houses built here after the 1980's have air conditioning. (For some areas of the country air conditioning didn't become normal in new houses until the 2010's.) Area that where air conditioning is more common also adopted heat pumps earlier. So how we install heat pump here is slightly different. She seems to be talking about replacing a high temperature boiler / non condensing boiler with a heat pump. But she doesn't clearly state this. In the USA this almost never considered as an option. For houses with hot water heating the most commonly selected option is to install ductless heat pump system. Doing the boiler swap she is talking about also eliminates one of the advantages of heat pump. That advantage is being able to have air conditioning/ mechanical cooling. Using existing radiator intended for heating for cooling is generally not an option. Catch pans and a condensate drainage system would need to be added. Calling a heat pump a form of electric heat is such a dumb down explanation that it really isn't useful. A heat pump doesn't have to be electric. The air conditioning (heat pump in reverse) in our gasoline (petrol) cars isn't run by electric. The air conditioning compressor is run by the engine. Outside air temperature is a much greater limiting factor for efficient heat pump use than house insulation. But since that didn't fact didn't fit the narrative and data she was presenting that fact was overlooked.
I rented a cottage built around 1825 3 years ago. The landlord managed to get the energy rating up to the minimum level by installing a new boiler and loft insulation. On arrival, during the first winter i noticed a half centimeter gap around most of the front door. Installed tape around the door and heating bills dropped by half. The UK is a joke when it comes to this stuff
I lived in an apartment that was heated with a heat pump. I live in Massachusetts and it can get pretty cold in the winter. The apartment only got to about 50 F in January and February. I moved out after telling the landlord that the place is not livable.
Canadian here. Our house was built in 1950 with a oil furnace (very hot) air ducts. We changed to gas 20 years ago (hot) putting in heat pump (warm) would mean larger duct work. Heat pumps want the air to flow all the time with less static pressure. So would need larger plenum ducting.
We have forced-air heating and cooling in our upgraded sixty-year-old home. The heat pump works superbly at both heating and cooling. Outside temperatures range from -25 to +40 Celsius. In extreme cold a high-efficiency gas furnace kicks in. 85% of electricity in this province is hydroelectric. The other 15% is purchased from our neighbouring province. Only about 20% of our gas bill is for the methane itself. The rest is to pay for infrastructure, storage, transmission and operation costs. And there's a small carbon tax too.
The carbon tax in BC is almost as much as the methane itself. But yes a heat pump works great in Metro Vancouver or anywhere on the south coast and most of the Island. Up north not so much.
It works amazing but you have back up gas? I'm so sorry but that means it's doesn't work amazing. Here in the UK they want to dismantle the gas network so that isn't an option.
@@Ryan-lk4pu Yeah they've banned gas in new builds here already. I'm sure they'll try and yoink it eventually. Honestly the coldest it's ever been here is about -15C and even my single speed contractor grade heat pump kept the temp up at that. I doubt I'll keep the gas furnace whenever I need to replace the system, I'll just put a coil in the air handler.
@@antonniedersteiner4377 HP's would be sized accordingly, so if it got down to say -7/8 I doubt it would be sufficient, similar to our Canadian friend here. Plus, I absolutely do not believe the COP ratings the government / manufacturers are stating. This is the next big scandal in waiting "were you mis-sold a heat pump? Call us and claim now..."
One issue in UK is many installers are doing a bad job on system design this causes very poor efficiency and therefore many are not getting the cost saving.
Do people not use Wall Mounted Split Air Con? They're literally just two boxes for inside and outside with some flexible tubes. Very easy to install and no calculations required.
@@davidliddelow5704The vast majority of homes in the UK and France use water and radiator systems with a gas boiler. In recent years quite a lot of underfloor heating systems have been installed. We extended our 1950s house and now all living areas have underfloor heating except bedrooms which still have radiators. We are now contemplating installing a heat pump because they work best with underfloor heating. Primary reason is to reduce CO2 emissions for hopefully similar annual energy cost. The UK government's grant scheme will probably mean the installation cost would be at most £2000.
Brand-new house in the Scottish Highlands here. Its insulated to a higher level than Building Regs and we spent a mind-boggling £35,000 on the plumbing, most of which was the ground-source heat pump with three 150m boreholes. We have a Vaillant heat pump, which is frighteningly complex and delicate. The installer did a competent job but is not interested in doing maintenance so the bedding-in process was stressful as they were reluctant to come all the way out here to tweak the system. Now after 4 years it's working reliably and we get a yield of 3.5 to 1. Since it only produces what they call "low grade heat" i.e. large volumes of warm water, it would not be suitable for an old stone house or a 60s bungalow. I can see the benefit of ground source but I can't understand how air source is supposed to work when the outside temperature hits minus 15c. A neighbour with an identical heat pump suffered a month without heating when a major component broke and it took Vaillant that long to replace their pump so I am absolutely not confident in this over-complex, over-expensive system and would have preferred a simple condensing boiler with an LPG tank.
If a house requires more heat, use a bigger heat pump. This is not rocket science. Plus, this "over complex system" is exactly the same technology as an air conditioner, except with a reversing valve. So if you think it's complex, an air conditioner should be equally complex. And an air conditioner plus a furnace should add together to be more complex than a single air-conditioner-like device that does both. Just because your neighbor had problems does not mean that everyone will, or that people don't have problems with their furnaces (except they don't announce it to the world because furnaces are existing technology so there would be no reason to announce how bad they are).
You might want to read the excellent book “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff. In it he gives an excellent primer on how to recognize when statistics are being used deceptively.
@@jpe1 Thanks a lot for the suggestion ! A very nice popular style book that touches on this as well is Steven E. Landsburg‘s „Can you outsmart an economist ?“
I live in a house built in 1906. I have had a hybrid system for 4 years now. I can confirm that you need to insulate your house to the max to reach a comfortable level. That said, insulation is a good thing in any circumstance with any heating system. The most sustainable form of energy is the one you don't need. Yes it's going to cost but cost-benefits aren't or shouldn't be solely calculated on the household level. That's why we have subsidies I guess.
My son bought a house about this age (1904 I think), that was just improved a little bit by the seller. They had installed new windows and installed a heat pump with a geothermal probe as heat source. It is working just fine. no need for a hybrid system and no need to switch from radiators to floor heating. On top of that, the radiators are still the very old small ones. With an oil stove, such a size and type of building would typically consume 20+ MWh equivalent primary energy (oil). With the heat pump it uses less than a 3rd of that.
@@beatreutelerYou say that as if a geothermal heat probe will produce sufficient energy for the majority. In which country and region is the installation?
@@andersjjensen In my opinion, it is one of the most fundamental misconceptions that people are thinking location being a key differentiator for the use of heat pumps. Heat pumps are working very well from places close to the Ecuator until as far north as people tend to live, probably with some exceptions which could be some polar research stations. etc. Also I would agree that the more higher up in the mountains you live the more important would be the advantage if you can use a GTH-probe as heat source instead of air. However if you refer to the specifics of geothermal heat probes then I would agree to a certain extent, because where my house stands, which is just a mile away from my son, I cannot drill for a GTH probe. Reason is a grond water protection zone defined by the government. However that is not holding me up to have a heat pump installed next month, but it will be a type using air from the environment as heat source.
@@incandescentwithrage For the effectivity of GTH-probes, the country and region is not that important. It is much more important if your house stands in a place where drilling for a GTH probe can realistically be made. In our country (Switzerland) there are maps publicly available where the government shows where GTH-probes are allowable and where not. Fundamentally it deals with ground water protection zones. Of course there are also other limitations, for example the density of probes that can be drilled in quarters predominantly urban by big multi-flat high rise buildings, it may become difficult. Same is with very old city centers where the density of houses is just a little bit prohibitive for such drilling. pretty much everywhere else, the amount of investment for the owner is likely the only limit I can think of. Technically, if the possibility to drill is positive, it is in fact so that GTH-probes can provide enough heat basically for everyone as far as we are talking residential buildings. It is just a matter on how deep you drill or if you need more than 1 probe. Industrial is possibly different.
Or improvements due to better insulation being falsely attributed to heat pumps. Different heating methods should be compared on the same conditions...
Western Norway here. Installed a split A/A heat pump some 20 years ago in our traditional, 200 year old wooden town house. We saw a major savings on the electricity bill from day one. A decent heat pump will cost from around 1500 euro installed. Our medium sized heat pump keeps is the main heat source in this 85 square meter three storey house. Add the wood burning stove in the living room and small electrical ovens in all rooms to be used when needed the few days or weeks the temperature do drop below zero. Most of the time, they are not used. (And yes, I have installed around 20 double glazed windows and insulated the most wind exposed walls as well. Also important. By doing it myself, I save a LOT of money) .
4:49 It is also worth mentioning that houses in Sweden and Norway widely use electricity for heating already due to a history of cheap hydro or nuclear power.
in the 1970's Diablo Canyon nuclear facility promised inexpensive electricity forever, so California contractors installed resistance heating in the ceilings of the apartment I lived in. But by the early 80's PG&E decided they couldn't just provide inexpensive electricity forever and as a result my apartment had no heat in winter because only wealthy people could heat their homes with resistance heat. Thus began the idiocy of politics and energy in my state, which continues today with bans on natural gas, hybrid diesel trucks (because our governor insisted on only electric trucks). Total Clown World.
Statistics should be be a core course in secondary school. Once you know it, it immunizes you to much bollocks. As the old saying goes … “there are three kinds of lies in the world … white lies, damned lies … and statistics 😂”
@@williamstephenjackson6420Do you happen to know what are the chances of three structures separated by several feet between them falling down after only two of them being directly hit?
In Switzerland, you can get subsidies for a heat pump only if the final installation is efficient enough. This means your house must be sufficiently insulated, located in an area not too cold for your insulation (altitude), and so on. This must be verified by a specialist. So, heat pumps tend to be installed in new houses, houses that have enough insulation, or after required work to ensure that the insulation is good enough. Also, you must limit the power of the additional heater (heat pumps include a classical electric heater for low temperatures) and cannot use the heat pump to cool your house. The main issue is dishonest companies that pretend they have inspected your house and will handle the subsidies but do nothing. As a result, you lose the subsidy, and your installation performs poorly, using much more energy than planned. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to combat these companies.
Heat pumps are subsided because that can save lots of energy heating houses. If they are used for cooling then they will use energy in summer and the energy savings will be massively reduced.. It's not the reason for not allowing cooling, but air source heat pumps will only be used for space heating when everyone has their windows closed because it's cold outside. That way the noise from heat pump outside units is only heard by people outside. If used for cooling in summer then most people have windows open and neighbours might hear the fan units from inside homes.
@@chasg5648 Its the same in the UK. Subsidies only apply to heat only systems. Most room by room heat pumps are reverse cycles models, and don't comply. So, almost all heat pump installations are centralised heat only ones.
Some facts, from my own heat pump system: Yes, a Scottish gov. grant 100% paid for my installation. My owner-occupied 1980 house, is block + cavity (now insulated as part of the grant) plus 75 mm of internal stud filled with mineral wool insulation, part of the original build. Very thorough. While it doesn't get as cold here as some might think (by the sea, the Gulf Stream not far off-shore), it is often VERY windy, which strips heat faster than mere cold temps. However, while the old central heating in the house when I bought it - coal, and wood in the 'shoulder' seasons - cost upwards of £2,400 a year (!), and that was THEN, pre-covid/Ukraine/whatever, I now pay almost exactly half of that, i.e., about £105 a month throughout the year (including standing charge, which I would have had to pay anyway (£50 a month for all other domestic electricity use + £15 SC). The massive increases in electricity prices in the UK, almost doubling in the blink of an eye, and I was still paying half of my old power bills (plus I didn't have to shift 3 tonnes of coal every year and a similar amount of wood, and I no longer have to dispose of coal ashes, pretty toxic in themselves). I had to do nothing at all, except to admit 3 very young fitters speaking in grumbled undertones into my house, pull a couple of carpets back, and after 2 days, bingo! Huge emitters replaced my old sometimes incandescently hot old ones. And here's the 'physics' of all this - why heat emitters to 60-70 C if you want only 20-23 C air temperatures in your house? Why not use winter max 45 C emitter flow temps, 35-38 in spring and autumn, approx. through emitters (they were never radiators, which is part of the huge misunderstanding in many people's minds, and definitely in the minds of those moronic 'Heat pumps don't work' misinformation-spreaders. Emitters use convection to move warmed air around a room.) sized to HEAT THE AIR to a comfortable temperature, not just a too-small emitter - NOT radiator - heating itself and not much else. Sizing the pump unit is pretty critical, its kW rating m8st be sized to the property and heat loss calculations. Mind you, a brand now gas boiler should be thus sized. Most older gas systems use less than half their potential capacity, but gas has to burn at a certain minimum temperature, so even a proper modulating system is much harder to get to work efficiently. My heat pump is a bit over-sized - 11 kW where 8 would have worked better, and use less power, but hell, the whole system was free to me! - but I can address that when the current unit expires. By that time, heat pump units will be probably much cheaper, and the rest of the system shouldn't need anything doing to it. Simply replace. If that's even as much as £3.5 k , that'll only be between £175-350 a year, so I'm still quids-in. And yes, insulation is so important, obviously! In the UK gas has been, historically, not so expensive, so people crank up their hopelessly inefficient gas system, and now moan like mad when unit rates escalate. Talk about toxic mortgages! When will people start factoring in circumstances beyond their control?! Or even begin to try to understand heat pumps for what they are - a relatively cheap way to heat outside air from, say, 5 C to 40 C, and distribute this around the house/flat? My house is the same temperature year-round. (see how refrigerators work, then reverse it. Simple) Apols for the ramble - there is so much ignorance out there it appals me, and this subject is nowhere near rocket science or brain surgery! 97% of people won't read this right through, and none of the sceptics I am sure. Och well (-:)~
To me heat pumps have been a normal smart thing for decades BUT I realise that after watching this video most people are misunderstanding why I'm saying what I am. I've bought and completely refurbished properties in the US and Europe and so in my case you're coming up with a whole new system in a home stripped of its floors and walls. So all my properties were old but this wasn't trying to just replace one heater with another, but rather starting from scratch. Mini-split a/c units can work well for Mediterranean climates and you don't need to install anything other than the unit. In the US, your heat pump works with your central air and so it's easier. The problem for most in the US is more so heating a 250m² home with 10 rooms and 2 people. Nothing about that is efficient.
@@katrinabryce Indeed, I was thinking of a rowhouse remodel in Philadelphia. Very energy efficient but still cold winters. They're typical in Arizona (which itself is diverse enough with climate differences) since most homes have central air and so heat pumps work beautifully. Most folks who live in Alaska don't live in the cold inland areas, so they're comparable to Norway which has high heat pump use. I really don't know if they're common in Alaska.
The government in Sweden set the building standards to improve insulation and every new building has three glass windows. Those rules were implemented in the 1970s, so it takes a long term government stategy. The oil crisis in 1973 was the driving factor for this policy change. Sweden wanted to become independent of oil and gas. Today there is more reason than ever to get rid of any oil or gaz dependency. I live wa house that was built in 1880, and the isolation has been upgraded and my heat pump has worked perfectly for more than 20 years. All investments are well paid back now. The decrease in energy costs was 200EUR every month.
Ummmm, did you mean "tripple pane" (three layers of glass) windows where you wrote "three glass windows" (which reads as if they said everybody only gets to have three windows)?
@@DrewNorthup, dude really? Nothing about 'interesting information to share', 'wish our government did that years ago', 'i should also get tripple', 'did you know it's also quieter', only a pedantic comment. Everybody says triple glasing and that is fine.
If your government forced you to install an electric heat pump, then tripled your utility rates, would that still be a good idea? I live in California where climate zealots make the rules and that is our future.
This is Sabine on her worst. at 10:50 , you do NOT need to use a heat-pump to heat water for your radiators. Most heat-pumps in use in the Nordics are air-to-air. And they also function as air condition in the summer. Then about insulation. Better insulation on your housing is good. NO matter if you have a heat-pump. Then the rather ignorant comment that ALL houses in Norway, Sweden and Finland has good insulation... Yes, we do have a lot of well insulated houses after 1980 or so. )At least compared to what I know about UK and Spain). But we do have a lot of houses that are not insulated well. AND they have a very good use og heat -pumps. The location/placement in the house of an air to air heat pump is important. You also have to make sure that the heat can be distributed. Leaving doors open between room. If that cannot be done, then air-to air heat pump is probably not for you. Personal experience is that it works incredibly well wit the units in a wooden house built in -84 that has three floors and many rooms.
And, even if you do heat your water, you really do not want to have to heat it to 70 °C even with gas. First, it will mean that your condensing boiler will no longer condense (and quite a bit of the energy in the gas goes now directly our from the flue rather than heat up your home). Second, the 70 °C radiators will be way too hot for comfort, unless you like accidental burns. Which is also why the radiators should be sized for at most 55 °C even with gas (and that is for the coldest imaginable winter conditions, so for most of the winter the flow will be below 50 °C even with gas and an older but not ancient gas boiler with reasonable controls).
@@upnorthandpersonal True. Underfloor heating will certainly help reduce the temperature even further, to well below 50 °C even with not-that-great insulation. It also encourages the correct use of near-constant lower power heating for better efficiency (even with gas, but especially with heat pumps).
She lost me at the ignorant vegan comment. Of course everyone can be happy on a vegan diet. I’m currently trying to figure out if I can replace my failing HVAC in a 100+ year old house that’s poorly insulated where it gets very hot and very cold… and I have little money but there are currently some decent tax credits. And she’s like a doctor in the 1950s that loves smoking telling me that it’s healthy to smoke every time she mentions vegans so I’m done with her channel when it comes to anything to do with the environment. Makes me wonder if she’s just as biased about other areas of science. It’s so frustrating for someone who just wants to do the right thing to listen to such an obvious fallacy and wonder what else she’s biased about.
People here in the Balkans have less money - majority of us use polystyrene insulation on our homes no matter what heating is installed - it's the only way to afford heating. Without insulation the bills you have to pay get too big for any solution, except burning wood maybe. You wouldn't even rent a place without insulation, because it's too expensive in the winter.
Installing a heat pump in my home cut my energy cost to 33% of what i was paying with electric baseboard, in floor water, and wood stove. House is warm in winter and cool in summer. No idea what Sabine recommends is better than heat pumps but in my experience they are by far the best option.
Perhaps the point should be that before pulling the boiler out, consider insulation: It will reduce emissions too, and is a prerequisite for later upgrade to a heat pump
HVAC Technician here. A good ground source heat pump will give 1:4 in return, an air source will give about 1:3 in warmer climate and 1:2 in colder. If your electric price is low heat pumps are cheap, but if its high, heat pumps become expensive. Nordic countries have low electric price, thats why heat pumps are common there. If the price increase, they will be thrown out. A heat pump has a real life life of about 15 years, so you will need to replace it often. Heat pumps are in essence just a way to make electric heating more affordable. But, if electric prices are high, heat pumps will be expensive.
This is the most important part for me. I live in Onterrible with some of the highest prices of electricity in the world so my natural gas saves me a bunch.
@@TomTermini Your comment makes sense if, and only if, two things are true: 1. Climate change is an existential threat. 2. Cost is irrelevant. In the real world neither of these statements is true. 1. Climate has naturally changed in the past, is changing now, and will change in the future. Anthropogenic CO2 causes only a minor positive offset to the natural change. High temperatures are NOT increasing; low temperatures are increasing, primarily at night, in the winter, at higher latitudes. Average temperatures are increasing solely due to the increase in low temperatures. In other words, CLIMATE IS BECOMING MILDER, NOT MORE EXTREME. Historical data on hurricanes, fires floods, droughts, etc. all bare this out: NO INCREASE IN EXTREME WEATHER. Global climate-related deaths have DECREASED 97% from 1925 to 202 while the population almost quadrupled, and fossil fuel use and human prosperity increased exponentially. 2. POVERTY KILLS. In the real world things have costs. When costs rise, poor people suffer, and more people die.
@@dzcav3 …your suppositions are not all-encompassing. Consider that costs can be mitigated in other ways, besides through the singularly non-humanistic “balance sheet” approach. While the cost of renewables for electricity generation is a critical factor in the transition to a low-carbon economy and the fight against climate change, it is not the only one. The intermittency of renewable energy sources like solar and wind necessitates effective energy storage solutions, such as batteries, and smart grid technologies to ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply. This transition also requires significant upgrades to existing infrastructure, including transmission lines, distribution networks, and electric vehicle charging stations, all of which must handle increased loads and the integration of decentralized energy sources. Improving energy efficiency across all sectors-residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation-is vital for reducing overall energy demand and emissions. This involves better building designs, energy-efficient appliances, and more efficient industrial processes. Effective policies and regulations are necessary to incentivize the adoption of renewable energy and penalize carbon-intensive activities, including subsidies for renewable energy projects, carbon pricing, and stricter emissions standards. Continuous research and development are needed to improve existing renewable energy technologies and develop new ones, driving innovations that lead to more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable solutions for clean energy production and storage. The economic impacts of this transition, such as job creation in new industries and job losses in traditional fossil fuel sectors, must be considered. Ensuring social acceptance and equitable distribution of benefits and costs is critical for a just transition. Addressing climate change is a global issue requiring international cooperation. Developing countries may need financial and technological support from developed nations to implement renewable energy solutions and mitigate their own emissions. The deployment of renewable energy infrastructure must be managed to minimize adverse environmental impacts, such as habitat disruption and land use conflicts, through sustainable siting and environmental assessments. Public awareness and willingness to adopt sustainable practices also play a significant role in moderating climate change. Changes in consumption patterns, support for renewable energy projects, and participation in energy conservation efforts are all important. Additionally, resilience and adaptation strategies must be developed to cope with the impacts of climate change, such as building infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather events and developing systems for water and food security. I’m going to ignore the obvious fallacy of “climate change isn’t real” b.s., as well as your complete ignorance of the life-changing (killing) nature of petroleum use. While the cost of renewables is key to making the transition economically feasible, addressing climate change comprehensively requires a multifaceted approach. This approach must incorporate energy storage, infrastructure development, energy efficiency, policy and regulation, technological innovation, economic and social considerations, international cooperation, environmental impact management, public awareness, and resilience strategies. Only through a holistic and integrated strategy can we effectively mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
I had my air to air heat pump installed in 2020... Love it and works perfectly fine. My parents like it so much that after their first visit after installation, they decided to put the same on their house and are super happy with it. My partner like it so much that he decided to get an air to air heat pump for both he's house and for he's mother house... Both are very happy with it, both in terms of comfort as of in terms of temperature achieved.
Quebecer here, heat pumps are common here in Quebec and theres no controversies. For very cold temp, theres low temp heat pump but a regular heat pump can be combine to a standard electric heat system when its very cold and its fine.
I live in the mid-west in the US, we’ve had dual systems for 20 years. I have a heat pump with a gas furnace backup. I live very comfortably in a 2,200 square foot house.
One thing that may be particular to the UK: with many older buildings which are poorly insulated, the heating system is turned off during most of the time - only kept on when people are inside and awake. This means that the heating system must have a high power capacity, to quickly bring the living space up to temperature. Heat pumps work best by being sized for average demand, so that they can run more or less continuously. They also have a much higher efficiency if they can deliver their heat to the living space at a lower temperature - which means either more radiator area, or blown heat exchange surfaces. In saying this, I'm a huge fan of heat pumps. I'm just aware that poorly thought out installations will give them a bad name.
Blown heat exchangers make heat pumps worse. When they kick on they feel like they are cooling the room. A 75F air blown around a room feels colder than 70F still air. The blowing of the air makes it feel colder just like running a fan. Radiant floor is the way to go, but is extremely expensive to retrofit and you don't have the benifts of AC in the summer which is often a big selling point.
@@crissd8283 Sensible blown heat exchangers allow for this. In cooling mode they just blast out the air. In heating mode they raise the air flow slowly, to avoid that chilling effect from the draught enhancing evaporative cooling. Our last home used Daikin reverse cycle air cons to both cool and heat the place, and the heating in winter was provided in a very comfortable manner.
If your radiators are able to keep your house warm enough running only part of the time, then they are running hotter than they have to. This is an indication that you can lower the temperature of your heating loop. This can still be done whilst you have an oil/gas fired boiler to empiricaly test if the house is able to be heated with a heatpump.
@@copperknight4788 Do you guys forget that the weather outside drastically changes how much energy the heating system must push out? A heating system should only run at nearly 100% duty cycle on the coldest day of the year.
If a house is poorly insulated, you're going to need a bigger heat pump or a bigger furnace to heat it. But somehow installing a bigger furnace is better than installing a bigger heat pump.
That 'somehow' is that heatpump heating power is capped by the rather small amounts of electricty that can be supplied by a single phase domestic supply and the economics assosiated with more powerful motors and compressors.
@@CmdrTobs 3phase AC is normal. Normally heat pumps and A/C have their own circuits. Same with kitchen appliances and washing machine/tumbler. Otherwise, you wouldn't get very far.
@@svr5423 Maybe normal where you are, 3 Phase isn't normal in my country. Domestic supplies are singluar, single phase 240VAC (Hot + Neutral). 100A MAX fused. There are no extra phases supplied for appliances.
Statistician: "Give me a desired outcome, and I'll twist the numbers until we get there." This is a significant problem with so many "studies" that are quoted these days.
I calculated it for myself. Depends on gas prices for my heating kWh will save nothing to som reasonable amount. Problem would be if the gas price does go up artificially. On the other side my electricity provider also did rise them. I get tax money back for a heat pump. My uncle spent over 20k on a heat pump + a big number on solar and a credit for that. I don't have so much money laying around and drive old cars. I have a credit for my house. One is enough. The last new gas heater war like 6000€ new and used with the old prices around 700€ for a complete year. Now I think I get a little over 1000€
@@Nordlicht05 [FUN FACT] In Australia: *"Starting from July this year, solar panel owners will face a penalty of 1.2¢ per kilowatt-hour for exporting electricity to the grid between 10 am and 3 pm."* 🤦♂
@@maxhugen hi. wow... Fun fact too... Here you can get cheap tax supportet electricity. I think it is around 0,25-0,28c. But!!! only at night(where heating is throttled 🙄) and only for the heat pump!!!! My neighbour said he didn't do it. His new special counter would cost him 1000€ extra and a higher fee per month. You would buy this only for the winter. Important only for heating!!!
Swede here: my grandfather installed heat pumps in his house, after his death my mother moved in, and then I did too(having come back from working abroad, and thus cancelling the lease on my appartment), but in winter we still had to burn wood for heating, the heat pumps were insufficient on their own. Without the wood furnace the temps went down to 14C.
TLDR; Heat pumps aren't supposed to duty cylcle constantly like old fashioned heating and AC systems do. If they are being installed and controlled to work that way, they will disappoint. Worse, it will take greatly oversizing the system... Bigger radiators, pipes, ect. which gets expensive fast. There is a significant problem with improperly sized and installed heat pumps. There are a lot of old HVAC folks who just go by the rules of thumb for AC and incorrectly assume that is what's needed for a heat pump. That usually leads to oversized systems which are not only less efficient, but just don't heat well. Yes, insulation needs to be addressed for a heat pump to work well. It doesn't need to be super insulated or whatever, but lots of places have shockingly bad insulation which can usually be improved a lot at pretty low cost. Oh, and lots of people think heat pumps "don't work well" because they don't blow really hot air. Doesn't matter if the thing is maintaining the whole space at the setpoint... It doesn't "feel" like it is "working" 🤦 When a heat pump is working optimally, it is constantly running and blowing air which feels almost exactly the same temperature as the setpoint.
exactly. doesn't have to be "piping hot". Another example, my last gaming PC (not the current one) had a 2KW PSU and two radiators for water cooling. air came out slowly at typically 40 to max 50 degrees C. But boy did the room get hot fast at load.
I think at least some of the problem with heat pumps is that for the best efficiency they need be used in a different way than traditional gas boilers. Traditionally the gas boiler installed in a property has been oversized for the heat loss of the property to enalbe faster heating of the home when the boiler fires. With a heat pump it is more efficient to install a unit that is closely matched (or more likely outputs slightly more Kwh) than the heat loss. This means it takes longer to heat the property from cold. It is therefore more efficient and pratctical to have the heat pump maintain a constant temperature rahter than letting the house warm up in the morning, cool during the day whilst at work and warm up again in the evening. The long and short of it is that heat pumps should be used differently than gas boilers. This is a problem of education. Those who sell and install systems should educate the users on how to use their systems effectively. On top of this the systems should be configured correctly by the installer. This should mean that minimal changes would need to be made after installation. Check out the heat geek youtube channel for more info on this. All of the above was from memory and might not be 100% accurate.
ya but it always falls to the lowest common denominator. A builder in the US would be sued if there wasn't adequate rapid heating so overkill is the easiest solution. Most people do not want to be educated and if RUclips is any indicator a large portion CANNOT be educated including those making the policies.
I'm also wondering how the above-mentioned schedule discrepancy affects the efficiency gains the heat pump is supposed to deliver; assuming you want your house warm only when you're at home, a heat pump in this scenario needs to fight the leak over the inside-outside differential 24/7, while a classical heater may have to re-heat the house when you get home, but doesn't need to fight that hard the much lower leak over the much smaller temperature differential when you're not at home.
@@AttilaAsztalos The lower the flow temp of the heat pump the more efficient it's going to be, but the slower the home will warm. It's a balancing act. You can run the heat pump in a lower efficency higher temp mode to heat more quickly then once the desired temp is reached lower the flow temp to maintain. So if the inside temp of the house is lower than a set threshold set the heat pump to high temp, if it's above the lower threshold but lower than the desired temp then set the heat pump to a more efficient temp. I'm not an expert but I'm sure this is possible using controls that are on the market. The same can be done to compensate for lower outside temps. A outside temerature compensation curve can be set to compensate for lower outside temps. Meaning the heat pump will run at lower efficiency when the temp is 0c outside vs when the temp is 10c outside. I have no practical expirence with heat pumps outside the HVAC at work. A absolutely no expirence of an air to water heat pump like the once referred to in the video. However I do watch a lot of videos from Heat Geek and Urban Plumbers who discuss heat pumps a lot and are the source of most of my info/knowledge.
My house was built in the 1970s, by a very cheap developer. It had poor insulation, electric baseboard heaters, and a couple of window AC units for cooling. I improved the thermal time constant of the house by a factor of 3 simply by putting R-36 fiberglass insulation in the attic myself for a few hundred bucks in the 1990s. I'm pretty sure that I could have kept the house warmer in the winter by simply burning $1 bills than turning on the baseboard heaters. I worked long hours with a long commute, so I didn't bother heating or cooling most of the house while I was gone - that was the only thing that kept the power bill reasonable. In 2012 a retired relative moved in with me, and liveable temperatures were needed 24/7. I had a high-efficiency heat-pump installed, and triple-pane windows and sliding glass doors. I also installed more insulation myself in strategic areas around the house that I found were leaking air after the heat pump was installed. The previous owners paid about $400/month for electricity back in the 70s and 80s. I've been averaging about $100/month. The system has paid already for itself (and the windows / doors and insulation), and I now have a house that I can live in comfortably all year round. Each home is different, and some older homes were built at a time when insulation was an afterthought. However, given the potential savings, it behooves homeowners to check there own situation carefully. In many cases, just adding insulation can add hundreds of dollars of recurring savings with relatively minor cost / effort, especially if you're a DIYer. This will help you save $$$ whether you get a new heat pump or not.
I'm a little skeptical you have achieved ROI by now unless your electricity is considerably higher than the national average. Plus you are closing in on the end of life for that heat pump. You might get many more years but I'd start planning to replace that system now because it's going to be five figures easily.
@@shawnbottom4769 $300/month savings in electricity. This fall will be 12 years, which comes to $43,200 in savings. The system cost around $16,000 to put in, including all the vent work and new wiring. The new windows and doors were no more than $20 grand. So yeah, it's paid for itself. The only thing I've had to do to is so far replace the UV lamps in the air handler - about $150 every 2 to 3 years, and air filters - $30 every 6 months. (They are the big, 4" wide ones.) The great thing about all the extra insulation I've added is that the pump doesn't have to work hard most of the time - it usually runs on "low" and you don't even hear it. In fact, when the outside air is still, I've seen the pump operating down to 7F, on low, keeping my house warm. If there's a good wind though, it will have to kick on the resistive heaters, but I've only seen that a couple of times in the past 12 years. In April and October, it typically doesn't run at all - the house stays warm enough by itself. Parts of my roof are shaded by large trees, so in the summer, the AC usually doesn't have to start working hard (i.e. "high") until around 4pm. As I mentioned this is a high-efficiency model - it was a few thousand $ more than what the average home owner puts in - but I'm an engineer and did some math first, so I was pretty confident it would be worth it. Arguably, it's a bit oversized for my little house, but the fact that it almost never really has to work hard should extend its life. My biggest fear is it being taken out by lightning. I've had several hits in my yard in the past 30 years, and it has taken out several trees and hundreds of dollars worth of electrical equipment. I have installed a whole-house surge supressor in my main breaker box, but I still need to put another one on the outside breaker for the compressor. Stay cool!
Small two bedroom unit in southern Australia. Insulated to an older standard. We added an extra split system. The two systems barely cope. I'm getting double glazing installed. It's not so much the running cost. My wife hates the cold and this winter has been unusually chilly. It's no fun for her waiting for the system to start heating. Yes, double glazing costs a fortune and we'll never recover the cost. But the price of peace in the home? Invaluable.
I live in the Adelaide hills in South Australia where most people refer to [air-to-air air-conditioning] heat-pumps as [electrically powered] DUCTED REVERSE-CYCLE AIR-CONDITIONERS. I have a DAIKIN system but know MITSUBISHI and RINNAI to be good too. Regardless of what they're called in different parts of the world, I recommend them for their relatively modest up-front cost, even when retro-fitted, their relatively cheap running costs, although not so cheap that one can be cavalier about running them non-stop, and their amazing ability to heat and cool quickly from a standing start. The main downside that I've found with such a system is that, because the vents are in the ceilings, it takes noticeably longer on cold winter mornings to warm the one room in my house with a tiled floor than it takes to warm the rest of the house, which is carpeted. The other minor complaint I have about them is that the air can feel a bit too dry sometimes, but perhaps that's true of all heating systems. During our summers, which can sometimes be fearfully hot, the system is unbelievably good and efficient as an all-round cooler. Yes, of course, good insulation, particularly around doors and windows, is vital. In a state that occasionally scores 100% renewable power, albeit only briefly, and often hits 75%, what's not to like about electrically powered heat-pumps to heat and cool our homes?
Ultimately heat pumps can work in any scenario in any house and it is not the house that is the problem it is the insulated R-value of the property is what the problem is and properties can be retrofitted with better insulation
German here. Here is an example of a satisfied heat pump owner living in a quite old house: I installed a heat pump two years ago in my "Reihenhaus" (row house?) which was built in 1937, after my gas heater broke down. The windows of my house were already new (from 2016). Otherwise the house had the standard of the 70s, the last time bigger renovations took place. Radiators, pipe work etc. weren't changed or updated (btw: radiators would have been pretty cheap). The heat pump works fine so far (and saves even money each month, after one complete and one nearly complete year I pay roughly 70% of the former cost of gas for the additional electricity). Granted: a row house like mine has two "warm" walls because it shares those walls with the neighbouring house. I paid 13.000 € for the heat pump including everything after I got the state subsidies. The alternative would have been a new gas heater which would have cost me 9.000 €. All in all I belong to the 80% who are ok with their new heat pump. There are probably houses where heat pumps are very expensive. An old row house in Germany's very North (and in my city district alone are 1.760 others like that, according to the current Building Plan of my city) doesn't seem to be one of those.
I think the issue is Sabine is assuming that people will be using it as a drop in replacement for a gas boiler. A lot of the systems installed in the UK are split systems that double up as Aircon units - they don't integrate with old radiators, and are significantly more efficient at heating and cooling the space.
@@istvanvanherck1674in the UK yes, in a lot of the rest of the English speaking world Row House is correct (ref. I'm a Brit that has lived abroad most of my life)
@@0087adi I think that depends on where you are in the US though. I've heard both used, with Townhouse usually meaning nicer more middle class ones, and Row houses being more frequently working class homes. In the UK we have a similar split between Townhouse (expensive) and Terraced house (cheap).
I'm a refrigeration tech in the US. One of the problems heat pumps have is their heating ability is highly dependent on the outside ambient temperature. The colder it is, the harder the system has to work to do the same amount of heating. That's one of the main reasons why here in the US, the parts of the country that have bitter winters rarely have heat pumps. The people pushing everyone to go to heatpumps truly don't understand the technology and the costs required to make it work in certain environments.
As a native Minnesotan, I've been out and about in weather just slightly warmer than -40 degrees. That's the one temperature where I don't have to specify Celsius or Fahrenheit, a fact that has been secured firmly in my mind by its association with the memory of that bitter cold. When heat pump manufacturers proudly proclaim that their systems can handle temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit, I tell them that's a good start, but they've still got a ways to go.
@edmunddoyle9299 geo thermal does help with the ambient problem that air source heatpumps have. The problem is that it is very expensive to install. Most people can't afford it, especially when you consider the other costs, like what Sabine mentioned in the video for retrofits.
You're right, any areas where it gets below 0°F heat pumps start to struggle and it gets worse the lower the temp gets. It's also why all heat pumps in my area are set up with back up or emergency heat. It might be electric heat or some form of gas/oil heat, but it is definitely required. Especially if the defrost during fails while in heating mode or if the reversing valve gets stuck. In either situation you lose heating and problems start to stack
It's more complicated even than the many commenters demonstrate. If you live where temperatures are sometimes below 0F in winter, a large heat pump is needed. But many houses (in my neighborhood) don't have an electrical panel that can accommodate that. So a new panel and new wiring (also permits) are needed, and redoing any walls that needed to be opened up, adding significantly to the cost. Even more than that, if power outages are common during those cold spells (they are here), you also then need a large backup generator; you can't just figure you'll bundle up for a while until power returns, because during that time, your regular water pipes (some of which are always against exterior walls) might freeze, which is a huge problem and cost. Thus, the total heat pump cost including the additional things needed for you to rely on it is a LOT more than just the unit itself.
As an American, what you guys in Europe seem to be trying to do with your heat pumps is not the same as what North America is doing with their's. It seems in Europe they're mostly trying to use them as a replacement for their current hot-water boiler and attempting to retain as much of that system as possible where-as in the US it's mostly either stand-alone systems with an outdoor compressor unit and one or more indoor cassettes that actually blow air through the radiators with a fan rather than rely on convection like the boiler systems. Or they are implemented into existing forced hot-air ducting systems with the coil being places inside the ducting. Also in the Northern US they are typically paired with a backup heating system (Usually fossil fuel based) in case the cold outside air reduces the efficiency too low to keep up.
Yes, it depends on the type of the heatpump. Here in Europe when ordering a new house from a company, you often have an offer of air-water heatpumps, which means that it takes the air temperature to warm the water in the heating system, which usually is built into the floor. Air-air offerings are rare, at least not for serious houses for living the entire year. If you are lucky with your location and have water (or underground water) nearby, you can set up a water-water heatpump - those are quite efficient because the deep water never reaches negative C temperatures. My brother installed a ground-water heatpump when he built his house. That's quite a complex beast, long pipes under ground of his yard, but it's more efficient than air-water heatpumps.
Florida, here as far as I know every AC is heat pump capable, back up is electric heating element (system decides), most houses have no gas pipes pulled up.
@@unclejim1528 An A/C and a heat pump are functionally the same thing the only difference is a heat pump has a reversing valve to reverse the direction of heating/cooling. An A/C only works to cool a space and heat the outside.
@@camelCased We literally have kits you can buy online and install yourself that are Air to air. Even the lines are pre-filled with refrigerant so you just drill a couple holes to pass the lines through and they have quick-connects on either side to attach to the outside/inside units. They function as both an A/C and heater. Most heat pump installations in the US are air to air, even in much colder climates than the UK or much of mainland Europe. You are correct in that a ground/water source heatpump is much more efficient but, air to air is still a lot more efficient at most reasonable outside temperatures than any sort of electric resistive heating.
US homes are larger and there is more room for ductwork. So the systems are often forced air. They can be gas, oil, electric resistance, heat pump, or hybrid. People who have enough money to be spoiled and picky can heat however they want. Where i live, if you need low heating costs, a single heat ductless head pump is a good product.
I am currently in the process of a heat pump installation. I wanted this done right, as an Air Source Heat Pump system needs to be designed by a heating engineer and not just guessed at. I therefore employed a Heat Geek to get the job done (this was the third of 3 quotes I had and the only one with detailed heat loss calculations). I must admit that all the radiators are being upgraded (all 14 of them). There’s also some new pipework going in, but that’s generally in the extension that we’re getting done at the same time. The government grant covered £7.5k of the cost but that still left £16k to pay. This is an investment though, and the system is guaranteed to have a minimum SCOP of 3.8. If it doesn’t hit this Heat Geek will come back and fix the system.
So, in the UK's I have been surveying new house builds around where I live. We have a number of large house building firms which dominate the market as they control all the available land parcels with planning permission. The process of planning permission is very expensive so only firms with deep pockets can 'play' and they have a ten year pipeline of developments. The properties on offer range from 2 bed apartments to six bed mansions (£200k-£1M). They are all optimised for profit, so they use very old, established building techniques. The main features being breeze blocks shell, air gap red brick walls, wooden trussed pitched roofs with ceramic tile roofs. They have tiny gardens and very limited parking spaces. They are all built with gas central heating and radiators. They have very limiting electrical power due to the cost of new substations and the grid connections are very expensive. So the maximum EV charging they can support is 7KWh and they can never will be converted to heat pumps due to the massive cost of total reworking the heat distribution. We will have to wait for the next generation of heat pumps that can produce higher temperatures so existing radiators can stay and smaller/quieter outdoor units can be placed in the tiny gardens without annoying your neighbours. Everything that normal people see on their quotes for heat pumps is the massive cost of of conversion of due to the above situation. That is not going to change in the next 10 years.
ouch. that sounds like they are building houses from the last century. Just moved in this year in a new apartment here in Switzerland. We have a central heat pump and I also have 2 A/C split units. Got separate circuits for electric BBQ, coffee machine, even 400V upstairs and in my basement compartment, in case I need more power. I can easily install a 22KW wallbox in my parking spot when I buy a BEV.
Half the new builds round our way have got fake chimneys on them! Might the problem be the clueless idiots that buy them? In the UK, it's yer period features that sell a house. Frankly I blame the mothers that brought up today's house buyers with the story of the three little pigs.
Hi Sabine, thanks once again for fact checking .. I am full Professor of Applied Thermodynamics and heat transfer Let me comment that carrier fluid temperature (50 vs 70C in your video) means just more time during the day for your heating system to be on... it's the conservation of energy principle.. hence same inner temperature can be maintained with lower temperature heat pump fluid
I can achieve the same percentage reduction or more from my "old school" HVAC system, simply by not using it as much and turning it off when I am not in my house. Of course, that's only part of the question, isn't it. The other part is how well does it work compared to an older technology HVAC.
@@kyleb3754 I don't see news about Norwegians freezing to death with their widespread heat pumps...? In fact they are much more capable of heating their homes much more effectively than in Britain
@@mepds9 And look at their electric bills! Typically 20 cents (US) per KWH while here in Texas USA I pay 9.5 cents. The numbers simply don't add up to foot the very high cost of changing over to a heat pump. Going into debt to do it is not a smart thing to do!
Electricity is 4 times the price of gas in the UK, whike most heat pumps are only 3 times as efficient. Modern gas boilers have a minimum efficiency of 92%. To break even on the cost of running a heat pump it needs to move at least 3.7 times the amount of heat as the electricity input just to match the boiler. Air to air systems are best for this, not using radiators, so the whole house needs a ducted warm air system as well as the heat pump, vastly increasing the cost if installation. In the UK in the coldest months we burn gas at power stations, to generate electriciry, to run heat pumps at home, but because of the inefficincies in the electricity generation, conversion to high voltage for distribution, losses in cables, conversion back to mains voltage, etc we don't save much oversll energy running heat pumps at that point. Resistive immersion are 100% efficient for heating hot water but again it's less efficient to burn the gas at a power station than at home. Once more renewable infrastructure is built to cope with the coldest parts of the winter (when there's often very little sun or wind) they won't do much to reduce CO2 rmissions.
The first few stanzas are more or less correct, but then .. " In the UK in the coldest months we burn gas at power stations, to generate electricity, to run heat pumps at home, but because of the inefficiencies in the electricity generation, conversion to high voltage for distribution, losses in cables, conversion back to mains voltage, etc we don't save much overall energy running heat pumps".. -- no, incorrect. Still worse, all these kinks that you allege in electricity distribution would have to be ironed out anyway, regardless of other issues, heat-pumps or whatever.
My understanding is that gas power station sourced electricity is ballpark 40% efficient right now, so in the coldest of cold snaps heat pumps do end up similar to gas stations in efficiency. However, gas isn't always the only source of energy! That all being said, the maths all checks out with a heat pump in isolation! It's all the same numbers I arrived at when researching heat pumps as well. Where things change, and this is its own problem, is if you've already invested in home battery storage. If you're able to make use of off peak power, you're suddenly seeing a massive saving. If you further have an EV with smart charging, you'll also have more off peak slots to charge your battery, and so on. Right now this isn't altogether attainable for the majority of people, though. But I suspect EVs with vehicle to home/grid are the key to making it much more viable, especially with EVs becoming much more affordable (a used Mokka E can be found for about £13k, for example, but the battery can only power the car, so ... meh).
Informed engineer here...In several key aspects your information is out of date... and whole rest of your spiel is more misinformation than anything salient. Modern R290 monoblock type heat pumps achieve higher CoP - nearer 5 and average 4.5. The fact that it is always running 24/7 at low level also helps out in efficiency than stop/start gas boiler. So they can run and cost less than you suggest. Certainly comparably and even favourably. Also - the 290 type can also as heat water to a higher temperature as well as gas can. So you don't need to to change your radiators or consider air-to-air anymore. Additionally if you move to a night tariff you will reduce costs further. (your daytime increases 10% but 6 hours at night you get for 70% less - overall a win) > I'm not sure where on earth you get the gross misinformation idea that there is 'very little wind' in the UK in winter months! Do you live here or are you just a troll? If you live here you should well know that autumn/ winter is by far the windier season (or maybe try getting outside more in the winter months ....and then call me a liar). Or just trust this; www.dnv.com/article/windiness-uk-and-ireland-2022/ Info on R290 pumps; ruclips.net/video/Z_VDejZ_d58/видео.html ruclips.net/video/X6qIP8snPW8/видео.html p.s. For almost 3 months of year my electricity is next to zero costs thanks to home solar and battery
@bbbf09 Out of interest, do you know if there's a good way to approach measuring CoP or otherwise working out a heat pumps efficiency? We've recently got one, and I'd like to dive into stats and whatnot :D Our quoted sCoP as quoted by Octopus at a flow rate of 53C was 3.43 (a Daikin unit using R32), and it'd be fun to see what that correlates to across the year! We also have solar/battery/EVs + smart chargers, so the £500 (post grant) cost for a heat pump was ultimately a no brainer for us seeing as our average electricity cost is ballpark 8-10p/kWh meaning even a terrible CoP (which I'm not expecting) would be a benefit for us. P.S. Thanks for the links! TIL about R290 and whatnot!
@@TheComfiestChair How an installer/ supplier would measure and what equipment is on board within each system to do so I'm not exactly sure of - and specifics would likely greatly depend on system installed. My physicists head tells me its relatively simple thing to do from scratch (though involved). You would first measure mass flow rate and temperature at output of heatpump (have to install a volumetric flow meter). That plus knowing the specific heat capacity of water (can look up precise values for given temperature) would then give you an accurate heat energy produced by the system over so many minutes/hours that you measured across (in metric SI that heat energy would measure as Joules - or better as MegaJoules). Call this measure J1. Over the same time period you would log electrical usage (with all other household systems closed down) . You would convert kWh recorded to Joules (1kWh = 3.6MJ) and get measure J2. If you divide J1 by J2 you get the CoP. Of course thats at the air temperature for that particular time on that particular day. You would need whole bunch of measurments at different temperatures (as they vary a lot) to compile your own data set and get full picture.
We lived in an old poorly insulated house with gas. It sucks, I was not happy with it. It got cold very fast when the heaters were off, it got warm around the heaters - we always had to change the heaters to be high/low/off depending on what we were doing or where we went. And the bill was enormous. Replacing that with a heat pump would not have made us happier. But what you are missing is, the problem is not the heater itself, the problem is the poorly insulated houses.
Look into a proper load compensated controls for your gas boiler, the technology is called OpenTherm, it will increase comfort and reduce your bills. To be fair a modern heat pump system is going to have much better controls which are going to increase comfort as long as it had the capacity to keep up.
7:53 what you overlooked is that the same group generally had larger homes, so would have been harder to heat effectively. If then sample was weighted towards larger homes as you showed, it's actually impressive that they reached 80% satisfaction. Modern insulation no doubt helped a bit.
i live in an old house, that has been renovated with good insulation and floor heating 20 years ago. the heat pump worked perfectly last winter. the whole discussion shouldn't be about heat pumps or old houses, but rather about renovating desolate buildings.
If your home is poorly insulated enough that a heat pump won't make sense I'd argue you need to fix the insulation regardless of whether you install a heat pump, because at some point burning gas to give the flies in your porch springtime temps is probably not a great thing for sustainability.
The problem is most houses in the US are forced air. To renovate with radian floor is a big deal and then you don't have AC which is a selling point of a heat pump. Forced air with heat pump works great for AC but not for heat. To get heat pumps to really work requires a lot more than just putting in a heat pump.
How can it be environmental friendly to rip out everything and install new when there is still good life in the old system, plus on top of that you have to insulate and make sure the house is draught free. The whole thing is a scam and some one is getting very rich on it. Another example how many new wind turbines do you need to replace one traditional generator? As they are building thousands of of them.
How old was the house? Here in Germany even after WW2, millions still live in building from the 19th century and older. And did you calculate the GHG-footprint of you renovations?
The problem is that there are 2 distinct issues being discussed here (which is not identified): 1) heating the air directly in a home and 2) heating the water in a home. The former is not a concern for heat pumps vs a gas furnace, whereas the latter may need supplementation with electric heating (PTC) and/or better insulation surrounding the water tank (such as vacuum insulation). Water radiator based room heaters are much more common in Europe, but not common at all in the US, also it's exceptionally rare to come across a 1920's or earlier house in the US.
AND, I believe that adding an extra conversion step (Heating the water, to radiat heat to the air using pre-installed radiator units) is needlessly reducing the overall efficiency & mandating these larger radiators & higher temperatures. Ultimately, like mentioned here, one needs the ambient air warm, not the water hot. It feels like having a thermal store should be an added bonus to increase efficiency while the unit isn't running, not the basic mode of operation. Disclaimer: I'm only familiar with air-to-air dual cycle AC units, above freezing temps.
Whilst heat pumps that heat air are more efficent. There are plenty of heat pumps that heat water for radiators that are efficent and powerfull enough to not need resistive heating to keep a house warm.
A big part of the problem in the UK is a lack of qualified fitters. It is more complex to set up a heating system based around a heat pump, and the knowledge just isn't there at present. Also you didn't mention the noise . *All* fans make more noise the older they get, and a lot of these units are quite noisy to begin with. This doesn't go well with small houses close together, like we have in the UK.
Yes! Someone else banging the same drum as I keep doing. I can't understand why most media doesn't mention this at all. Even the media that is sceptical. Fans in boxes are notoriously problematic for noise and old ones significantly so. Keep going please. Maybe eventually the message will get through.
Strong disagree. I had a mini-split style, multi head heat pump installed in my house and it is substantially quieter than my old electric baseboard heaters - which clicked and tinged as it heated up and cooled down due to thermal expansion - and the relatively new two hose stand up air conditioner that I had previously. It is even quieter than the water radiators that were at an old house I lived in where I could hear bubbles in the lines - yes we bled the system but it was never silent. Humans are better able to ignore a constant, soft wooshing sound than the periodic sounds that radiators and baseboard heaters produce. To wit, which do you notice more when they are flying above you at altitude: a turboprop airliner or a jet?
Sabine, I'm a degreed electrical engineer and have been living with heat pumps for the past 52 years (40 years in Florida and 12 years in Tennessee). In Florida winters were mild and the heat pump did its job nicely. In Tennessee, the story is very different. When the outside temperature is below 40 F, the heat pump will run constantly and produce very little heat. The colder it gets the worse is the performance of the heat pump. We use natural gas as a backup heat source, which is less expensive and provides all the heat one could want. Although the heat pump system works great for air conditioning, it leaves a lot to be desired as an actual heat source. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the boiling point of the refrigerant used in the system since heat pumps work on the principle of the latent heat of vaporization of the refrigerant.
40 F? May I ask what kind of heatpump are you running? 40 F should is perfect temperature for getting the benefits from a heatpump. We go to -15C (e.g. 5F) regularly in the winter (60N) and have no problems with a heat pump. Sure there is insulation, but we can basically go -50 F lower than your place and still have the heat pump produce heat. 😅
I have 1988 built 150m^2 home and one single air-to-air heat pump can heat it up just fine. If it get's colder than -25c then you need direct electric heating to help little bit. Air-to-water doesn't work so nicely so if you don't want fan blowing the hot air indoors then you have to get newer house. But I don't see any problem on just slabbing air-to-air units everywhere? And here in Finland you either have air-to-air unit or air-to-water with floor circulation and most of those heat pumps have the geothermal loop to increase the efficiency. converting water circulation system from oil to heatpumps really don't work here either so we use lot of air-to-air units. But it's really easy to way to save on heating bill here just to slab air-to-air unit or multiple to any house. Costs 2000-3000€ per unit so really cheap upgrade also.
I'm an HVAC installer and have 25 years of experience. I'm also environmental scientist with two degrees. Modern heat pumps are nothing like old heat pumps. The technology has evolved a lot. I live in Asheville North Carolina where there's tons of old leaky homes that are poorly insulated. If you know what you're doing as an installer and you install according to the energy efficiency of the building, there's no issue with a heat pump. In fact, new heat pump technologies out now where it doesn't even need the old conventional heat strip auxiliary heat built into the heat pump. The technology is actually quite amazing these days and getting better all the time.
I disagree. Yes new systems are much better than the systems of years ago. I installed a central heat pump system rated 30,000 Btu's for my upper level in NC 2 years ago ( 16 SEER and 3.5 COP). The air handler has 10 kW (34,000 Btu's) of resistance auxiliary heat installed. When we had single digit outside temperatures last year in NC, the auxiliary heat failed the energize due to a thermostat issue and the inside temperature dropped to 60 degrees F and falling from a 72 degree set point. We corrected the problem and the system holds temperature with the 10 kW of auxiliary heaters. But when the auxiliary heat kicks on, the cost is $1.50 per hour to run. The auxiliary heater also comes on when the outside unit goes into a defrost cycle to prevent blowing cold air out the supply ducts.
@@frankd8957compassion to you for your situation that you have struggled with your system due to an installers incompetency. sorry sir but you're speaking about things that you don't understand from an engineering perspective. First of all, the heat pumps I am speaking of are not made at that low 16 seer efficiency that you got so there's really no product on the market that I'm aware of across all brands that has such a low efficiency heat pump that is utilizing the newer recompression and inverter technology. Let me ask you this, if your thermostat was not sending signal correctly with a furnace, what would have happened?, you would have had no heat at all. There's no way that you had an inverter heat pump that can put out its full capacity at temperatures outside that get as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. I live in Asheville North Carolina and have installed over 150 of these newer technology heat pumps and none of them have had problems. Even the ones that are up at 4500 elevation on the North shaded side of a mountain with lots of winter wind. It's interesting though that your argument you're blaming the thermostat problem on the heat pump when it was the the thermostat management equipment involved. In this case, your thermostat. sounds like you had an incompetent technician or company who did not set your equipment up correctly or the size your heat pump is too small so that the heat strips have to kick on too frequently. The other major issue people run into is user error with heat pumps. A furnace is like turning on the floodgates and then back off for a short period of time, which does a great job at heating quickly but also creates temperature oscillations in between cycles. Furnaces will overshoot the temperature at the thermostat during the heating cycle and then temperatures fall in the house until it comes on again. Heat pumps are designed to maintain temperature, not to swing the temperature in the house quickly. The heat pump runs longer cycles in a good one is ultra quiet. They trickle heat in over a longer period of time. Thus reducing the oscillations slightly above and below your desired temperature set point at your thermostat. One of the biggest mistakes people make is turning down their thermostat at night with a heat pump thinking they're saving /energy/money but then they turn it back up in the morning and this pushes it past the "droop temperature" programming at the thermostat at which point the system turns on both the heat pump and the heat strips early in the morning. There's a threshold that the thermostat reads on temperature where it turns on the heat pump at first but then if the temperature difference between the room and the thermostat set point becomes large enough where it exceeds the droop temperature setting, then the auxiliary heat kicks in. The auxiliary heat in your case is electric heat strips. Additionally, setting the thermostat back at night consumes more energy because When the heat pump is trying to make up that difference and reheat the house in the morning, it's being forced to run at the coldest outside temperatures which makes it the least efficient and then it also has to rely on the heat strips because the temperature was turned up several degrees and that activates the heat strips. The same concept applies during the summer. People often think they're saving money by just turning their AC on in the afternoon but then the outside unit has to work harder and use more energy for the same amount of cooling versus just maintaining the temperature 24 hours a day. The other thing with air conditioning is that there's a huge amount of humidity that has to be removed when they see system is first turn back on so that the system has to work in the middle of a hot afternoon to lower the temperature in the house and lower the humidity if someone has not kept it set at the same temperature 24 hours a day. It's most efficient for your air conditioner to maintain lower humidity and keep the house at a cooler temperature starting in the morning so that as heat load comes into the structure throughout the day, the actual mass of the building is already dehumidified and cooler so it offsets the amount of time that the AC has to run during the hottest part of the day Just because you didn't get the correct equipment or configuration with your system doesn't mean that heat pumps don't keep houses comfortable at a very low cost.. Heat pumps do really keep a more consistent temperature in the house and create more even temperature but you have to know how to set them up correctly and you have to be educated correctly by the installer regarding how to use them correctly as the homeowner. I am quite frustrated with my industry because there's a lot of incompetency in the industry. Half of the success of my business is being far more competent than the average reputable HVAC company in my area. Even some of the most reputable companies in my area do things incorrectly according to the most accurate engineering approach on a fairly large percentage of the installs that they do.. I'm an independent technician and have worked on my own for 25 years and have an outstanding reputation for approaching heat pump installations from a high technical engineering approach. Unfortunately, just like with all industries, you have to really screen companies and technicians to make sure they know what they're talking about.I give my clients guarantees on my systems. If I had installed a system at your house and it was driving up electrical costs because the heat strips are coming on too much, I would know how to correct that or I would remove the system and put in the correct system if I made a mistake. It sounds like that maybe someone put in a heat pump and sized it based on the square footage of your house without really analyzing the overall energy efficiency of the home which has to analyze how leaky the are envelope of the home is, types of Windows you have, types of insulation you have, and the percentage of your west facing side of the house that is Windows. I see technicians frequently make mistakes were they install equipment that is not ideal or they do not train the homeowner on the difference of how to manage your thermostat for a heat pump as compared to a gas furnace. Regarding your conclusions that heat pumps don't don't work well: To do good science, you cannot take a sample size of one of your own experience and then extrapolate that to a whole body of information, especially if you are not specialized in that engineering and scientific knowledge so that you know what you're saying applies to equipment or an industry at Large, a system at large, or whatever it happens to be that is being scientifically analyzed. Sounds like you need a really good HVAC consultant like myself. They're out there. Seems like about half of the industry has really good technicians and the rest of it is a crapshoot
@@brianwnc8168 Where do you have time to write a 10,000 word reply? As far as I don't know what I am talking about, I am a degreed electrical engineer with over 40 years of industrial power distribution, design and industrial control systems experience with a Professional Engineer's license since 1976. Also, 12 years as a Fortune 500 corporate energy engineer. I have installed, powered and started up 1500 ton industrial chiller systems, water tower cooled. I know the difference between a Watt and a volt-ampere. The typical, affordable residential heat pump system is very close to what I described. In the USA, the vast majority of homes have centralized units utilizing air handlers not the ductless mini splits which are more efficient.
Heat pumps are great in modern houses. The load on the heat pump needs to be reduced with more insulation and air sealing. The old school method was to just pump in more heat rather than trying to build a tighter house. Plus heat pumps struggle in very cold temps.
@@manoo422 The video made clear that Canada,* Sweden, Norway and Finland *are* already using them in vast quantities. These are colder climates; so they definitely meet the standard of "any good." But insulation is key. Insulation will also make your air conditioner work better in the summer, too; but no one is saying that the AC in a drafty house is "no good." *EDIT: I misread the chart. Canda does use them, but only in the same proportion as the US does, according to the chart at 4:48
If you want to talk about building tighter houses, do some reading about the long-term health effects of that. Humans aren't meant to live in hermetically sealed bubbles full of plastic and their own dead skin cells.
@@jeffbenton6183 I'd like to see reliable statistics that show that Canada uses heat pumps in vast quantities. In Ontario at least the majority of domestic heat is via natural gas fired forced hot air furnaces.
I live in Northern Italy, the temperature today is 32.5 C. In our newly built home we had to install a heating pump. We have hot water for showers and warm water for underfloor heating. Much better than gas or oil.
There is a big thing missing. This video only shows and talks about heat pumps that use outside air. The best systems have the heat exchanger underground and groundwater flows around it. That is at 8 degrees year round. So when its -10 degrees outside, the heat pump gets a big head start and starts at 8 degrees, that is an 18 degree head start right away. Same for cooling, when its really hot, like 40 degrees outside, your air conditioning can work off of that same chilly 8 degrees. That is crazy efficient.
The ground water system is not always an option. Some places actually limit how many and how deep holes you can drill next to your house in an urban environment and if you live where the water table is deep or there isn't much ground water you might have to drill a 200 meter hole to get enough thermal conductivity to sustain the heatpump for a house. Deep holes are expensive.
I agree heat pumps work best when the year round temperature is at a point where both cooling and heating have a mid range delta. So using an underground piping system is smart. This is why I also advocate a basement in any new construction as any building underground maintains a steady state temperature very close to optimal living conditions for humans. Plus once again the the naturally maintained temperature is much closer to the desired temperature requiring very little heating or cooling.
@@anthonycarbone3826 Look, i am also lucky, in many places in Germany the ground water is not far below the surface, and it flows. Access to that energetically tasty goodness means you drill and dig just around 20 meters or 60 feet. Basements here are a bit crazy. All buildings have them, even while all buildings require the basements to have full protection against groundwater intrusion. We count ground level as zero, and buildings that go to -3 are not rare at all. We have shopping malls here in Munich that are one level below ground. You start at ground level, go one level down, and you find restaurants, and a massive supermarket.
My son had a ground water heat pump system installed, 5 tons, and it cost him $48,000. Most ground water systems require buried piping and auxiliary pumps to move the water, very expensive.
that's why you put a ventilation system with a heat exchanger in your home. Not only does it filter out the pollution and noise coming from outside, it also regulates huminidty and prevents heat from escaping
4:15: the easiest way to use a heat pump with an old heating system is to use a pump which generates higher temperatures. That simple. Heat pumps generating 65°C or 70°C are pretty common, because, well, there are many old heating systems. Demand creates supply.
Hi Sabine, I really appreciate your statistical work. I am in New Zealand 🇳🇿 sun- tropical country. We are removing boiler heated radiators and transitioning into ducted heat pump systems. With 50°C air flowing into rooms with temperature & C02 sensors, the airflow is increased or decreased by automated dampers in the ductwork. Once the system/home has ‘heated up’ the main airflow is reduced and heat production by the heat pump is levelled out by an inverter-drive on the heat pump’s compressor. Ground sourced heat pumps are even more efficient.
We live in Denmark, and our House is from 1772, with relatively little insulation, compared to now a days demand. In spite of cold, damp, Wind weather here, we have no problem with heating the 200 m2 two floor house using a 7Kw heat pump!! So your claim is false. You come around the low circulation temperature with increasing the flow We went from 70 C ( gas) to max 45 C with no problems.
Yes, but I have cases where that's not enough in Sweden. Put the only thing that happens are that the compressor stops and electric heater takes over or what else the aux heater are.
Canadian here. I have installed 300 heatpumps in mainly 100 year old houses in Toronto over the last few years and I have to say that satisfaction is very high. Running cost was lower than gas and this is in a place where we have very cheap gas. These are a mix of air to air heatpumps and air to water. Yes, we would like to have a few more radiators (I always want more) but we also use a bit of backup electricity when needed. Luckily, it is not needed much.
One thing they also dont talk about is the temperature limitations. Heat pumps struggle when the outside temp is lower than about -15C to -25C. For much of the world thats not an unmanageable limitation - you can get electric room heaters for the few cold days. But in Canada where I live it can go days or weeks without the daily high going above -25C and hit -35 or colder at night. Heat pumps might save some green house gasses, but Canadians still need effective central heating to back up the current heat pump technology for those cold days.
they also don't work very well when the heat rises very high, a heat pump in the place I live is totally useless because it only works 3 months out of the year, and the rest of the time you're still either using heaters or AC anyway
Canadian here. I converted to a ducted air-to-air central heat pump in 2016 in my 1950's-era home. I've saved a lot of money compared to the oil burner I used to have. I have a 10kW heat coil to augment the heat pump when temps go lower than -21C. Yes, this costs $$$ but it is still much less expensive than the oil burner I had and takes care of those few weeks of very frigid temps. Comparatively, cooling in the summer is very inexpensive - we get temps of 30C+ quite often in the summer and this unit keeps the whole home at a comfortable temperature. I set the thermostat in the spring and fall and don't need to adjust it again. Don't let anyone tell you they are suitable for any or every build - just like any HVAC product, insulation and building envelope integrity matter. I cannot understand why these products are controversial, in my experience heat pumps are a great product.
Simple solution is ground source. That's what you see in e.g. Sweden. Yes, drilling costs money but when it gets seriously cold, it's a no-brainer. Ground is a very stable source of heat. Especially when you don't need cooling in summer and you can drill deep (relatively speaking). It's when you have milder temperatures that drilling is debatable. The benefit just isn't that big. In those cases, ground to water heat exchanger is a decent middle ground.
We built a new home in 2019. Instead of a whole home heating cooling solution with a multi room heatpump system, I got installed 2 smaller heatpumps. These 2 heat and cool the home very well, and keep it at a comfortable 22C most year round. They are 1 at 4.5kw rated and a smaller at 2.5kw rated. The running cost of the 2 pumps is less than the cost of 1 big unit. It also has alot more area to exchange the heat with as well. We have not yet had one freeze up that we have noticed. Our average electricity usage is 9000 kWh per year including my hobby room. Last year we installed solar power grid tied. During the summer the sunshine is powering the pumps to keep the house cool. In winter it assists in keeping the house warm. Our system in winter provides 1/2 of the power we use in the day in May/June/July. The other 1/2 is exported and we get credit. For us, we have no electric bill what so ever. The solar will be breaking even after just over 72 months. Hamilton, NZ
I have had heat pumps installed in 3 properties, 2 terraced houses (one built c.1910, one built in late 1950s) and a bungalow (built in 1969). Fortunately all houses were well insulated. In all cases the occupiers are delighted with the results BUT without a government grant the payback period for the work required would have been around 20 years. Biggest problem here in the UK is the capabilities of building contracting industry, there are just so many cowboys and incompetents offering to install heat pumps - many of them are incapable of installing loft insulation correctly - and the number of true expert installers in frighteningly small
In Texas, most new housing uses cheap central HVAC heat pumps, "cheap" meaning sized according to the cooling mode (AC cooling is life saving in our summers) and costing about $1,000 more than a unit for AC only at about $6,000 (an outside compressor and coils unit plus an inside attic air handler fan and coils). These are air to air heat pumps, optimized for cooling, but equipped with a refrigerant flow reversing valve, that enables pumping heat into the house from the outside. The "cheap" part that can sink the electric grid is the back-up electric resistance heater strips, that start kicking on as the outside temperature falls below 30 F. Our three and four ton energy rated units each have 10 kW of heater strips (room for 15 kW for colder climes...like Dallas). Figure Texas has a roughly once a decade extreme cold invasion with the average temperature at about fifteen F for a few days...now many millions of houses are each pulling 10 kW...supposing ten million housings, the heating would represent 100,000 mWe of load (compare to the 1 to 2 kW load in normal weather). Another problem we see from our hilltop house: the developments of large tract housing below us in the valley send us rising heat (and sometimes awful fireplace smoke) during cold still winter nights...we stay above freezing while the valley housing sparkles with deep frost in the morning sun...and the temperature reading driving down hill falls to 16 F. Wow! On average, it's supposed to be 25 F. Their heat pumps have fought each other all night for whatever heat can be gleaned, even condensing low humidity moisture into a frosting condition. The natural gas distribution people had a joke years ago...a heat pump will find and suck the warmth out of your litter of puppies in the garage. One more problem...back to those heater strips...you have rolling blackouts...when power is to be restored, all those heater strips are ready to provide instant load...sometimes the substation transformer explodes. When there is a gas distribution system for gas heaters...there too is an instant load which may drop the line pressure low enough to cause a district valve cut-off. Now a big problem there also.
>XmarkedSpot : What's so bad about being oversized? Doesn't that reduce the duty cycle, so the unit is off more? (No energy used while it's off, compensating for the extra energy used while it's on.)
@@brothermine2292 Larger heat pumps typically have a lower COP. Though more costly, zoned heat pumps can get a much better overall COP than a central unit with ductwork
3:00 I think its worth pointing out: Traditional Heating generates energy by burning fuels or using resistance coils in case of electric. Heat pumps move energy. Its typically cheaper to move that thermal energy than it is to generate.
It might be so but the efficiency drops as the temperature difference increases. Also it depends what the source of electricity is. During the winter when the need for heating is high there is very little "renewable" production so, most of the energy comes from gas power plants. They burn the gas and make electricity with about 50% efficiency, about 20% gets lost in transportation remaining about 40% from the initial energy then we power a heat pump which has a cop of 2-2.5 when the weather is cold and we are where we started, we could simply burn the gas directly.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 I agree completely and then you have to factor in the heat pumps complexity, higher purchase and maintenance cost plus the unending governmental regulations regarding refrigerants which cost trillions and only fills the landfills with more precious materials. I truly believe we'd be better off burning the the fuels directly for heat.
@@jbar6618 Just continue and don't adapt is the easy way and also the way that will lead us to more problems. I think fossil fuels have diminished our creativity to do much with limited tools.
But electricity is way more expensive than gas! So if the gas bill is like $150 in winter how is an electric bill 3X that going to be cheaper?? Plus it may not even work when it gets super cold? Or with ice storms? Minus 20 F outside?? Or lower? People cannot afford $450 electric bill. That is the food money than!
Thanks, really great explanation of the issue. Basically, we use gas and oil boilers to quickly heat a room or area only as and when we need it, so a draughty poorly insulated property is less of an issue, whereas with a heat pump you have to continuously heat the room or area to ensure it is warm, so thermal leakage is a much bigger issue. Many people in the UK live in older properties, so to make them suitable they need insulation, and this is a much bigger topic than most realise. The best form of insulation is probably external cladding, but even if you can get planning permission to alter the exterior, it may require the roof extending, which is not always possible. If you have a cavity, you can have that insulated, but the risk is you create a bridge between the external and internal wall allowing water to percolate through. For older properties with solid walls, they rely on the internal warmth to dry the wall out, so if you insulate inside, they remain wet. As you say, for a well-insulated property a heat pump is great, otherwise it cannot keep up.
Something you didn't mention Sabine: most heatpumps can also provide cooling during heatwaves, installations based on the burning of fossil fuels can obviously only add heat inside the house. Yes, heat loss is key. It's not only about the ammount of insulation but also about the size and type of building.
Insulation is a separate issue, a gas boiler is not going to work well if the house is not insulated either. You're still going to have the same leakage of energy, but the gas boiler will cost you more and also produce co2.
This is an excellent discussion of the pros and cons of heat pump installations in existing homes. Massachusetts has a program which is funded by taxes that people pay in their energy bills. The program pays $10,000 toward the cost of heat pumps and pays 75% of the cost of additional insulation in existing homes. We used this program. It replaced an oil hot water furnace with Mini-Split heat pumps. We had already replaced the windows and doors which are much tighter than were the original 1950s windows and doors. The additional insulation was done properly. This is not only my opinion, it is the inspector's opinion. The heat pumps cost us more than the program paid. This cost, plus the Insulation, and removal the old furnace and oil tank cost us over $6,000. This omits the cost of the new windows and doors since they were completed more than 7 years ago. Your research is certainly correct. Our house will now save considerable money on air conditioning cots, which will eventually recoup the money that we spent. Electricity is expensive in Massachusetts. Your point that heat pumps in older dwellings might not heat the house sufficiently to make up for the heat loss is correct. They will work in older dwellings, if the insulation is improved and the windows and doors are replaced. The type of heating/cooling system might need to be completely renewed for heat pumps to work effectively. The costs could be $30.000 to $50,000 for a modest home. My costs were for a 70 m2 home with a basement.
Norwegian here. Live in a «log cabin» from 1750`s. Installed heatpump 5 years ago. A godsend durring the heatwave in summer, and a fairly good improvement in tempratures in winter… But,,, replaced all windows last year, and the difference was HUGE… Now the heatpump can allmost be the sole heatsourse in winter. So it can`t be stressed enough INSULATION is the biggest key. But then again the windows cost 24k €, while the heatpump only cost 3k €…
Norway has heatwaves???? 🤪🤪 Come down to Texas.
@@pagodakid The only reasons to visit TX IMO is to visit SpaceX and the Tesla Gigafactory. No offense... ;-)
We had a heatpump installed after replacing our windows. We don’t have good insulation yet, but the windows have made heating and cooling workable. Need to save up for insulation.
they are good if you have the differential for it to work , but the cheap ones being fitted by land lords in uk dont work well.
also when the temperature crashes really low, they can actually use more electricity than they provide direct heating for.
i would rather use an oil boiler , and a decobon filter , than can be emptied
@@StormyDog None taken. 😁
Pardon the length, and the rant. I was a mechanical contractor/engineer for 30 yrs in the SE USA. Starting just when heat pumps were starting to gain a foothold. I see several inadequacies in this vid and in the several studies therein referenced. And they ALL seem to be related to the most common failings that I found within my industry over the years.
Dissatisfaction with heat pumps can almost always be traced to an improper installation. Not just the act of physically placing components and hooking them together. Installation begins with the design of the system. 99.9% of all residential HVAC sales start with some "sales" effort that typically begins with an off-the cuff or rule-of-thumb estimate of how much of a system is required. Usually something like "well, you've got a 1200 square-foot area, and at 400 square feet per ton, ( a TON is 12,000 BTUs per hour), you'll need a 3-ton (36,000 BTU) unit to properly heat it. But this does NOT account for the REAL heat loss/heat gain of the structure. In my experience, and speaking with contractors around the country, the only time heat loss/gain is actually calculated is when an architect designs a structure and hires an engineer to actually design the HVAC. This failing to account for the actual needs of the structure can result in a significant under-sizing of the system, and that results in poor performance and customer satisfaction.
Point Two: Customer education. You touched on this briefly in your vid. Customers are used to their fossil fuel-fired system (whether it is forced air or static radiator or under-floor) delivering much warmer outlet temps. Often on the order of 130 -160° F (54.4 - 71.1° C), which is much higher than body temp and therefore FEELS warm. Heat pumps operate on a basic 20-30°F (-6.6 to -1.1°C) rise across the indoor coil. Meaning if the air in the house is 70°F (21.1°C) , then the heat pump can add about 30°F (-6.6°C) to that, for an output temp of about 100°F (37.7°C). Only 2°F ( -16.6°C) above body temp. This feels cool to the skin. BUT - it IS putting the required 36,000 BTU/hr (or whatever) into the structure. This is before the auxiliary heat strips are called in to play. THEN the heat pump can deliver you 130°F (54.4°C) output air. But at a huge cost. And even most contractors do not realize that heat pumps are very charge sensitive, Put in too much or too little freon and the efficiency goes to hell.
I could write a book about how to get a satisfactory heat-pump installation, but the point is, I feel that NO discussion of heat pumps should be undertaken without a thorough exploration of what makes them work or fail.
Went from the Greater Northeast to the Hot Southeast, and what you have observed about skin temperature surprised me, but the overall 'heating' with a heat pump is VERY EASY to live with when you factor in full house AC in Summer and things like 'abnormal' gas backup. I have some 'cooler/hotter rooms', but NOTHING like the ice-on-the-windows attic I grew up in from an oil/radiator house.
Thanks for the practical insights, because there is such a lack of such experience in RUclips!!
Which ultimately means that many people will not have a properly sized or maintained heat pump and they will be disappointed. In addition to paying more than if they just used a gas furnace.
Perhaps it's time write that book.
how would 100°F feel cool? skin surface temperature is much lower than core temperature
We are building single family homes in Ontario, heat pumps are amazing, but it’s a whole design thing. Something as simple as awnings on south facing windows can drastically alter demand on the system
Our house is in the middle of the Rhine plain near Karlsruhe/Germany.
It was built in 1954/1967 and energy-efficiently improved in 1983.
The standard outside temperature for the design of the heating is minus 10°C.
The oil heating is 30 years old and still works fine.
The only weak point is the high consumption of 4000 liters of heating oil per year.
After switching to heat pump technology, there are now around 150 liters of heating oil and around 5500 kWh of electricity left per year. The old oil heating helps the heat pump out in the event of permanent frost below 0°C. The SCOP of the heat pump is around 4.5.
The house and the radiators remained unchanged.
The heating costs have halved.
That's the intelligent way to do it. Use the heat pump for regular heating, and the old oil system as a secondary system during cold spells.
Hi, you must also have added some insulation in the process because your old consumption of 4000 liters amounts to 40.000 KWh ( lets say 35.000KWh with 88% efficiency) and now you generate 1500KWh + 5500KWh *4.5 = 26000KWh
@@micheljansens4643 I did not add any insulation to the house. But I separated heating and hot water and removed the hot water circulation. So energy consumption for hot water in the summer went from 70 Liters of oil per month down to 30 kWh electricity by switching to the new heatpump boiler.
SCOP of the 30 years oil heating was not 88% but below 70%.
Two system to maintain. Great....
And how much did the system cost to install, and based on your yearly savings, how many years will it take to make your investment back? 20? 30?
Installed a heat pump in an 1915-build house and it works fine in winter. Main confusion is that it's not a like for like replacement of a gas/oil system. You can't return to a cold house, crank up to max and expect the same level of almost instant heating you can achieve with a fossil system - heat pumps love (i.e. work most efficiently at) 24/7 lower level output and from experience the bills are just fine. Used in this mode the 'radiators' become 'convectors' so you lose that feeling of being in front of a radiant heat source, to be replaced with a bath of warm air throughout the house. Heat pumps also appear to suffer more from bad installs than fossil systems - the quality and experience of the team doing the installation makes a HUGE difference.
Fossil fuels have always had the bad problem of being terribly inefficient hence why people like all that wasted fuel turned into a face full of hot air blasting you. A heat pump is different and humans hate change so it will take time to adjust but this will slowly happen at some point. It also feels wrong to have your furnace on 24/7 since we are all taught that you should turn things off to save power but that is not always the case as seen here with heat pumps. What a lot of people are not discussing is how quit heat pumps are; less forced air sound inside can lead to less hearing loss long term and also the outside fan is so much quieter that you are not forced to put it next to your neighbor to blast them out too.
Where do you blow the cold air? Which part of your premises gets a continuous cold blast from September to May?
Is your house terraced, or a semi?
I think you hit on a thing though. Radiant heat is much more comfortable than increased air temperature. People like sitting in front of a firepit, even though 90% of the heat goes up to the sky.
@@grantmcinnes1176 A very good point - even to the 'near infrared' health movement. Our relationship to heating and cooling appears more subtle than many realise - a lot of the appeal of air con is down to humidity control, and not just temp - perhaps a reason the cooling in the Paris 24 Olympic village has been criticised as it controls for temp only.
ASHP are the new double glazing in the UK. Nothing wrong with the product but given the BUS grant, many are being attracted to the market by the money that can be made. There also appears to be no low temperature design element to current apprentice/learner courses, which is quite shocking (sure Heat Geek referenced this at some point).
And turning stats to what you want them to say has been perfectly demonstrated in this vid. ASHP can heat any building *in theory*. You just need a suitable sized ASHP. BUT you may not have space, you may need a massive one which would be deemed inefficient. BUT it would heat the space. We need to stop thinking about this being a binary can/can't, and more how we can make it work. If climate scientists are correct, then we'd be far better off with an inefficient ASHP on a green grid, saving the planet, than saying 'MEH too hard, lets burn more gas and to hell with the world'.
If the environment and/or lower heating costs is the goal then the first step should always be to fix the insulation. It doesn't really matter what type of heating or cooling you have, a well insulated house will need less energy to heat/cool, no matter if you are burning coal or gas or moving heat with electricity; fixing the insulation lowers them all. Then you can think about changing to a heat pump or stick with what you have.
That's not generally true. It depends on how much carbon dioxide is emitted, while producing your electricity. If that's close to zero (as it is for example in norway) the investment in a heat pump is more environment friendly than insulating your home and burning gas or oil.
@@dashiernervt123 NO, it IS TRUE ! First INSULATION ! And if you still use oil to heat, you wil need A LOT LESS !
@@ellsworthm.toohey7657 you should fix your caps lock key and your reading skills. Try to understand what "it depends on how much carbon dioxide is emitted" means. No co2, no problem.
@@dashiernervt123 "and/or lower heating costs" if you want to get technical about reading skills...
@@oasntet what's your point here? The heating costs depend on how much the energy costs. Since a heat pump is very efficient, it's well plausible that you reduce your heating costs just by installing one of these, especially if electricity is cheap.
Apart from that is 'fixing the insulation ' a too broad statement. When insulating you always have a number of options which will have different economical and/or environmental impact.
I think the main problem between the two groups is cost. To the poor 'just install better insulation' or 'just buy an electric car' etc is impossible and grossly ignorant. To the rich they think the poor dont care about the planet. If you're worried about the next bill then the planet can wait. These groups aren't talking.
World emissions are going to be driven by the understandable aspirations of the poor in China, India and other places. Affluent Westerners being good isn't going to solve the problem.
The average UK salary is £30,000 a year and minimum wage is £17,000 ( a state pension is £11,000 pa). I doubt Sabine has any idea of those sort of facts at all.
The poor may well care about the planet. Their more pressing concern might be getting through the next day.
People shouldn't be so wasteful and pampered. When I was poor, I put on a sweater. Summers I let the inside get 15+ degrees warmer than pampered people do. Winters I let the inside get 15+ degrees cooler than pampered people do. I bought my first car for $400. I would buy bulk dry goods at the grocer instead of going to restaurants and convenience stores. The world's problems comes from 8 billion poor people trying to live like they're the rich and they will externalize as much cost as they can, often in the form of CO2 pollution. At least when the 1% flies their private jets, it's not multiplied by 8 billion.
@@thorr18BEM "The world's problems comes from 8 billion poor people trying to live like they're the rich"
Not it does not.
The problem comes from a couple million people that have thousands of times the emissions of normal people, and a couple billion people that do not have access to anything coming even close to modern technology.
"At least when the 1% flies their private jets, it's not multiplied by 8 billion."
No, it is just multiplied by a couple thousands - they fly more and with no other people that need to travel.
So even if we would grand you your delusional numbers: if the 1% often fly with their private jets than that is more than the lower 90% combined.
Over here in America, where heat pumps are pretty common, nobody I know of is installing the kind of system Dr. Hossenfelder is talking about, where you hook up the heat pump to existing radiators that are supposed to cool via radiant heat. What people mostly do here is either hook their heat pumps up to an existing central *forced air* heat or A/C system, or they install mini-splits or multi-splits with head units that circulate moderately warmed air in the room. Mini-splits and multi-splits in fact do work really well, even in old houses. I've even seen them installed in historic homes that are over two hundred years old.
Using your existing radiators seems like a bad idea for the very reason Dr. Hossenfelder states: the radiator isn't warm enough. But there is no particular reason to confine yourself to such a system.
Also, this system is much better when tied to hydronic radiant floor heating, which many new build places tend to have.
@grumpynerd forced air heating was never popular in UK homes it was tried and almost all of the systems were replaced with gas boilers . There is not normally the room for ducts in uk homes , domestic air con is not realy a thing and in fact to get a gov grant for a heat pump, the system is not allowed to operate in cooling mode .
Central forced air heating is pretty much non-existent in northern Europe. Air-to-air (is that same as mini-splits, we don't use the term?) is common as complementary to other heating systems, but ground source heat pumps as a single source is increasingly popular in northernmost parts (I have a ground source heat pump).
What you call heat pump in America is called split system aircon elsewhere in the world. The real heat pump system has heat exchanger buried deep underground and usually provides hot water too.
@@samuelchamberlain2584 Forced air has the advantage that the same system is used as air conditioning which, AIUI, isn't common on your side of the pond. If radiant heat is used, two completely separate systems have to be installed, and maintained.
My daughter here in U.S. lives in a 1935 cottage. The house has been rewired, new plumbing and re-roofed . I've insulated under the house, in the attic and in the walls. Put in new heat pump system. Takes forever to change yep. On cold days (15-19° in PNW) the unit can't even begin to do the job. Fortunately we kept the little natural gas fireplace otherwise she would freeze
Heat pump temperature rise is limited by the refrigerant thermodynamics. 15°F is about 20° outside their capabilities. Some larger units have resistance heaters that kick in when the temperature is really low. Needless to say, the operating cost is insane.
@@MrKentaroMotoPI That's the case with R22 which hasn't been installed in over a decade. Modern "Cold climate" certified heat pumps produce 70% of their rated output at 5F outdoor temp without aux heat.
My house was built with electric baseboard heat and poor insulation. It cost over $200 per month to heat in the winter here in Ohio. Over time I upgraded the insulation and installed a heat pump. My monthly bill was cut in half until COVID inflated the cost. I shudder to think what might have been had I done nothing. Yes, I am satisfied with my heat pump, thank you very much.
Electric heaters are expensive as you get 1 to 1.
Yours is an upgrade as your getting 4 to 1 now
Heat pumps are a no brainer with houses that were built with resistance baseboards near the floor and AC in the ceiling, as many were in the 1960s and 1970s. The ductwork is already there, and these houses are often well insulated, so very little rework is involved. It would be more complicated in a place like mine, with district heating from a central boiler, solid masonry walls and not much room to run any ductwork. What we have works and trying to change anything in a condominium is like pulling teeth.
You had the worse type of heating. No wonder. If gas was option, I would have done trade between that and heat pump.
Why would you remove a heating system That is already working in an older house. Just add the heat pump in addition to existing heating.
Yes. We have a hybrid system. The heat pump keeps the house warm when the outside temperature goes down to about 45°f. Below that the gas kicks in.
Yeah I stupidly did that when moving into a house with a furnace. Took out the registers because I was one of those idiots who believed that 'when it was off it wasnt actually off' and I took them out. Immediately regretted it because teh insane design had the vents go into the attic then blow the hot air DOWN from the ceiling. In winter it was IMPOSSIBLE to heat the upstairs. On the other hand, the upstairs were bedrooms that were only used for sleeping so it ultimately saved us money, but it was impossible to have a warm room up there.
Sometimes that's not a compatible option. In the UK where boilers are used which heat water to be circulated to radiators which heat rooms, those are designed to just have one boiler and circulation system. Adding a mini-split would work, but this research was about retrofitting homes with existing heating systems with heat pumps. It does show that the hydronic heating approach has limitations- many would be better off with a multi-split system, but that's more expensive still.
Seems today, to get many grants (Canada), you must remove your old system. Things are going to get very interesting for the regions serviced by natural gas infrastructure.
@@jaymemaurice There is never a requirement to remove a system. Grants cover installation and equipment, and obviously there is only so much space but no grants require removal of anything.
We had natural gas in southern ontario, when we moved in gas was expernsive so we had thought of switching to hydro, but then gas got cheaper, the big kicker was when the government sold most of Ontario hydro and prices skyrocketed, maybe thats intentional.
One of the most significant issues is that people just ignore reversible mini-split AC units. Their efficiency is comparable to (or even better since they don't need to get nearly as hot) central units and they circumvent the issue of preexisting small surface area radiators by having active ventilation, so lots of the retrofitting work isn't necessary. They can also be used as an AC in the summer, which is a huge quality of life improvement.
It also allows people to slowly transition to heat pumps, since you can install them one unit at a time, gradually replacing your existing boiler's tasks.
Having multiple heat pumps like that also means that in case one breaks, you still have heat because you can just open doors to heat the room with the broken unit with the units in adjacent rooms. If you only have one central heating unit, be it a heat pump or a fossil burner, you're just kinda screwed if it breaks during winter.
Air-conditioner, heat pump, refrigerator - they're all the same thing under different names: It's a phase change fluid circulated by electric pump, flowing through an evaporator (cold end) and a condenser (hot end).
So I agree with you that heat-pump enthusiasts dismissing "mini-split AC units" is like Instant Pot enthusiasts dismissing pressure cookers. In twenty years we should sell these people on an amazing new "climate control tech" we call "phase transformation".
Sure, air blowing systems like common split systems will work but not everyone likes circulation of air, especially people who suffer on house dust allergies. Most people I know in Germany prefer low air movement systems for heating.
We use our split system for 10 month a year for heating/cooling.
Our gas heater is reserved for the coldest 2 months.
This concept more than halved our gas consumption and saves more than 30% in total cost for heating.
@@matneu27 cleaning helps with the house dust :).
I have both reversible A/C units and a central heat pump for warm water and floor heating.
Quite happy with it.
Keeping my oil burner heating system and installing a 36K btu mini slit on one side of house, mainly for AC. If the heating is adequate for Fall and Spring (North of Boston) I'll add another 36K btu unit to other side of house if the first system works out well.
All of Australia: What's a radiator?
Installing heat pumps here costs about $500USD and takes about 2 hrs with zero modifications to the house (except for one 2-inch hole through the wall).
That’s one room covered, my house has three floors and 8 rooms.
That's a mini-split, which is a type of heat pump. But a heat pump large enough to heat an entire house in a North American or northern European winter is of an entirely different scale.
I heard Sabine say something about “old houses,” and I thought “uh oh.” But then I realized I live in America, on the west coast, where “old” means something very different than just about anywhere else on earth. I live in a 72 y.o. house, and our heat pump works just fine. But 72 years isn’t old if you’re a European house.
I had that same realization when I went to Scotland to visit my uncle.. he was asking where I lived and what life was like in Canada and during that I said something about buying an old house from the 50's and he started laughing and told me his house was nearly 300 hundred years old, it has just been remodeled.
from my experience it's not the years but the kind of heating system you have in the house, current heat pumps aren't just suitable for houses with radiators, I guess you use other medium to convert electricity to heat?
Haha, oh yes 72 years is old in Europe too. But of course we also have houses who are centuries old. They normally are monument protected and unable to get insulated. all the best🙂
Mine is 350 years old minimum with 20 inch stone walls. Two days to heat up, then stays warm all winter with daytime triple combustion woodstoves.
Nice. My House here in Germany is from 1860 and is made of clay and wood. I have a gas boiler and a fireplace. Works fine but I will invest in infrared as 3rd option while keeping the rest.
I live in a large 400 yr old granite stone house that was very cold our first 3 winters. Feeding the four fireplaces took half my waking hours and barely made a dent in the cold more than 2 or 3 meters from the fire. I had to dress indoors as though I was going skiing. My options were pellet boiler, diesel fuel boiler, resistance electric, or heat pumps. We got heat pumps, and had an insulated new roof installed. It took half a year of construction for both. Every window was replaced with thermal double glazed windows. This would have been an unsuitable house, with 60cm thick granite walls. All new piping was needed. In short, the heat pump system works. It uses a lot of electricity but it is very effective and was life changing. It is a large system,. It was also quite expensive, complex, a long installation, and requires a lot of knowledge and skill to optimize it. It works very different than a heat on demand gas boiler common in the UK or US. It is far far more efficient. I get a COP of about 3 to 4, which means for every kw of electricity I get 3 to 4 kw of heat. A diesel boiler system would’ve been about 25 percent less in cost, but likely more in fuel. A PV system with batteries offsets some of the electric consumption but in cloudy winter it is almost nonexistent which is when it is needed most. After 18 months I am probably halfway to technician qualification for heat pumps.
"In short, heat pump system works". Yeah after you replaced your roof, your windows, and your piping. Truly astonishing
@@DschinghissRight, but that is what it takes in a cold climate. Over time that investment will pay off. And even if they'd installed a gas boiler, they'd have still had a very inefficient dwelling. So it would have still felt cold because heating the air inside a leaky building is a losing battle. Staying warm in a cold climate has everything to do with economics. Even when gas was cheap it was the rich that stayed warm and the poor that shivered, unable to afford a shilling to put in the gas meter. So that hasn't changed with the transition from gas boilers to heat pumps. Except now the general population is much wealthier and more people can afford the upgrades. Bottom line - if you can afford it, do it. If not then no one is forcing you to put in a heat pump but be aware - it might cost you more over time.
@@Dschinghissa couple of mini split air to air systems would have taken care of the place without spending on insulation. Insulation always helps, but 15 kW from gas is the same as 15 kW from a heat pump, except that with an air to air heat pump you'll be paying 1/3 for the energy.
The only reason insulation is *needed* is because of installing air to water heat pumps which are inherently *vastly* less efficient.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
My fire was rubbish.
Once I rebuilt my house the heat pump was much better at keeping me warm.
I'd go out into a limb and say your fire will be far better now too after rebuilding an entire house.
PS, I live in a completely uninsulated house. Single pane windows, no roof or wall insulation at all, no seals around doors and one mini split *air to air* kept the place toasty warm when it was below zero outside. We had 2 units but rarely turned on the second one. Only if we wanted to warm the place up quickly. Both units were 25 years old when we replaced them with a ducted air to air which is complete overkill.
To put in two 7kW inverter mini splits you're only looking at 2-3000 pounds which is less than an air to water after the subsidy, plus you get air conditioning, and installation is just a small hole in an exterior wall, an outdoor single phase power supply and hanging a bracket inside.
Swede here - Installed a heatpump for around 3k Euro, no need for new radiators as I don't have any at home anymore, the house is 90 years old. The type of the heatpump is air-to-air so no need for radiators, air gets warm within minutes and it works as AC at summer (and that's amazing!!). The type you were talking about is air-to-water but there are other solutions and those are still heatpumps.
Could you elaborate your setup a bit more. How many rooms, how many internal/external devices have been installed.
@@heikoguckes5693 Sure, one unit ( I have a preatu open house. The internal part is installed on the first floor. I was afraid that the upper floor would be cold but since the air blows under the ceiling it's actually quite ok. I have two bedrooms upstairs. The pump is mitsubishi ln35 hero.
@@heikoguckes5693 Slightly more "typical" (non-open floor plan) layout here. The heat pump that was installed took the place of using a fireplace to supplement an oil-fired boiler (forced hot water baseboard heating), but with a little planning (and bothering to use the scheduling feature) it takes care of more than half of the heating needs. The unit is a Samsung Max Heat 2.0 12k BTU (roughly 3.52 kW nominal capacity, heating & cooling) model and has an effective minimum outdoor temperature of -25°C (which thankfully doesn't happen extremely often here-I have definitely been outside during colder weather than that within the last five years).
This is what Sabine missed in her video here. She is only talking about air-water-heatpumps, not air-air-heatpumps (or more commonly known as AC). As she correctly notes, air-water-heatpumps have a problem working with old radiators, but the indoor units of AC put out easily the same amount of heat as normal radiators.
Thanks for all the answers.
This means that practically every building can at least be augmented by an AC unit, also known as air-to-air heat-pump.
Costs are about 3k€ per unit including installation.
They work down to -25°.
Main disadvantage is the need for opened doors or additional devices.
A backup plan for very cold weather might be a good idea.
"80% of people in a sample population already predisposed to liking heat-pumps reported liking heat-pumps"
Interesting.
Output isn’t good at a 0,8 coefficient.
Her line about vegans shortly after this was absolute banging.
Not great reasoning though. People who stick with old technology also are biased. I'm sure if you polled people who still have rotary wall phones they would have a high satisfaction rate but that doesn't mean they are better than smartphones.
I am living in Sweden. We have air to air heatpumps here. Air does not need to be warmer than 40C. No piped heating system needed. Our home is old and poorly insulated but with two new heatpumps we make massive reduced heating bills. The ratio between bought electricity and provided heat is 1:6 in optimal conditions 1:4 during -20C. Pay back period for the two pumps were ca 2-3 years.
I live in Finland and can confirm this. Sabine is way too quick on disregarding the Nordic countries on the basis of insulation. 1) there are poorly insulated houses here too, that uses heat pumps. 2) she completely ignores the option with air-based heat pumps, which is very common here, as it mitigates those costs Sabine is talking about. 3) the cold climate does to a certain extent mitigate the benefits of good insulation. One should consider energy use needed for heating a house to 20 degrees during winter. The energy needed in north Sweden/Finland might be similar to Germany/UkK
One can definitely benefit from heat pumps without a big investment in insulation or radiators.
Do people there ever modify them and add a coil buried in the ground to increase the efficiency?
Poorly isulated in Sweden is good isulation for the "never seen -20C" rest of the world. The efficient temperature rage of sigle stage heat pums is very narrow and the lower the temperature outside the lower the heating capacity. At -20C a normal heatpump has the same efficiency as a electric or diesel furnace
@@nigelliam153 They aren't modified, ground source heat pumps are a separate technology. They cost about ten times as much and require a tailored heating system, heated floors, air ducting or something else. Air heat pump you just install the indoor unit near the ceiling in one room, drill a hole through the wall and install the outdoor unit somewhere nearby the hole. Ground source heat pumps are so expensive they are mostly practical in large houses with lot of heating requirement.
Oh yes, the famous "But sometimes". Technology connection has some things to say about that.
Heat pumps aren't great as the only source of heat in old, poorly insulated buildings. They work wonderfully for 350 days a year, but then a cold snap comes and they turn into expensive resistive heaters. However, it just so happens that these old buildings tend to already have some kind of heating already in place, that can easily be fired when the weather becomes a little to much for the heat pump, and also as a backup.
So you can have this super efficient heat source for most of the year, and you don't have to blow through most of what you saved in a cold snap. A well designed pump will need this kind of help over 5-10 days a year.
That being said, ALWAYS insulate the building first if it is at all possible. You will save on the heat pump probably half of what you invest into insulation, and it can slash your heating bill by 2/3 regardless of the method used.
Bingo. My air-to-air heat pump works wonderfully ~11.5 months out of 12 where I live in Norway. I also have backup electric heating (the bathroom floor heating being the most frequently used indulgence) and a modern, very effective wood-burning fireplace/stove. I especially appreciate the stove because it functions as a backup for any interruptions in the power supply. It's not designed to cook on but I could boil water on it at a pinch, so I'd be fine using just that in winter for a week, potentially a couple weeks, in the event of a grid issue.
350 days per year in Chicago, which is about the same distance south as Barcelona or Rome.
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
@@katrinabryce The latitude doesn't tell nearly the whole story. Europe gets help from the Gulf Stream. Chicago is inland far enough that it only gets help from Canada.
or insulate your house really well but stick with your existing heating system?
You seem to mix apples and oranges.
Heat pumps are excellent for older houses. But if you are going to replace a boiler, it's not that great or very expensive.
Here in Norway, we are always referring to air-air heat pumps unless something else is specified.
Ditch the radiators that rely on high input temperatures, and rather get a mini-split system, preferably with several indoor units.
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
You can usually add a basic air-to-air heat pump system as an addon to your home. It won't even cost all that much and, while it won't remove the need for central heating at least due to needing hot water, it will reduce your heating bill by quite a bit.
What about heatpump waterboilers
@@Hans-Yolo There are several kinds, it can collect heat from the ground, water, outside air, or even inside air.
The ground/water ones will be more efficient, but also more costly. I think the outside air is the most common one. It's a bit more expensive than the regular air-air, but not too expensive, and a good solution for hot water - especially if you use water for heating the house(in floor or radiators).
I think this is the one Sabrina focused on. It will (likely) not manage alone in the winter, and also needs backup heat from another source.
Lastly there is the indoor air water boilers that I do not know much about except that they sit on top of the boiler and sucks heat from the room. Sounds like a great thing in a hot area where you still want hot water.
@@Hans-Yolo Assuming you mean water boiler with built in heat pump - Those seem like a solid choice if you live in a hot climate, since they take the heat from the room they are in and act like a secondary AC.
In a cooler area, they might still make sense, it the room they are pulling the heat from are heated by a heat-pump. Otherwise you'd have to basically use the same amount of electricity as a resistance boiler but in a more roundabout way if you want the room to keep its temperature.
Shout out to all those scientifically litterate people that are able to understand (and actually take the time to read) a proper study and then present the findings honestly. We need more people in the world like you Sabine. Keep it up =)
I designed and built a two room recording studio in the UK 25 years ago. It was designed to reduce sound transfer, but the thermal performance was astonishing. I ran a couple of hundred watts of background heating on a thermostat, and the heat from a computer could bring it up to warm in 5 minutes.
I think other comments are touching on this: our faces feel the average temperature of surrounding surfaces. If there are cold window surfaces, it may be more comfortable to have a hot area adjacent to them to bring the average temperature up. There's an obvious issue with heat pumps not being able to generate sufficiently hot areas. Hence with single-glazed windows and a heat pump which is putting out enough energy to achieve the required air temperature, people may still feel uncomfortable.
Finally, I had previously designed and installed a gas-fired heating system for a 1938 house which was still just using coal fires. That included creating a full thermal model of the house, not using "rules of thumb". There was a problem with a step rise in boiler costs with capacity, but an extra layer of insulation in the loft reduced heat loss enough to enable me to avoid that step in capital cost. When insulation is displacing not just fuel cost but capital cost, its payback becomes much more rapid. My suspicion is that commercial installers would not have modelled the house but would have used rules of thumb, resulting in a system at its heating limits. Converting that to a heat pump would then have been a failure. That may be what is behind much of the dissatisfaction.
I would have liked to design and build a house based on the studio construction, that would have been cheap and easy to heat.
You're exactly right: talk to a plumber and more often than not they think you're lucky to get a CoP of >2.5 and have likely no idea what a SCoP is. They think you can just swap out a 30kW combi boiler for a 15kW heat pump and call it a day. That's not how it works. As you said: they need to do a full thermal survey to spec and design the system to work efficiently for that specific house. And often the changes that help the heat pump help the boiler, so invest in thermal insulation before the heat pump.
@@SloverOfTeuth you are so stuck on your radiators.
Get a air-to-air heat pump and it can replicate the feeling when you get out of the plane in Mallorca.
@@Leo99929 very common and just to add the amount of houses that have been converted from solid fuel back boilers or gas boilers or fired with balanced flues then to modern power flue combi boilers and have never had the ventilation adjusted to suit is astounding.
@@kimmono You're right, however air to air can't do your domestic hot water too, so you'd need a separate system for that or keep a non heat pump water heater.
@@stephenfanthorpe2708 My house had multiple air bricks in every room because it's a requirement for carbon monoxide levels produced by the open fire back boiler it no longer has. Literally see day light through a hole in the wall. you can feel the cold gushing through it in winter.
Our land lord installed a heat pump. We discovered cold air coming in around the windows and base boards. Once this was fixed our heating/cooling costs are about half of what they were when we were using an oil furnace.
"We discovered cold air coming in around the windows and base boards."
@@johansvideor It's never a miss. It's a hit that's 3 times the size of the target. IOW Forget doing a heat loss, just install 2 sizes bigger than the last guy so you don't get a callback.
My house is 100 years old this year. When it was built in 1924 drywall had not yet been invented. Instead for the interior walls the builders nailed narrow strips of wood (called "lathe") between the vertical supports and then plastered over the lathe. The space between the exterior and interior walls was left open. This left a huge gap for heat to escape, but in 1924 this was probably not a problem - coal was cheap and plentiful, and when the house got cold in winter you simply added more coal to the boiler. The coal furnace was eventually replaced by a gas boiler before I moved in. One of the first things I did after I bought the house was to insulate the walls. It was expensive, but it was worth every penny. What was a drafty old house in winter is now comfortable. For old buildings, I think it makes better sense to insulate them first to the extent that it's possible before changing the heating system.
All this time, I've been wholly unaware that Europeans were basically grafting heat pumps into radiator heated houses.
In the US, heat pumps are almoat invariably used in a forced air system, and are used to provide cooling in the summer as well as heat in the winter.
Because forced air systems are extremely rare in residential housing in Europe. Those are used almost exclusively in commercial/industrial buildings.
@@TheAngelsHaveThePhoneBox If only there was a type of heat pump that didn't use existing dispersal systems like radiators or forced heat. We could call them...maybe...minisplits. Yeah, I like the sound of that.
I'm working in heat pumps, a propane heatpump at 65°C (which should be enough for most old buildings) would be about 20% more expensive compared to gas heating at German pricing. However, in Germany, Gas is heavily subsidized, without subsidies, the heat pump would be an obvious choice for every last building. Regarding energy efficiency, assuming electricity comes from gas in a power plant, you can expect 50% of efficiency (not considering waste heat usage). According to the physics, at average temperatures in Germany a modern propane heatpump would have an average COP of 3ish which means that you are still producing a third less carbon emissions than gas heating. If you factor in waste heat usage and and renewable energy, the ecological benefit only improves.
This👆
Isn't it that electricity is massivly overtaxed to make up losses from dumb governmental desicions (i.e. sutting down nuclear power plants, having wind farms that need to be payed for while they aren't even connected to the grid, having a tax system that makes energy storage not viable etc) ?
Brown outs in unstable countries leaves fridges freezers and heat pumps as expensive jokes.
@@pholdway5801 that's obviously a different problem and will hopefully be addressed through decentralized electricity generation and stronger grids, however the countries that require the largest amounts of heating have stable power grids
@@pholdway5801 your gasboiler won't work without electricity either.
We installed a heatpump in our 1932 house, the building already has radiators (water) so a Air/Water heatpump was used.
It makes all of our heat and hot water.
We run the hot water at 60 degrees.
Power consumption with electric heater dropped from 45000 kWh per year, down with heatpump to 11500 kWh. Then to be blunt during the winter we have increased the indoor temperature from 19 degrees to 23 degrees, simply as we can afford the comfort.
We are definitely happy with it.
In particular it's fun during the summer with solar panels (18) we have basically no heating cost for months on end.
Granted there is an initial investment, the cost of electricity offsets it quickly when power in the socket at home average 30 cents for 2023.
Total installation was 10 000 Euros or so, meaning the financial recovery was ONE YEAR.
Very happy heatpump owner, encouraging more people to invest in their home and their comfort.
In the odd case the temperature drops under -15 degrees C it' switches to electric but so far during three years it happened only a few days a year usually in decent or February.
We live in Malmö, Sweden and the house has not been insulated to modern standards. Meaning we have more to save.
Malmö have like the mildest winters in northen europe
"We live in Malmo, Sweden". What a surprise. You will have a totally different level of insulation in your home to myself, for example, who lives in the UK. Whether a heat pump heats your home effectively enough is down to three things: insulation, insulation and insulation. In the UK homes were not built with insulation in mind. The UK is built on coal which we relied on both to run the central heating until North sea Gas came on line in the 1980's, now run out of course, and to burn in the grate during our occasional cold snaps.
Most houses built before 2000 will have nothing more than bare slates covering the roof with maybe a thin layer of roofing felt under that assuming it hasn't already rotted away. Very few houses have modern high insulation rating windows and front doors, they have cheap ones with virtually no insulation value at all, they do little more than stop the wind coming in. Otherwise they are typically to all intents and purposes whacking great holes in the walls.
To properly insulate the average small terraced house in the UK would cost at least £20-25k to completely replace the front and back doors, the windows and the roof with top of the range high insulation replacements. That's your upfront cost before you even consider paying for a heat pump. Furthermore our roof rafters here are almost always only 75mm in height which means the max thickness of PIR board you can put in the roof is 50mm. I'll bet in Sweden you've got much taller rafters than that.
Thanks for sharing, and glad you've had such a great experience with a heat pump and solar panels. Can you clarify: is 11500 kWh the energy now that you've increased the temperature to 23 C, or before when it was still 19 C?
Pretty much a no brainer over electric resistance heating.
@@Gregorovitch144 It's down to THREE things: DESIGN, (proper sizing), installation and insulation. But seriously, insulation is a major deal.
I lived in a house with a heat pump in Seattle for about 5 years and it was awesome. It heated, it cooled, and it was efficient as hell, as long as you left the thermostat alone. Turn the heat up too much too fast and the aux heater would come on and immediately wipe out all your efficiency gains, but if it was just maintaining a constant temp it was great!
Sure, depending upon the climate of the place you live, though. You don't want an air heat pump in a cold climate. We had one in our house when we bought it, but it was terrible in central Pennsylvania winters. Cost too much. After a couple years we got a high-efficiency condensing gas furnace with AC, and it's still inexpensive and works great. (It helps we have cheap natural gas in our state, since we produce so much of it.)
Sounds like it might have needed a little adjustment, to bring the temperature up more slowly using the pump rather than going for the aux heater without needing to.
Yeah, they work great in a place that goes from 55 degrees to 65 degrees over the course of the year. Absolutely worthless in places that actually get cold and here in the deep South they have to be oversized to keep up with the summer heat. That makes them less efficient the rest of the year.
@@Alboalt Air heat pumps are popular in the Nordics including Norway, where it gets reasonably cold. Mine is rated to -35 C. I haven't had the chance to test it in colder weather than -20 C yet, but it had no trouble whatsoever at that temp. I guess it would struggle in Siberia or Canada.
@@tvuser9529 What kind of furnace? Forced air or radiators? US heat pumps are associated with forced air systems and double as air conditioners.
“Boilers” implies hot water home heating, an efficient system itself. Heat pumps in Canada usually replace gas-fired circulating air systems. One less medium makes for excellent performance except in extreme temperatures (>-20c). Heating a tin shed in any winter is pointless.
you can't beat hydronic underfloor heating for comfort and efficiency, there isn't one less medium, its the same number of mediums, what matter is how warm you and the objects in your house are, not how warm the air is.
@@edc1569 It’s how warm I am and touch air.
Over 20 years ago i visited friends homes in Montana and Sierra Nevada CA which were built with very good insulation. Note these are Norway like climates .. cold to colder. Both home owners said the extra insulation was not expensive during the build. Both had total yearly heating costs of less than $100. At that time neither had heat pumps, while both were heated by "stoves" burning only a few cord of wood.
American here. Every house I've lived in had forced air, so I forgot about radiators. I had a radiator only at university for 1 or 2 years, and I don't remember having air conditioning those years. Americans love air conditioning, so there's a lot of forced air here in houses and apartments/flats.
My house has a heat pump for heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. I love it.
When my previous electric water heater went bad, I replaced it with a heat pump version. I love it.
Like anything else, they just need to be sized properly for your usage pattern.
I watched this whole video and have to say it's basically for a European target audience.
I also got the impression the video was mostly aimed at a European audience. Where I live, the vast majority of housing stock is less than 50 years old, meaning a pressing need for energy conservation had already reared its ugly head before it was built. The change in temperature over the year is also pretty extreme compared to most places in Europe, and air conditioning is universal because summers would be unbearable without it. As a result, most houses are fairly well insulated.
Aussie here, and same thing. Reverse cycle air conditioner (ie heat pump) for heating the house in winter and straight up heat pump for hot water. Air doesn't need to get anywhere near 50 degrees so helps efficiency, and newish pump for hot water hits 60 degrees easily while retaining 400%+ efficiency. Add in solar and timing the heat pump to draw from solar makes it much cheaper than gas.
As a European I concur with your statement - radiators are a big thing here whereas heat pumps work best (i.e. are most efficient) with forced air.
@@bobbun9630 I'd say mostly targeting Central Europeans where insulation of buildings are sub-par to Nordic standards. Heat pumps work well even in -20C IF you choose a brand that knows how-to. Most brands have no idea and as such not sold in the Nordics at all.
Really depends where you live in US. I grew up in CA and my experience is with natural gas forced air heating. When I moved to northeast oil radiator heating seems more common. But despite this I ended up with gas forced air with gas water heater. Both are relatively high efficiency. I like gas. I've lived in apartment with heat pump and really didn't like it. To be fair that was back in the early 90s. As for water heaters. Seems to me when I looked at replacing my failing water heater, heat pump ones where more expensive. By HOA bylaws, we are supposed to replace every 10 years. At time, I replaced it, didn't make economic sense to replace with heatpump. Besides in a power outage, only need small battery to have heated water. Having had a number of multiple power outages that were for days, few close to a week, it is nice to have a easy back up.
Heat pumps are the icing on the cake. Just insulate your house! (I worked as an insulator for a time, and it is amazing how leaky most houses are! Some have massive holes where you can feel a large draft blowing through.)
Some insulation code interpretations are wasteful. In my area (typically cold winters, hot summers), I was required to hang ducting above the ceiling insulation, in the uninsulated area, so the (somewhat insulated) ducting is heating and cooling the area with exterior airflow.
@@russbell6418 This is important to avoid humidity/condensation in your ceiling. Otherwise, in winter your ceiling gets warm, and you'll get humidity under your cold roof. Good exterior airflow is essential under your roof, but it's not so much about insulation.
Or build with different materials that don't need insulation; stop using concrete in particular.
On the other hand, those "leaks" provide fresh air to breathe.
@@russbell6418: Is your area in New Mexico?
Insulation also reduces emissions from traditional heat sources.
Good point. Though I believe most heat loss comes, not through the side walls, but through the roof. This argues for insulation of the ceilings. In my opinion, insulation in and around rafters is not very effective.
Disclaimer. I am currently working in the energy sector and in the past I did work with installing and designing HVAC systems.
There is quite a lot of missing information in this video.
Modern fossil heating furnaces (condensation furnaces) also have lower temperatures. This is because higher temperatures have a lot of energy loss.
Often the issue is that whoever planned the old heating system didn't properly calculate the size of the heating elements, even to the point of mismatching the size between the rooms.
Also, heat pumps are often significantly more expensive than classical systems. As a result, a budget-conscious user will most likely go with a refit with a classical system rather than a more expensive heat pump refit. On the other hand, when the user is already updating the entire heating system, there is a higher chance to install a heat pump since the difference in cost between installing a heat pump rather than a classical system is a lot lower proportionally to the entire cost. Here I am questioning the causality for the correlation that the data in the video showed.
About 5 years ago, I was making a calculator for determining the time to recoup the investment when going from an old system to a new one that is more efficient.
For heat pumps, a typical value would be about 10 years to recoup an upgrade from oil. Natural gas would take even longer.
Still there is another issue that is not mentioned here that is a lot more common with old houses. In old city centers the connected electrical power is often not high enough for heating the house.
A heat pump is still always a better option than installing electrical heaters.
TLDR:
Temperature differential and too small radiators are also a problem for new more efficient gas, oil and bio-mas furnaces.
The video is not talking about the real problems with heat pumps and is pointing out things that are not really issues with heat pumps themselves.
Also the video is conflating causation with correlation.
I agree. Note, that I am from the USA. Most of houses built here after WW2 have forced air heating instead of hot water radiant heat. Most houses built here after the 1980's have air conditioning. (For some areas of the country air conditioning didn't become normal in new houses until the 2010's.) Area that where air conditioning is more common also adopted heat pumps earlier. So how we install heat pump here is slightly different.
She seems to be talking about replacing a high temperature boiler / non condensing boiler with a heat pump. But she doesn't clearly state this. In the USA this almost never considered as an option. For houses with hot water heating the most commonly selected option is to install ductless heat pump system.
Doing the boiler swap she is talking about also eliminates one of the advantages of heat pump. That advantage is being able to have air conditioning/ mechanical cooling. Using existing radiator intended for heating for cooling is generally not an option. Catch pans and a condensate drainage system would need to be added.
Calling a heat pump a form of electric heat is such a dumb down explanation that it really isn't useful. A heat pump doesn't have to be electric. The air conditioning (heat pump in reverse) in our gasoline (petrol) cars isn't run by electric. The air conditioning compressor is run by the engine.
Outside air temperature is a much greater limiting factor for efficient heat pump use than house insulation. But since that didn't fact didn't fit the narrative and data she was presenting that fact was overlooked.
I rented a cottage built around 1825 3 years ago. The landlord managed to get the energy rating up to the minimum level by installing a new boiler and loft insulation. On arrival, during the first winter i noticed a half centimeter gap around most of the front door. Installed tape around the door and heating bills dropped by half. The UK is a joke when it comes to this stuff
Because the houses are old.
@@Robert-cu9bm and the regulations aren't fit for purpose
The resistance you see in the UK is from slumlords who don't want to pay to update their drafty old buildings to 21st-century standards.
@@Robert-cu9bm because the country is a joke. Privatization is ruining you guys.
@@alexdunlopuk
More regulation means higher cost to build.
We want less, this is why young people can't afford housing.
I lived in an apartment that was heated with a heat pump. I live in Massachusetts and it can get pretty cold in the winter. The apartment only got to about 50 F in January and February. I moved out after telling the landlord that the place is not livable.
radidator heating or forced air?
Canadian here. Our house was built in 1950 with a oil furnace (very hot) air ducts. We changed to gas 20 years ago (hot) putting in heat pump (warm) would mean larger duct work. Heat pumps want the air to flow all the time with less static pressure. So would need larger plenum ducting.
I live in Norway. Yes, winters are cold here. My 12 year old heathpump is my main heathsource. I love it.
We have forced-air heating and cooling in our upgraded sixty-year-old home. The heat pump works superbly at both heating and cooling. Outside temperatures range from -25 to +40 Celsius. In extreme cold a high-efficiency gas furnace kicks in. 85% of electricity in this province is hydroelectric. The other 15% is purchased from our neighbouring province. Only about 20% of our gas bill is for the methane itself. The rest is to pay for infrastructure, storage, transmission and operation costs. And there's a small carbon tax too.
The carbon tax in BC is almost as much as the methane itself. But yes a heat pump works great in Metro Vancouver or anywhere on the south coast and most of the Island. Up north not so much.
It works amazing but you have back up gas?
I'm so sorry but that means it's doesn't work amazing.
Here in the UK they want to dismantle the gas network so that isn't an option.
@@Ryan-lk4pu Yeah they've banned gas in new builds here already. I'm sure they'll try and yoink it eventually. Honestly the coldest it's ever been here is about -15C and even my single speed contractor grade heat pump kept the temp up at that. I doubt I'll keep the gas furnace whenever I need to replace the system, I'll just put a coil in the air handler.
@@Ryan-lk4pu When was the last time in the UK it got to -25? Even so, things were colder then.
@@antonniedersteiner4377 HP's would be sized accordingly, so if it got down to say -7/8 I doubt it would be sufficient, similar to our Canadian friend here.
Plus, I absolutely do not believe the COP ratings the government / manufacturers are stating. This is the next big scandal in waiting "were you mis-sold a heat pump? Call us and claim now..."
One issue in UK is many installers are doing a bad job on system design this causes very poor efficiency and therefore many are not getting the cost saving.
Do people not use Wall Mounted Split Air Con? They're literally just two boxes for inside and outside with some flexible tubes. Very easy to install and no calculations required.
@@davidliddelow5704The vast majority of homes in the UK and France use water and radiator systems with a gas boiler. In recent years quite a lot of underfloor heating systems have been installed. We extended our 1950s house and now all living areas have underfloor heating except bedrooms which still have radiators. We are now contemplating installing a heat pump because they work best with underfloor heating. Primary reason is to reduce CO2 emissions for hopefully similar annual energy cost. The UK government's grant scheme will probably mean the installation cost would be at most £2000.
Brand-new house in the Scottish Highlands here. Its insulated to a higher level than Building Regs and we spent a mind-boggling £35,000 on the plumbing, most of which was the ground-source heat pump with three 150m boreholes. We have a Vaillant heat pump, which is frighteningly complex and delicate. The installer did a competent job but is not interested in doing maintenance so the bedding-in process was stressful as they were reluctant to come all the way out here to tweak the system. Now after 4 years it's working reliably and we get a yield of 3.5 to 1. Since it only produces what they call "low grade heat" i.e. large volumes of warm water, it would not be suitable for an old stone house or a 60s bungalow. I can see the benefit of ground source but I can't understand how air source is supposed to work when the outside temperature hits minus 15c. A neighbour with an identical heat pump suffered a month without heating when a major component broke and it took Vaillant that long to replace their pump so I am absolutely not confident in this over-complex, over-expensive system and would have preferred a simple condensing boiler with an LPG tank.
If a house requires more heat, use a bigger heat pump. This is not rocket science.
Plus, this "over complex system" is exactly the same technology as an air conditioner, except with a reversing valve. So if you think it's complex, an air conditioner should be equally complex. And an air conditioner plus a furnace should add together to be more complex than a single air-conditioner-like device that does both.
Just because your neighbor had problems does not mean that everyone will, or that people don't have problems with their furnaces (except they don't announce it to the world because furnaces are existing technology so there would be no reason to announce how bad they are).
As somebody mentioned in the last videos ... "statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics"
So do people who tell the truth.
@@AlanPeery Exactly. Bringing statistics and logic to the table doesn’t mean you are necessarily right.
@@SimonWoodburyForget That’s still not the statistic lying, it’s the person reading too much into it lying to himself and others.
You might want to read the excellent book “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff. In it he gives an excellent primer on how to recognize when statistics are being used deceptively.
@@jpe1 Thanks a lot for the suggestion !
A very nice popular style book that touches on this as well is Steven E. Landsburg‘s „Can you outsmart an economist ?“
I live in a house built in 1906. I have had a hybrid system for 4 years now. I can confirm that you need to insulate your house to the max to reach a comfortable level. That said, insulation is a good thing in any circumstance with any heating system. The most sustainable form of energy is the one you don't need. Yes it's going to cost but cost-benefits aren't or shouldn't be solely calculated on the household level. That's why we have subsidies I guess.
My son bought a house about this age (1904 I think), that was just improved a little bit by the seller. They had installed new windows and installed a heat pump with a geothermal probe as heat source. It is working just fine. no need for a hybrid system and no need to switch from radiators to floor heating. On top of that, the radiators are still the very old small ones. With an oil stove, such a size and type of building would typically consume 20+ MWh equivalent primary energy (oil). With the heat pump it uses less than a 3rd of that.
@@beatreutelerYou say that as if a geothermal heat probe will produce sufficient energy for the majority.
In which country and region is the installation?
@@beatreuteler Both of you leave out the key differentiator: Location.
@@andersjjensen In my opinion, it is one of the most fundamental misconceptions that people are thinking location being a key differentiator for the use of heat pumps. Heat pumps are working very well from places close to the Ecuator until as far north as people tend to live, probably with some exceptions which could be some polar research stations. etc. Also I would agree that the more higher up in the mountains you live the more important would be the advantage if you can use a GTH-probe as heat source instead of air.
However if you refer to the specifics of geothermal heat probes then I would agree to a certain extent, because where my house stands, which is just a mile away from my son, I cannot drill for a GTH probe. Reason is a grond water protection zone defined by the government.
However that is not holding me up to have a heat pump installed next month, but it will be a type using air from the environment as heat source.
@@incandescentwithrage For the effectivity of GTH-probes, the country and region is not that important. It is much more important if your house stands in a place where drilling for a GTH probe can realistically be made. In our country (Switzerland) there are maps publicly available where the government shows where GTH-probes are allowable and where not. Fundamentally it deals with ground water protection zones.
Of course there are also other limitations, for example the density of probes that can be drilled in quarters predominantly urban by big multi-flat high rise buildings, it may become difficult. Same is with very old city centers where the density of houses is just a little bit prohibitive for such drilling. pretty much everywhere else, the amount of investment for the owner is likely the only limit I can think of.
Technically, if the possibility to drill is positive, it is in fact so that GTH-probes can provide enough heat basically for everyone as far as we are talking residential buildings. It is just a matter on how deep you drill or if you need more than 1 probe. Industrial is possibly different.
Insulation problem being blamed on heat pumps.
Or improvements due to better insulation being falsely attributed to heat pumps. Different heating methods should be compared on the same conditions...
Western Norway here. Installed a split A/A heat pump some 20 years ago in our traditional, 200 year old wooden town house. We saw a major savings on the electricity bill from day one. A decent heat pump will cost from around 1500 euro installed. Our medium sized heat pump keeps is the main heat source in this 85 square meter three storey house. Add the wood burning stove in the living room and small electrical ovens in all rooms to be used when needed the few days or weeks the temperature do drop below zero. Most of the time, they are not used. (And yes, I have installed around 20 double glazed windows and insulated the most wind exposed walls as well. Also important. By doing it myself, I save a LOT of money) .
4:49 It is also worth mentioning that houses in Sweden and Norway widely use electricity for heating already due to a history of cheap hydro or nuclear power.
Yes, a typical house has three heat sources: Electric radiators in all rooms, a heat pump and one or more old wood stoves.
in the 1970's Diablo Canyon nuclear facility promised inexpensive electricity forever, so California contractors installed resistance heating in the ceilings of the apartment I lived in. But by the early 80's PG&E decided they couldn't just provide inexpensive electricity forever and as a result my apartment had no heat in winter because only wealthy people could heat their homes with resistance heat. Thus began the idiocy of politics and energy in my state, which continues today with bans on natural gas, hybrid diesel trucks (because our governor insisted on only electric trucks). Total Clown World.
@@r2dad282 I don't think nuclear power was cheap at anytime anywhere in the world. Usually it is state-subsidised.
I had an epiphany when you described how to rig the data by removing specific samples to be considered.
And including others. It turns out that a huge percentage of religious people are happy with their religion.
Good. (It's widely done.)
How do you think they managed to get 97% of climate scientists to agree...they simply removed all those who didnt...simple
Statistics should be be a core course in secondary school. Once you know it, it immunizes you to much bollocks. As the old saying goes … “there are three kinds of lies in the world … white lies, damned lies … and statistics 😂”
@@williamstephenjackson6420Do you happen to know what are the chances of three structures separated by several feet between them falling down after only two of them being directly hit?
In Switzerland, you can get subsidies for a heat pump only if the final installation is efficient enough. This means your house must be sufficiently insulated, located in an area not too cold for your insulation (altitude), and so on. This must be verified by a specialist. So, heat pumps tend to be installed in new houses, houses that have enough insulation, or after required work to ensure that the insulation is good enough. Also, you must limit the power of the additional heater (heat pumps include a classical electric heater for low temperatures) and cannot use the heat pump to cool your house.
The main issue is dishonest companies that pretend they have inspected your house and will handle the subsidies but do nothing. As a result, you lose the subsidy, and your installation performs poorly, using much more energy than planned. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to combat these companies.
Interesting that the heat pumps are disqualified for subsidies if used for cooling too. I don't understand that limitation. Do you know the reason?
@@chasg5648answer
Stupidity
Heat pumps are subsided because that can save lots of energy heating houses.
If they are used for cooling then they will use energy in summer and the energy savings will be massively reduced.. It's not the reason for not allowing cooling, but air source heat pumps will only be used for space heating when everyone has their windows closed because it's cold outside. That way the noise from heat pump outside units is only heard by people outside. If used for cooling in summer then most people have windows open and neighbours might hear the fan units from inside homes.
@@chasg5648 Its the same in the UK. Subsidies only apply to heat only systems. Most room by room heat pumps are reverse cycles models, and don't comply. So, almost all heat pump installations are centralised heat only ones.
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
Some facts, from my own heat pump system: Yes, a Scottish gov. grant 100% paid for my installation. My owner-occupied 1980 house, is block + cavity (now insulated as part of the grant) plus 75 mm of internal stud filled with mineral wool insulation, part of the original build. Very thorough. While it doesn't get as cold here as some might think (by the sea, the Gulf Stream not far off-shore), it is often VERY windy, which strips heat faster than mere cold temps. However, while the old central heating in the house when I bought it - coal, and wood in the 'shoulder' seasons - cost upwards of £2,400 a year (!), and that was THEN, pre-covid/Ukraine/whatever, I now pay almost exactly half of that, i.e., about £105 a month throughout the year (including standing charge, which I would have had to pay anyway (£50 a month for all other domestic electricity use + £15 SC). The massive increases in electricity prices in the UK, almost doubling in the blink of an eye, and I was still paying half of my old power bills (plus I didn't have to shift 3 tonnes of coal every year and a similar amount of wood, and I no longer have to dispose of coal ashes, pretty toxic in themselves). I had to do nothing at all, except to admit 3 very young fitters speaking in grumbled undertones into my house, pull a couple of carpets back, and after 2 days, bingo! Huge emitters replaced my old sometimes incandescently hot old ones. And here's the 'physics' of all this - why heat emitters to 60-70 C if you want only 20-23 C air temperatures in your house? Why not use winter max 45 C emitter flow temps, 35-38 in spring and autumn, approx. through emitters (they were never radiators, which is part of the huge misunderstanding in many people's minds, and definitely in the minds of those moronic 'Heat pumps don't work' misinformation-spreaders. Emitters use convection to move warmed air around a room.) sized to HEAT THE AIR to a comfortable temperature, not just a too-small emitter - NOT radiator - heating itself and not much else. Sizing the pump unit is pretty critical, its kW rating m8st be sized to the property and heat loss calculations. Mind you, a brand now gas boiler should be thus sized. Most older gas systems use less than half their potential capacity, but gas has to burn at a certain minimum temperature, so even a proper modulating system is much harder to get to work efficiently. My heat pump is a bit over-sized - 11 kW where 8 would have worked better, and use less power, but hell, the whole system was free to me! - but I can address that when the current unit expires. By that time, heat pump units will be probably much cheaper, and the rest of the system shouldn't need anything doing to it. Simply replace. If that's even as much as £3.5 k , that'll only be between £175-350 a year, so I'm still quids-in. And yes, insulation is so important, obviously! In the UK gas has been, historically, not so expensive, so people crank up their hopelessly inefficient gas system, and now moan like mad when unit rates escalate. Talk about toxic mortgages! When will people start factoring in circumstances beyond their control?! Or even begin to try to understand heat pumps for what they are - a relatively cheap way to heat outside air from, say, 5 C to 40 C, and distribute this around the house/flat? My house is the same temperature year-round. (see how refrigerators work, then reverse it. Simple) Apols for the ramble - there is so much ignorance out there it appals me, and this subject is nowhere near rocket science or brain surgery! 97% of people won't read this right through, and none of the sceptics I am sure. Och well (-:)~
To me heat pumps have been a normal smart thing for decades BUT I realise that after watching this video most people are misunderstanding why I'm saying what I am. I've bought and completely refurbished properties in the US and Europe and so in my case you're coming up with a whole new system in a home stripped of its floors and walls. So all my properties were old but this wasn't trying to just replace one heater with another, but rather starting from scratch. Mini-split a/c units can work well for Mediterranean climates and you don't need to install anything other than the unit. In the US, your heat pump works with your central air and so it's easier. The problem for most in the US is more so heating a 250m² home with 10 rooms and 2 people. Nothing about that is efficient.
"250m²...10rooms...2people." - So right, and it´s the same in Germany!
I would imagine "the US" means something very different in for example Arizona vs Alaska.
@@katrinabryce Indeed, I was thinking of a rowhouse remodel in Philadelphia. Very energy efficient but still cold winters. They're typical in Arizona (which itself is diverse enough with climate differences) since most homes have central air and so heat pumps work beautifully. Most folks who live in Alaska don't live in the cold inland areas, so they're comparable to Norway which has high heat pump use. I really don't know if they're common in Alaska.
The government in Sweden set the building standards to improve insulation and every new building has three glass windows. Those rules were implemented in the 1970s, so it takes a long term government stategy. The oil crisis in 1973 was the driving factor for this policy change. Sweden wanted to become independent of oil and gas. Today there is more reason than ever to get rid of any oil or gaz dependency. I live wa house that was built in 1880, and the isolation has been upgraded and my heat pump has worked perfectly for more than 20 years. All investments are well paid back now. The decrease in energy costs was 200EUR every month.
Ummmm, did you mean "tripple pane" (three layers of glass) windows where you wrote "three glass windows" (which reads as if they said everybody only gets to have three windows)?
@@DrewNorthup, dude really? Nothing about 'interesting information to share', 'wish our government did that years ago', 'i should also get tripple', 'did you know it's also quieter', only a pedantic comment. Everybody says triple glasing and that is fine.
@@DrewNorthupabsolutely everybody understood what he meant by three glass windows, except you
@@DrewNorthup Yes. Three layers of glass.
If your government forced you to install an electric heat pump, then tripled your utility rates, would that still be a good idea? I live in California where climate zealots make the rules and that is our future.
This is Sabine on her worst.
at 10:50 , you do NOT need to use a heat-pump to heat water for your radiators. Most heat-pumps in use in the Nordics are air-to-air. And they also function as air condition in the summer.
Then about insulation. Better insulation on your housing is good. NO matter if you have a heat-pump.
Then the rather ignorant comment that ALL houses in Norway, Sweden and Finland has good insulation... Yes, we do have a lot of well insulated houses after 1980 or so. )At least compared to what I know about UK and Spain). But we do have a lot of houses that are not insulated well. AND they have a very good use og heat -pumps.
The location/placement in the house of an air to air heat pump is important. You also have to make sure that the heat can be distributed. Leaving doors open between room. If that cannot be done, then air-to air heat pump is probably not for you.
Personal experience is that it works incredibly well wit the units in a wooden house built in -84 that has three floors and many rooms.
And, even if you do heat your water, you really do not want to have to heat it to 70 °C even with gas. First, it will mean that your condensing boiler will no longer condense (and quite a bit of the energy in the gas goes now directly our from the flue rather than heat up your home). Second, the 70 °C radiators will be way too hot for comfort, unless you like accidental burns. Which is also why the radiators should be sized for at most 55 °C even with gas (and that is for the coldest imaginable winter conditions, so for most of the winter the flow will be below 50 °C even with gas and an older but not ancient gas boiler with reasonable controls).
It is so frustraiting when its obvious she has no idea what she is talking about, but makes such a strong ignorant claim
@@L2M2K2 Or radiant floor heating, and drop the temperature even more.
@@upnorthandpersonal True. Underfloor heating will certainly help reduce the temperature even further, to well below 50 °C even with not-that-great insulation. It also encourages the correct use of near-constant lower power heating for better efficiency (even with gas, but especially with heat pumps).
She lost me at the ignorant vegan comment. Of course everyone can be happy on a vegan diet. I’m currently trying to figure out if I can replace my failing HVAC in a 100+ year old house that’s poorly insulated where it gets very hot and very cold… and I have little money but there are currently some decent tax credits. And she’s like a doctor in the 1950s that loves smoking telling me that it’s healthy to smoke every time she mentions vegans so I’m done with her channel when it comes to anything to do with the environment. Makes me wonder if she’s just as biased about other areas of science. It’s so frustrating for someone who just wants to do the right thing to listen to such an obvious fallacy and wonder what else she’s biased about.
People here in the Balkans have less money - majority of us use polystyrene insulation on our homes no matter what heating is installed - it's the only way to afford heating. Without insulation the bills you have to pay get too big for any solution, except burning wood maybe. You wouldn't even rent a place without insulation, because it's too expensive in the winter.
Installing a heat pump in my home cut my energy cost to 33% of what i was paying with electric baseboard, in floor water, and wood stove. House is warm in winter and cool in summer. No idea what Sabine recommends is better than heat pumps but in my experience they are by far the best option.
Perhaps the point should be that before pulling the boiler out, consider insulation: It will reduce emissions too, and is a prerequisite for later upgrade to a heat pump
HVAC Technician here. A good ground source heat pump will give 1:4 in return, an air source will give about 1:3 in warmer climate and 1:2 in colder. If your electric price is low heat pumps are cheap, but if its high, heat pumps become expensive. Nordic countries have low electric price, thats why heat pumps are common there. If the price increase, they will be thrown out.
A heat pump has a real life life of about 15 years, so you will need to replace it often.
Heat pumps are in essence just a way to make electric heating more affordable. But, if electric prices are high, heat pumps will be expensive.
Every 15 years is not often. Especially when in 15 years technology will advance a lot.
This is the most important part for me. I live in Onterrible with some of the highest prices of electricity in the world so my natural gas saves me a bunch.
Would not getting to net-zero suggest electricity generated with renewables should be the basis of civilization? End petro-chemical infrastructure?
@@TomTermini Your comment makes sense if, and only if, two things are true:
1. Climate change is an existential threat.
2. Cost is irrelevant.
In the real world neither of these statements is true.
1. Climate has naturally changed in the past, is changing now, and will change in the future. Anthropogenic CO2 causes only a minor positive offset to the natural change. High temperatures are NOT increasing; low temperatures are increasing, primarily at night, in the winter, at higher latitudes. Average temperatures are increasing solely due to the increase in low temperatures. In other words, CLIMATE IS BECOMING MILDER, NOT MORE EXTREME. Historical data on hurricanes, fires floods, droughts, etc. all bare this out: NO INCREASE IN EXTREME WEATHER. Global climate-related deaths have DECREASED 97% from 1925 to 202 while the population almost quadrupled, and fossil fuel use and human prosperity increased exponentially.
2. POVERTY KILLS. In the real world things have costs. When costs rise, poor people suffer, and more people die.
@@dzcav3 …your suppositions are not all-encompassing.
Consider that costs can be mitigated in other ways, besides through the singularly non-humanistic “balance sheet” approach. While the cost of renewables for electricity generation is a critical factor in the transition to a low-carbon economy and the fight against climate change, it is not the only one. The intermittency of renewable energy sources like solar and wind necessitates effective energy storage solutions, such as batteries, and smart grid technologies to ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply. This transition also requires significant upgrades to existing infrastructure, including transmission lines, distribution networks, and electric vehicle charging stations, all of which must handle increased loads and the integration of decentralized energy sources.
Improving energy efficiency across all sectors-residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation-is vital for reducing overall energy demand and emissions. This involves better building designs, energy-efficient appliances, and more efficient industrial processes. Effective policies and regulations are necessary to incentivize the adoption of renewable energy and penalize carbon-intensive activities, including subsidies for renewable energy projects, carbon pricing, and stricter emissions standards.
Continuous research and development are needed to improve existing renewable energy technologies and develop new ones, driving innovations that lead to more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable solutions for clean energy production and storage. The economic impacts of this transition, such as job creation in new industries and job losses in traditional fossil fuel sectors, must be considered. Ensuring social acceptance and equitable distribution of benefits and costs is critical for a just transition.
Addressing climate change is a global issue requiring international cooperation. Developing countries may need financial and technological support from developed nations to implement renewable energy solutions and mitigate their own emissions. The deployment of renewable energy infrastructure must be managed to minimize adverse environmental impacts, such as habitat disruption and land use conflicts, through sustainable siting and environmental assessments.
Public awareness and willingness to adopt sustainable practices also play a significant role in moderating climate change. Changes in consumption patterns, support for renewable energy projects, and participation in energy conservation efforts are all important. Additionally, resilience and adaptation strategies must be developed to cope with the impacts of climate change, such as building infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather events and developing systems for water and food security.
I’m going to ignore the obvious fallacy of “climate change isn’t real” b.s., as well as your complete ignorance of the life-changing (killing) nature of petroleum use. While the cost of renewables is key to making the transition economically feasible, addressing climate change comprehensively requires a multifaceted approach. This approach must incorporate energy storage, infrastructure development, energy efficiency, policy and regulation, technological innovation, economic and social considerations, international cooperation, environmental impact management, public awareness, and resilience strategies. Only through a holistic and integrated strategy can we effectively mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
I had my air to air heat pump installed in 2020... Love it and works perfectly fine.
My parents like it so much that after their first visit after installation, they decided to put the same on their house and are super happy with it.
My partner like it so much that he decided to get an air to air heat pump for both he's house and for he's mother house... Both are very happy with it, both in terms of comfort as of in terms of temperature achieved.
Quebecer here, heat pumps are common here in Quebec and theres no controversies. For very cold temp, theres low temp heat pump but a regular heat pump can be combine to a standard electric heat system when its very cold and its fine.
I live in the mid-west in the US, we’ve had dual systems for 20 years. I have a heat pump with a gas furnace backup. I live very comfortably in a 2,200 square foot house.
One thing that may be particular to the UK: with many older buildings which are poorly insulated, the heating system is turned off during most of the time - only kept on when people are inside and awake. This means that the heating system must have a high power capacity, to quickly bring the living space up to temperature. Heat pumps work best by being sized for average demand, so that they can run more or less continuously. They also have a much higher efficiency if they can deliver their heat to the living space at a lower temperature - which means either more radiator area, or blown heat exchange surfaces. In saying this, I'm a huge fan of heat pumps. I'm just aware that poorly thought out installations will give them a bad name.
Blown heat exchangers make heat pumps worse. When they kick on they feel like they are cooling the room. A 75F air blown around a room feels colder than 70F still air. The blowing of the air makes it feel colder just like running a fan. Radiant floor is the way to go, but is extremely expensive to retrofit and you don't have the benifts of AC in the summer which is often a big selling point.
@@crissd8283 Sensible blown heat exchangers allow for this. In cooling mode they just blast out the air. In heating mode they raise the air flow slowly, to avoid that chilling effect from the draught enhancing evaporative cooling. Our last home used Daikin reverse cycle air cons to both cool and heat the place, and the heating in winter was provided in a very comfortable manner.
Exactly. A HP system is to run constantly to balance the heat production to match the heat loss. This maintains a comfortable level.
If your radiators are able to keep your house warm enough running only part of the time, then they are running hotter than they have to. This is an indication that you can lower the temperature of your heating loop. This can still be done whilst you have an oil/gas fired boiler to empiricaly test if the house is able to be heated with a heatpump.
@@copperknight4788 Do you guys forget that the weather outside drastically changes how much energy the heating system must push out? A heating system should only run at nearly 100% duty cycle on the coldest day of the year.
If a house is poorly insulated, you're going to need a bigger heat pump or a bigger furnace to heat it. But somehow installing a bigger furnace is better than installing a bigger heat pump.
That 'somehow' is that heatpump heating power is capped by the rather small amounts of electricty that can be supplied by a single phase domestic supply and the economics assosiated with more powerful motors and compressors.
it's a lot cheaper
@@CmdrTobs 3phase AC is normal. Normally heat pumps and A/C have their own circuits. Same with kitchen appliances and washing machine/tumbler. Otherwise, you wouldn't get very far.
@@svr5423 Maybe normal where you are, 3 Phase isn't normal in my country. Domestic supplies are singluar, single phase 240VAC (Hot + Neutral). 100A MAX fused.
There are no extra phases supplied for appliances.
Statistician: "Give me a desired outcome, and I'll twist the numbers until we get there."
This is a significant problem with so many "studies" that are quoted these days.
Trust "The Science"! ;)
87% of studies use made-up numbers anyway.
I calculated it for myself. Depends on gas prices for my heating kWh will save nothing to som reasonable amount. Problem would be if the gas price does go up artificially. On the other side my electricity provider also did rise them. I get tax money back for a heat pump. My uncle spent over 20k on a heat pump + a big number on solar and a credit for that. I don't have so much money laying around and drive old cars. I have a credit for my house. One is enough. The last new gas heater war like 6000€ new and used with the old prices around 700€ for a complete year. Now I think I get a little over 1000€
@@Nordlicht05 [FUN FACT] In Australia: *"Starting from July this year, solar panel owners will face a penalty of 1.2¢ per kilowatt-hour for exporting electricity to the grid between 10 am and 3 pm."* 🤦♂
@@maxhugen hi. wow... Fun fact too... Here you can get cheap tax supportet electricity. I think it is around 0,25-0,28c. But!!! only at night(where heating is throttled 🙄) and only for the heat pump!!!! My neighbour said he didn't do it. His new special counter would cost him 1000€ extra and a higher fee per month. You would buy this only for the winter. Important only for heating!!!
Swede here: my grandfather installed heat pumps in his house, after his death my mother moved in, and then I did too(having come back from working abroad, and thus cancelling the lease on my appartment), but in winter we still had to burn wood for heating, the heat pumps were insufficient on their own. Without the wood furnace the temps went down to 14C.
TLDR; Heat pumps aren't supposed to duty cylcle constantly like old fashioned heating and AC systems do. If they are being installed and controlled to work that way, they will disappoint. Worse, it will take greatly oversizing the system... Bigger radiators, pipes, ect. which gets expensive fast.
There is a significant problem with improperly sized and installed heat pumps. There are a lot of old HVAC folks who just go by the rules of thumb for AC and incorrectly assume that is what's needed for a heat pump. That usually leads to oversized systems which are not only less efficient, but just don't heat well.
Yes, insulation needs to be addressed for a heat pump to work well. It doesn't need to be super insulated or whatever, but lots of places have shockingly bad insulation which can usually be improved a lot at pretty low cost.
Oh, and lots of people think heat pumps "don't work well" because they don't blow really hot air. Doesn't matter if the thing is maintaining the whole space at the setpoint... It doesn't "feel" like it is "working" 🤦
When a heat pump is working optimally, it is constantly running and blowing air which feels almost exactly the same temperature as the setpoint.
exactly. doesn't have to be "piping hot".
Another example, my last gaming PC (not the current one) had a 2KW PSU and two radiators for water cooling. air came out slowly at typically 40 to max 50 degrees C. But boy did the room get hot fast at load.
I think at least some of the problem with heat pumps is that for the best efficiency they need be used in a different way than traditional gas boilers. Traditionally the gas boiler installed in a property has been oversized for the heat loss of the property to enalbe faster heating of the home when the boiler fires. With a heat pump it is more efficient to install a unit that is closely matched (or more likely outputs slightly more Kwh) than the heat loss. This means it takes longer to heat the property from cold. It is therefore more efficient and pratctical to have the heat pump maintain a constant temperature rahter than letting the house warm up in the morning, cool during the day whilst at work and warm up again in the evening.
The long and short of it is that heat pumps should be used differently than gas boilers. This is a problem of education. Those who sell and install systems should educate the users on how to use their systems effectively. On top of this the systems should be configured correctly by the installer. This should mean that minimal changes would need to be made after installation.
Check out the heat geek youtube channel for more info on this.
All of the above was from memory and might not be 100% accurate.
ya but it always falls to the lowest common denominator. A builder in the US would be sued if there wasn't adequate rapid heating so overkill is the easiest solution. Most people do not want to be educated and if RUclips is any indicator a large portion CANNOT be educated including those making the policies.
I'm also wondering how the above-mentioned schedule discrepancy affects the efficiency gains the heat pump is supposed to deliver; assuming you want your house warm only when you're at home, a heat pump in this scenario needs to fight the leak over the inside-outside differential 24/7, while a classical heater may have to re-heat the house when you get home, but doesn't need to fight that hard the much lower leak over the much smaller temperature differential when you're not at home.
@@AttilaAsztalos The lower the flow temp of the heat pump the more efficient it's going to be, but the slower the home will warm. It's a balancing act. You can run the heat pump in a lower efficency higher temp mode to heat more quickly then once the desired temp is reached lower the flow temp to maintain.
So if the inside temp of the house is lower than a set threshold set the heat pump to high temp, if it's above the lower threshold but lower than the desired temp then set the heat pump to a more efficient temp.
I'm not an expert but I'm sure this is possible using controls that are on the market.
The same can be done to compensate for lower outside temps. A outside temerature compensation curve can be set to compensate for lower outside temps. Meaning the heat pump will run at lower efficiency when the temp is 0c outside vs when the temp is 10c outside.
I have no practical expirence with heat pumps outside the HVAC at work. A absolutely no expirence of an air to water heat pump like the once referred to in the video. However I do watch a lot of videos from Heat Geek and Urban Plumbers who discuss heat pumps a lot and are the source of most of my info/knowledge.
My house was built in the 1970s, by a very cheap developer. It had poor insulation, electric baseboard heaters, and a couple of window AC units for cooling. I improved the thermal time constant of the house by a factor of 3 simply by putting R-36 fiberglass insulation in the attic myself for a few hundred bucks in the 1990s.
I'm pretty sure that I could have kept the house warmer in the winter by simply burning $1 bills than turning on the baseboard heaters. I worked long hours with a long commute, so I didn't bother heating or cooling most of the house while I was gone - that was the only thing that kept the power bill reasonable.
In 2012 a retired relative moved in with me, and liveable temperatures were needed 24/7. I had a high-efficiency heat-pump installed, and triple-pane windows and sliding glass doors. I also installed more insulation myself in strategic areas around the house that I found were leaking air after the heat pump was installed.
The previous owners paid about $400/month for electricity back in the 70s and 80s. I've been averaging about $100/month. The system has paid already for itself (and the windows / doors and insulation), and I now have a house that I can live in comfortably all year round.
Each home is different, and some older homes were built at a time when insulation was an afterthought. However, given the potential savings, it behooves homeowners to check there own situation carefully. In many cases, just adding insulation can add hundreds of dollars of recurring savings with relatively minor cost / effort, especially if you're a DIYer. This will help you save $$$ whether you get a new heat pump or not.
I'm a little skeptical you have achieved ROI by now unless your electricity is considerably higher than the national average. Plus you are closing in on the end of life for that heat pump. You might get many more years but I'd start planning to replace that system now because it's going to be five figures easily.
@@shawnbottom4769 $300/month savings in electricity. This fall will be 12 years, which comes to $43,200 in savings. The system cost around $16,000 to put in, including all the vent work and new wiring.
The new windows and doors were no more than $20 grand. So yeah, it's paid for itself.
The only thing I've had to do to is so far replace the UV lamps in the air handler - about $150 every 2 to 3 years, and air filters - $30 every 6 months. (They are the big, 4" wide ones.)
The great thing about all the extra insulation I've added is that the pump doesn't have to work hard most of the time - it usually runs on "low" and you don't even hear it.
In fact, when the outside air is still, I've seen the pump operating down to 7F, on low, keeping my house warm. If there's a good wind though, it will have to kick on the resistive heaters, but I've only seen that a couple of times in the past 12 years.
In April and October, it typically doesn't run at all - the house stays warm enough by itself.
Parts of my roof are shaded by large trees, so in the summer, the AC usually doesn't have to start working hard (i.e. "high") until around 4pm.
As I mentioned this is a high-efficiency model - it was a few thousand $ more than what the average home owner puts in - but I'm an engineer and did some math first, so I was pretty confident it would be worth it.
Arguably, it's a bit oversized for my little house, but the fact that it almost never really has to work hard should extend its life.
My biggest fear is it being taken out by lightning. I've had several hits in my yard in the past 30 years, and it has taken out several trees and hundreds of dollars worth of electrical equipment. I have installed a whole-house surge supressor in my main breaker box, but I still need to put another one on the outside breaker for the compressor.
Stay cool!
Small two bedroom unit in southern Australia. Insulated to an older standard. We added an extra split system. The two systems barely cope. I'm getting double glazing installed. It's not so much the running cost. My wife hates the cold and this winter has been unusually chilly. It's no fun for her waiting for the system to start heating. Yes, double glazing costs a fortune and we'll never recover the cost. But the price of peace in the home? Invaluable.
I live in the Adelaide hills in South Australia where most people refer to [air-to-air air-conditioning] heat-pumps as [electrically powered] DUCTED REVERSE-CYCLE AIR-CONDITIONERS. I have a DAIKIN system but know MITSUBISHI and RINNAI to be good too. Regardless of what they're called in different parts of the world, I recommend them for their relatively modest up-front cost, even when retro-fitted, their relatively cheap running costs, although not so cheap that one can be cavalier about running them non-stop, and their amazing ability to heat and cool quickly from a standing start. The main downside that I've found with such a system is that, because the vents are in the ceilings, it takes noticeably longer on cold winter mornings to warm the one room in my house with a tiled floor than it takes to warm the rest of the house, which is carpeted. The other minor complaint I have about them is that the air can feel a bit too dry sometimes, but perhaps that's true of all heating systems. During our summers, which can sometimes be fearfully hot, the system is unbelievably good and efficient as an all-round cooler. Yes, of course, good insulation, particularly around doors and windows, is vital. In a state that occasionally scores 100% renewable power, albeit only briefly, and often hits 75%, what's not to like about electrically powered heat-pumps to heat and cool our homes?
In Australia you could basically heat your home with solar year round with resistive heating.. 😂 Nevermind with using a hear pump lol.
Ultimately heat pumps can work in any scenario in any house and it is not the house that is the problem it is the insulated R-value of the property is what the problem is and properties can be retrofitted with better insulation
German here. Here is an example of a satisfied heat pump owner living in a quite old house:
I installed a heat pump two years ago in my "Reihenhaus" (row house?) which was built in 1937, after my gas heater broke down. The windows of my house were already new (from 2016). Otherwise the house had the standard of the 70s, the last time bigger renovations took place. Radiators, pipe work etc. weren't changed or updated (btw: radiators would have been pretty cheap). The heat pump works fine so far (and saves even money each month, after one complete and one nearly complete year I pay roughly 70% of the former cost of gas for the additional electricity). Granted: a row house like mine has two "warm" walls because it shares those walls with the neighbouring house. I paid 13.000 € for the heat pump including everything after I got the state subsidies. The alternative would have been a new gas heater which would have cost me 9.000 €.
All in all I belong to the 80% who are ok with their new heat pump.
There are probably houses where heat pumps are very expensive. An old row house in Germany's very North (and in my city district alone are 1.760 others like that, according to the current Building Plan of my city) doesn't seem to be one of those.
FYI: It's called a terraced house. :)
I think the issue is Sabine is assuming that people will be using it as a drop in replacement for a gas boiler. A lot of the systems installed in the UK are split systems that double up as Aircon units - they don't integrate with old radiators, and are significantly more efficient at heating and cooling the space.
@@istvanvanherck1674in the UK yes, in a lot of the rest of the English speaking world Row House is correct (ref. I'm a Brit that has lived abroad most of my life)
@@DuxDigital In the US you would typically find it being called a townhouse ...
@@0087adi I think that depends on where you are in the US though. I've heard both used, with Townhouse usually meaning nicer more middle class ones, and Row houses being more frequently working class homes. In the UK we have a similar split between Townhouse (expensive) and Terraced house (cheap).
I'm a refrigeration tech in the US. One of the problems heat pumps have is their heating ability is highly dependent on the outside ambient temperature. The colder it is, the harder the system has to work to do the same amount of heating. That's one of the main reasons why here in the US, the parts of the country that have bitter winters rarely have heat pumps. The people pushing everyone to go to heatpumps truly don't understand the technology and the costs required to make it work in certain environments.
Here in europe we have the gulf stream keeping everything from getting actually cold. Europe doesn't go far below freezing. Especialy the UK.
I think geo thermal heat pumps are the future . Thanks for your input.
As a native Minnesotan, I've been out and about in weather just slightly warmer than -40 degrees. That's the one temperature where I don't have to specify Celsius or Fahrenheit, a fact that has been secured firmly in my mind by its association with the memory of that bitter cold. When heat pump manufacturers proudly proclaim that their systems can handle temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit, I tell them that's a good start, but they've still got a ways to go.
@edmunddoyle9299 geo thermal does help with the ambient problem that air source heatpumps have. The problem is that it is very expensive to install. Most people can't afford it, especially when you consider the other costs, like what Sabine mentioned in the video for retrofits.
You're right, any areas where it gets below 0°F heat pumps start to struggle and it gets worse the lower the temp gets. It's also why all heat pumps in my area are set up with back up or emergency heat. It might be electric heat or some form of gas/oil heat, but it is definitely required. Especially if the defrost during fails while in heating mode or if the reversing valve gets stuck. In either situation you lose heating and problems start to stack
It's more complicated even than the many commenters demonstrate. If you live where temperatures are sometimes below 0F in winter, a large heat pump is needed. But many houses (in my neighborhood) don't have an electrical panel that can accommodate that. So a new panel and new wiring (also permits) are needed, and redoing any walls that needed to be opened up, adding significantly to the cost. Even more than that, if power outages are common during those cold spells (they are here), you also then need a large backup generator; you can't just figure you'll bundle up for a while until power returns, because during that time, your regular water pipes (some of which are always against exterior walls) might freeze, which is a huge problem and cost. Thus, the total heat pump cost including the additional things needed for you to rely on it is a LOT more than just the unit itself.
Modern buildings trap the heat from the residents and electrical systems inside.
Even in Swiss winter, I barely need to have the heating on.
As an American, what you guys in Europe seem to be trying to do with your heat pumps is not the same as what North America is doing with their's.
It seems in Europe they're mostly trying to use them as a replacement for their current hot-water boiler and attempting to retain as much of that system as possible where-as in the US it's mostly either stand-alone systems with an outdoor compressor unit and one or more indoor cassettes that actually blow air through the radiators with a fan rather than rely on convection like the boiler systems. Or they are implemented into existing forced hot-air ducting systems with the coil being places inside the ducting.
Also in the Northern US they are typically paired with a backup heating system (Usually fossil fuel based) in case the cold outside air reduces the efficiency too low to keep up.
Yes, it depends on the type of the heatpump. Here in Europe when ordering a new house from a company, you often have an offer of air-water heatpumps, which means that it takes the air temperature to warm the water in the heating system, which usually is built into the floor. Air-air offerings are rare, at least not for serious houses for living the entire year.
If you are lucky with your location and have water (or underground water) nearby, you can set up a water-water heatpump - those are quite efficient because the deep water never reaches negative C temperatures.
My brother installed a ground-water heatpump when he built his house. That's quite a complex beast, long pipes under ground of his yard, but it's more efficient than air-water heatpumps.
Florida, here as far as I know every AC is heat pump capable, back up is electric heating element (system decides), most houses have no gas pipes pulled up.
@@unclejim1528 An A/C and a heat pump are functionally the same thing the only difference is a heat pump has a reversing valve to reverse the direction of heating/cooling. An A/C only works to cool a space and heat the outside.
@@camelCased We literally have kits you can buy online and install yourself that are Air to air. Even the lines are pre-filled with refrigerant so you just drill a couple holes to pass the lines through and they have quick-connects on either side to attach to the outside/inside units. They function as both an A/C and heater.
Most heat pump installations in the US are air to air, even in much colder climates than the UK or much of mainland Europe.
You are correct in that a ground/water source heatpump is much more efficient but, air to air is still a lot more efficient at most reasonable outside temperatures than any sort of electric resistive heating.
US homes are larger and there is more room for ductwork. So the systems are often forced air. They can be gas, oil, electric resistance, heat pump, or hybrid. People who have enough money to be spoiled and picky can heat however they want. Where i live, if you need low heating costs, a single heat ductless head pump is a good product.
I am currently in the process of a heat pump installation. I wanted this done right, as an Air Source Heat Pump system needs to be designed by a heating engineer and not just guessed at. I therefore employed a Heat Geek to get the job done (this was the third of 3 quotes I had and the only one with detailed heat loss calculations). I must admit that all the radiators are being upgraded (all 14 of them). There’s also some new pipework going in, but that’s generally in the extension that we’re getting done at the same time. The government grant covered £7.5k of the cost but that still left £16k to pay. This is an investment though, and the system is guaranteed to have a minimum SCOP of 3.8. If it doesn’t hit this Heat Geek will come back and fix the system.
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
So, in the UK's I have been surveying new house builds around where I live. We have a number of large house building firms which dominate the market as they control all the available land parcels with planning permission. The process of planning permission is very expensive so only firms with deep pockets can 'play' and they have a ten year pipeline of developments. The properties on offer range from 2 bed apartments to six bed mansions (£200k-£1M). They are all optimised for profit, so they use very old, established building techniques. The main features being breeze blocks shell, air gap red brick walls, wooden trussed pitched roofs with ceramic tile roofs. They have tiny gardens and very limited parking spaces. They are all built with gas central heating and radiators. They have very limiting electrical power due to the cost of new substations and the grid connections are very expensive. So the maximum EV charging they can support is 7KWh and they can never will be converted to heat pumps due to the massive cost of total reworking the heat distribution. We will have to wait for the next generation of heat pumps that can produce higher temperatures so existing radiators can stay and smaller/quieter outdoor units can be placed in the tiny gardens without annoying your neighbours. Everything that normal people see on their quotes for heat pumps is the massive cost of of conversion of due to the above situation. That is not going to change in the next 10 years.
ouch. that sounds like they are building houses from the last century.
Just moved in this year in a new apartment here in Switzerland. We have a central heat pump and I also have 2 A/C split units. Got separate circuits for electric BBQ, coffee machine, even 400V upstairs and in my basement compartment, in case I need more power. I can easily install a 22KW wallbox in my parking spot when I buy a BEV.
Half the new builds round our way have got fake chimneys on them! Might the problem be the clueless idiots that buy them? In the UK, it's yer period features that sell a house. Frankly I blame the mothers that brought up today's house buyers with the story of the three little pigs.
Hi Sabine, thanks once again for fact checking .. I am full Professor of Applied Thermodynamics and heat transfer
Let me comment that carrier fluid temperature (50 vs 70C in your video) means just more time during the day for your heating system to be on... it's the conservation of energy principle.. hence same inner temperature can be maintained with lower temperature heat pump fluid
My heatpump has reduced my kWh consumption with 40-50%. My house is from 1977
Has it ever dipped below 0 outside? If it does, you will freeze.
I live in an area where it gets below 0 regularly and my heat pump is fine. This talking point is a complete and total lie.
I can achieve the same percentage reduction or more from my "old school" HVAC system, simply by not using it as much and turning it off when I am not in my house. Of course, that's only part of the question, isn't it. The other part is how well does it work compared to an older technology HVAC.
@@kyleb3754 I don't see news about Norwegians freezing to death with their widespread heat pumps...? In fact they are much more capable of heating their homes much more effectively than in Britain
@@mepds9 And look at their electric bills! Typically 20 cents (US) per KWH while here in Texas USA I pay 9.5 cents. The numbers simply don't add up to foot the very high cost of changing over to a heat pump. Going into debt to do it is not a smart thing to do!
Electricity is 4 times the price of gas in the UK, whike most heat pumps are only 3 times as efficient. Modern gas boilers have a minimum efficiency of 92%. To break even on the cost of running a heat pump it needs to move at least 3.7 times the amount of heat as the electricity input just to match the boiler. Air to air systems are best for this, not using radiators, so the whole house needs a ducted warm air system as well as the heat pump, vastly increasing the cost if installation. In the UK in the coldest months we burn gas at power stations, to generate electriciry, to run heat pumps at home, but because of the inefficincies in the electricity generation, conversion to high voltage for distribution, losses in cables, conversion back to mains voltage, etc we don't save much oversll energy running heat pumps at that point. Resistive immersion are 100% efficient for heating hot water but again it's less efficient to burn the gas at a power station than at home. Once more renewable infrastructure is built to cope with the coldest parts of the winter (when there's often very little sun or wind) they won't do much to reduce CO2 rmissions.
The first few stanzas are more or less correct, but then ..
" In the UK in the coldest months we burn gas at power stations, to generate electricity, to run heat pumps at home, but because of the inefficiencies in the electricity generation, conversion to high voltage for distribution, losses in cables, conversion back to mains voltage, etc we don't save much overall energy running heat pumps"..
-- no, incorrect. Still worse, all these kinks that you allege in electricity distribution would have to be ironed out anyway, regardless of other issues, heat-pumps or whatever.
My understanding is that gas power station sourced electricity is ballpark 40% efficient right now, so in the coldest of cold snaps heat pumps do end up similar to gas stations in efficiency.
However, gas isn't always the only source of energy!
That all being said, the maths all checks out with a heat pump in isolation! It's all the same numbers I arrived at when researching heat pumps as well.
Where things change, and this is its own problem, is if you've already invested in home battery storage. If you're able to make use of off peak power, you're suddenly seeing a massive saving.
If you further have an EV with smart charging, you'll also have more off peak slots to charge your battery, and so on.
Right now this isn't altogether attainable for the majority of people, though. But I suspect EVs with vehicle to home/grid are the key to making it much more viable, especially with EVs becoming much more affordable (a used Mokka E can be found for about £13k, for example, but the battery can only power the car, so ... meh).
Informed engineer here...In several key aspects your information is out of date... and whole rest of your spiel is more misinformation than anything salient.
Modern R290 monoblock type heat pumps achieve higher CoP - nearer 5 and average 4.5. The fact that it is always running 24/7 at low level also helps out in efficiency than stop/start gas boiler. So they can run and cost less than you suggest. Certainly comparably and even favourably. Also - the 290 type can also as heat water to a higher temperature as well as gas can. So you don't need to to change your radiators or consider air-to-air anymore. Additionally if you move to a night tariff you will reduce costs further. (your daytime increases 10% but 6 hours at night you get for 70% less - overall a win)
> I'm not sure where on earth you get the gross misinformation idea that there is 'very little wind' in the UK in winter months! Do you live here or are you just a troll? If you live here you should well know that autumn/ winter is by far the windier season (or maybe try getting outside more in the winter months ....and then call me a liar).
Or just trust this;
www.dnv.com/article/windiness-uk-and-ireland-2022/
Info on R290 pumps;
ruclips.net/video/Z_VDejZ_d58/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/X6qIP8snPW8/видео.html
p.s. For almost 3 months of year my electricity is next to zero costs thanks to home solar and battery
@bbbf09 Out of interest, do you know if there's a good way to approach measuring CoP or otherwise working out a heat pumps efficiency?
We've recently got one, and I'd like to dive into stats and whatnot :D Our quoted sCoP as quoted by Octopus at a flow rate of 53C was 3.43 (a Daikin unit using R32), and it'd be fun to see what that correlates to across the year!
We also have solar/battery/EVs + smart chargers, so the £500 (post grant) cost for a heat pump was ultimately a no brainer for us seeing as our average electricity cost is ballpark 8-10p/kWh meaning even a terrible CoP (which I'm not expecting) would be a benefit for us.
P.S. Thanks for the links! TIL about R290 and whatnot!
@@TheComfiestChair How an installer/ supplier would measure and what equipment is on board within each system to do so I'm not exactly sure of - and specifics would likely greatly depend on system installed.
My physicists head tells me its relatively simple thing to do from scratch (though involved). You would first measure mass flow rate and temperature at output of heatpump (have to install a volumetric flow meter). That plus knowing the specific heat capacity of water (can look up precise values for given temperature) would then give you an accurate heat energy produced by the system over so many minutes/hours that you measured across (in metric SI that heat energy would measure as Joules - or better as MegaJoules). Call this measure J1. Over the same time period you would log electrical usage (with all other household systems closed down) . You would convert kWh recorded to Joules (1kWh = 3.6MJ) and get measure J2. If you divide J1 by J2 you get the CoP.
Of course thats at the air temperature for that particular time on that particular day. You would need whole bunch of measurments at different temperatures (as they vary a lot) to compile your own data set and get full picture.
We lived in an old poorly insulated house with gas.
It sucks, I was not happy with it. It got cold very fast when the heaters were off, it got warm around the heaters - we always had to change the heaters to be high/low/off depending on what we were doing or where we went. And the bill was enormous.
Replacing that with a heat pump would not have made us happier.
But what you are missing is, the problem is not the heater itself, the problem is the poorly insulated houses.
Look into a proper load compensated controls for your gas boiler, the technology is called OpenTherm, it will increase comfort and reduce your bills. To be fair a modern heat pump system is going to have much better controls which are going to increase comfort as long as it had the capacity to keep up.
She DID mention the insulation problem very clearly and how it increases the cost. How did you miss it?
7:53 what you overlooked is that the same group generally had larger homes, so would have been harder to heat effectively. If then sample was weighted towards larger homes as you showed, it's actually impressive that they reached 80% satisfaction. Modern insulation no doubt helped a bit.
i live in an old house, that has been renovated with good insulation and floor heating 20 years ago. the heat pump worked perfectly last winter. the whole discussion shouldn't be about heat pumps or old houses, but rather about renovating desolate buildings.
If your home is poorly insulated enough that a heat pump won't make sense I'd argue you need to fix the insulation regardless of whether you install a heat pump, because at some point burning gas to give the flies in your porch springtime temps is probably not a great thing for sustainability.
The problem is most houses in the US are forced air. To renovate with radian floor is a big deal and then you don't have AC which is a selling point of a heat pump. Forced air with heat pump works great for AC but not for heat. To get heat pumps to really work requires a lot more than just putting in a heat pump.
"renovating desolate buildings."? I'm not sure I understand that comment - could you elaborate?
How can it be environmental friendly to rip out everything and install new when there is still good life in the old system, plus on top of that you have to insulate and make sure the house is draught free. The whole thing is a scam and some one is getting very rich on it. Another example how many new wind turbines do you need to replace one traditional generator? As they are building thousands of of them.
How old was the house?
Here in Germany even after WW2, millions still live in building from the 19th century and older.
And did you calculate the GHG-footprint of you renovations?
The problem is that there are 2 distinct issues being discussed here (which is not identified): 1) heating the air directly in a home and 2) heating the water in a home. The former is not a concern for heat pumps vs a gas furnace, whereas the latter may need supplementation with electric heating (PTC) and/or better insulation surrounding the water tank (such as vacuum insulation). Water radiator based room heaters are much more common in Europe, but not common at all in the US, also it's exceptionally rare to come across a 1920's or earlier house in the US.
AND, I believe that adding an extra conversion step (Heating the water, to radiat heat to the air using pre-installed radiator units) is needlessly reducing the overall efficiency & mandating these larger radiators & higher temperatures.
Ultimately, like mentioned here, one needs the ambient air warm, not the water hot. It feels like having a thermal store should be an added bonus to increase efficiency while the unit isn't running, not the basic mode of operation.
Disclaimer: I'm only familiar with air-to-air dual cycle AC units, above freezing temps.
Whilst heat pumps that heat air are more efficent. There are plenty of heat pumps that heat water for radiators that are efficent and powerfull enough to not need resistive heating to keep a house warm.
A big part of the problem in the UK is a lack of qualified fitters. It is more complex to set up a heating system based around a heat pump, and the knowledge just isn't there at present.
Also you didn't mention the noise . *All* fans make more noise the older they get, and a lot of these units are quite noisy to begin with. This doesn't go well with small houses close together, like we have in the UK.
Yes! Someone else banging the same drum as I keep doing. I can't understand why most media doesn't mention this at all. Even the media that is sceptical. Fans in boxes are notoriously problematic for noise and old ones significantly so. Keep going please. Maybe eventually the message will get through.
If they standardis the fan form factors, replacing the fans should be an easy and inexpensive thing to do.
Codswallop
I thought the UK was importing millions of doctors and engineers from Africa and the Middle East? What happened?
Strong disagree. I had a mini-split style, multi head heat pump installed in my house and it is substantially quieter than my old electric baseboard heaters - which clicked and tinged as it heated up and cooled down due to thermal expansion - and the relatively new two hose stand up air conditioner that I had previously. It is even quieter than the water radiators that were at an old house I lived in where I could hear bubbles in the lines - yes we bled the system but it was never silent.
Humans are better able to ignore a constant, soft wooshing sound than the periodic sounds that radiators and baseboard heaters produce. To wit, which do you notice more when they are flying above you at altitude: a turboprop airliner or a jet?
Sabine, I'm a degreed electrical engineer and have been living with heat pumps for the past 52 years (40 years in Florida and 12 years in Tennessee). In Florida winters were mild and the heat pump did its job nicely. In Tennessee, the story is very different. When the outside temperature is below 40 F, the heat pump will run constantly and produce very little heat. The colder it gets the worse is the performance of the heat pump. We use natural gas as a backup heat source, which is less expensive and provides all the heat one could want. Although the heat pump system works great for air conditioning, it leaves a lot to be desired as an actual heat source. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the boiling point of the refrigerant used in the system since heat pumps work on the principle of the latent heat of vaporization of the refrigerant.
40 F? May I ask what kind of heatpump are you running? 40 F should is perfect temperature for getting the benefits from a heatpump.
We go to -15C (e.g. 5F) regularly in the winter (60N) and have no problems with a heat pump. Sure there is insulation, but we can basically go -50 F lower than your place and still have the heat pump produce heat. 😅
I have 1988 built 150m^2 home and one single air-to-air heat pump can heat it up just fine. If it get's colder than -25c then you need direct electric heating to help little bit. Air-to-water doesn't work so nicely so if you don't want fan blowing the hot air indoors then you have to get newer house.
But I don't see any problem on just slabbing air-to-air units everywhere?
And here in Finland you either have air-to-air unit or air-to-water with floor circulation and most of those heat pumps have the geothermal loop to increase the efficiency. converting water circulation system from oil to heatpumps really don't work here either so we use lot of air-to-air units.
But it's really easy to way to save on heating bill here just to slab air-to-air unit or multiple to any house. Costs 2000-3000€ per unit so really cheap upgrade also.
I'm an HVAC installer and have 25 years of experience. I'm also environmental scientist with two degrees. Modern heat pumps are nothing like old heat pumps. The technology has evolved a lot. I live in Asheville North Carolina where there's tons of old leaky homes that are poorly insulated. If you know what you're doing as an installer and you install according to the energy efficiency of the building, there's no issue with a heat pump. In fact, new heat pump technologies out now where it doesn't even need the old conventional heat strip auxiliary heat built into the heat pump. The technology is actually quite amazing these days and getting better all the time.
I disagree. Yes new systems are much better than the systems of years ago. I installed a central heat pump system rated 30,000 Btu's for my upper level in NC 2 years ago ( 16 SEER and 3.5 COP). The air handler has 10 kW (34,000 Btu's) of resistance auxiliary heat installed. When we had single digit outside temperatures last year in NC, the auxiliary heat failed the energize due to a thermostat issue and the inside temperature dropped to 60 degrees F and falling from a 72 degree set point. We corrected the problem and the system holds temperature with the 10 kW of auxiliary heaters. But when the auxiliary heat kicks on, the cost is $1.50 per hour to run. The auxiliary heater also comes on when the outside unit goes into a defrost cycle to prevent blowing cold air out the supply ducts.
@@frankd8957compassion to you for your situation that you have struggled with your system due to an installers incompetency. sorry sir but you're speaking about things that you don't understand from an engineering perspective. First of all, the heat pumps I am speaking of are not made at that low 16 seer efficiency that you got so there's really no product on the market that I'm aware of across all brands that has such a low efficiency heat pump that is utilizing the newer recompression and inverter technology. Let me ask you this, if your thermostat was not sending signal correctly with a furnace, what would have happened?, you would have had no heat at all. There's no way that you had an inverter heat pump that can put out its full capacity at temperatures outside that get as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. I live in Asheville North Carolina and have installed over 150 of these newer technology heat pumps and none of them have had problems. Even the ones that are up at 4500 elevation on the North shaded side of a mountain with lots of winter wind. It's interesting though that your argument you're blaming the thermostat problem on the heat pump when it was the the thermostat management equipment involved. In this case, your thermostat. sounds like you had an incompetent technician or company who did not set your equipment up correctly or the size your heat pump is too small so that the heat strips have to kick on too frequently. The other major issue people run into is user error with heat pumps. A furnace is like turning on the floodgates and then back off for a short period of time, which does a great job at heating quickly but also creates temperature oscillations in between cycles. Furnaces will overshoot the temperature at the thermostat during the heating cycle and then temperatures fall in the house until it comes on again. Heat pumps are designed to maintain temperature, not to swing the temperature in the house quickly. The heat pump runs longer cycles in a good one is ultra quiet. They trickle heat in over a longer period of time. Thus reducing the oscillations slightly above and below your desired temperature set point at your thermostat. One of the biggest mistakes people make is turning down their thermostat at night with a heat pump thinking they're saving /energy/money but then they turn it back up in the morning and this pushes it past the "droop temperature" programming at the thermostat at which point the system turns on both the heat pump and the heat strips early in the morning. There's a threshold that the thermostat reads on temperature where it turns on the heat pump at first but then if the temperature difference between the room and the thermostat set point becomes large enough where it exceeds the droop temperature setting, then the auxiliary heat kicks in. The auxiliary heat in your case is electric heat strips. Additionally, setting the thermostat back at night consumes more energy because When the heat pump is trying to make up that difference and reheat the house in the morning, it's being forced to run at the coldest outside temperatures which makes it the least efficient and then it also has to rely on the heat strips because the temperature was turned up several degrees and that activates the heat strips. The same concept applies during the summer. People often think they're saving money by just turning their AC on in the afternoon but then the outside unit has to work harder and use more energy for the same amount of cooling versus just maintaining the temperature 24 hours a day. The other thing with air conditioning is that there's a huge amount of humidity that has to be removed when they see system is first turn back on so that the system has to work in the middle of a hot afternoon to lower the temperature in the house and lower the humidity if someone has not kept it set at the same temperature 24 hours a day. It's most efficient for your air conditioner to maintain lower humidity and keep the house at a cooler temperature starting in the morning so that as heat load comes into the structure throughout the day, the actual mass of the building is already dehumidified and cooler so it offsets the amount of time that the AC has to run during the hottest part of the day
Just because you didn't get the correct equipment or configuration with your system doesn't mean that heat pumps don't keep houses comfortable at a very low cost.. Heat pumps do really keep a more consistent temperature in the house and create more even temperature but you have to know how to set them up correctly and you have to be educated correctly by the installer regarding how to use them correctly as the homeowner. I am quite frustrated with my industry because there's a lot of incompetency in the industry. Half of the success of my business is being far more competent than the average reputable HVAC company in my area. Even some of the most reputable companies in my area do things incorrectly according to the most accurate engineering approach on a fairly large percentage of the installs that they do.. I'm an independent technician and have worked on my own for 25 years and have an outstanding reputation for approaching heat pump installations from a high technical engineering approach. Unfortunately, just like with all industries, you have to really screen companies and technicians to make sure they know what they're talking about.I give my clients guarantees on my systems. If I had installed a system at your house and it was driving up electrical costs because the heat strips are coming on too much, I would know how to correct that or I would remove the system and put in the correct system if I made a mistake. It sounds like that maybe someone put in a heat pump and sized it based on the square footage of your house without really analyzing the overall energy efficiency of the home which has to analyze how leaky the are envelope of the home is, types of Windows you have, types of insulation you have, and the percentage of your west facing side of the house that is Windows.
I see technicians frequently make mistakes were they install equipment that is not ideal or they do not train the homeowner on the difference of how to manage your thermostat for a heat pump as compared to a gas furnace.
Regarding your conclusions that heat pumps don't don't work well: To do good science, you cannot take a sample size of one of your own experience and then extrapolate that to a whole body of information, especially if you are not specialized in that engineering and scientific knowledge so that you know what you're saying applies to equipment or an industry at Large, a system at large, or whatever it happens to be that is being scientifically analyzed.
Sounds like you need a really good HVAC consultant like myself. They're out there. Seems like about half of the industry has really good technicians and the rest of it is a crapshoot
@@brianwnc8168 Where do you have time to write a 10,000 word reply? As far as I don't know what I am talking about, I am a degreed electrical engineer with over 40 years of industrial power distribution, design and industrial control systems experience with a Professional Engineer's license since 1976. Also, 12 years as a Fortune 500 corporate energy engineer. I have installed, powered and started up 1500 ton industrial chiller systems, water tower cooled. I know the difference between a Watt and a volt-ampere.
The typical, affordable residential heat pump system is very close to what I described. In the USA, the vast majority of homes have centralized units utilizing air handlers not the ductless mini splits which are more efficient.
Heat pumps are great in modern houses. The load on the heat pump needs to be reduced with more insulation and air sealing. The old school method was to just pump in more heat rather than trying to build a tighter house. Plus heat pumps struggle in very cold temps.
Yes, once we get minus 15 ° C my heat pump struggles. Luckily I can not remember we hit minus 5 last winter.
If heat pumps were any good we would already be using them...
@@manoo422 The video made clear that Canada,* Sweden, Norway and Finland *are* already using them in vast quantities. These are colder climates; so they definitely meet the standard of "any good." But insulation is key. Insulation will also make your air conditioner work better in the summer, too; but no one is saying that the AC in a drafty house is "no good."
*EDIT: I misread the chart. Canda does use them, but only in the same proportion as the US does, according to the chart at 4:48
If you want to talk about building tighter houses, do some reading about the long-term health effects of that. Humans aren't meant to live in hermetically sealed bubbles full of plastic and their own dead skin cells.
@@jeffbenton6183 I'd like to see reliable statistics that show that Canada uses heat pumps in vast quantities.
In Ontario at least the majority of domestic heat is via natural gas fired forced hot air furnaces.
I live in Northern Italy, the temperature today is 32.5 C. In our newly built home we had to install a heating pump. We have hot water for showers and warm water for underfloor heating. Much better than gas or oil.
There is a big thing missing. This video only shows and talks about heat pumps that use outside air. The best systems have the heat exchanger underground and groundwater flows around it. That is at 8 degrees year round. So when its -10 degrees outside, the heat pump gets a big head start and starts at 8 degrees, that is an 18 degree head start right away. Same for cooling, when its really hot, like 40 degrees outside, your air conditioning can work off of that same chilly 8 degrees. That is crazy efficient.
The ground water system is not always an option. Some places actually limit how many and how deep holes you can drill next to your house in an urban environment and if you live where the water table is deep or there isn't much ground water you might have to drill a 200 meter hole to get enough thermal conductivity to sustain the heatpump for a house. Deep holes are expensive.
@@wombatillo True, it does not work everywhere, but where it does work it is pretty awesome.
I agree heat pumps work best when the year round temperature is at a point where both cooling and heating have a mid range delta. So using an underground piping system is smart. This is why I also advocate a basement in any new construction as any building underground maintains a steady state temperature very close to optimal living conditions for humans. Plus once again the the naturally maintained temperature is much closer to the desired temperature requiring very little heating or cooling.
@@anthonycarbone3826 Look, i am also lucky, in many places in Germany the ground water is not far below the surface, and it flows. Access to that energetically tasty goodness means you drill and dig just around 20 meters or 60 feet. Basements here are a bit crazy. All buildings have them, even while all buildings require the basements to have full protection against groundwater intrusion. We count ground level as zero, and buildings that go to -3 are not rare at all. We have shopping malls here in Munich that are one level below ground. You start at ground level, go one level down, and you find restaurants, and a massive supermarket.
My son had a ground water heat pump system installed, 5 tons, and it cost him $48,000. Most ground water systems require buried piping and auxiliary pumps to move the water, very expensive.
There is also a big issue with insulating old houses - it frequently causes damp and mold (this is in the UK).
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
that's why you put a ventilation system with a heat exchanger in your home.
Not only does it filter out the pollution and noise coming from outside, it also regulates huminidty and prevents heat from escaping
4:15: the easiest way to use a heat pump with an old heating system is to use a pump which generates higher temperatures. That simple. Heat pumps generating 65°C or 70°C are pretty common, because, well, there are many old heating systems. Demand creates supply.
wouldn't that just decreases the efficiency of the system?
@@marioboiata2403 Even at lower efficiency it's still much better than gas heating.
As I say later in the video
@@SabineHossenfelder Why do you elaborate at length on a not existing problem, then? Makes no sense.
@@traumflug I think Sabine was replying to marioboiata's comment, not yours. Then it makes sense.
Hi Sabine,
I really appreciate your statistical work.
I am in New Zealand 🇳🇿 sun- tropical country.
We are removing boiler heated radiators and transitioning into ducted heat pump systems. With 50°C air flowing into rooms with temperature & C02 sensors, the airflow is increased or decreased by automated dampers in the ductwork. Once the system/home has ‘heated up’ the main airflow is reduced and heat production by the heat pump is levelled out by an inverter-drive on the heat pump’s compressor.
Ground sourced heat pumps are even more efficient.
We live in Denmark, and our House is from 1772, with relatively little insulation, compared to now a days demand. In spite of cold, damp, Wind weather here, we have no problem with heating the 200 m2 two floor house using a 7Kw heat pump!! So your claim is false. You come around the low circulation temperature with increasing the flow We went from 70 C ( gas) to max 45 C with no problems.
Yes, but I have cases where that's not enough in Sweden. Put the only thing that happens are that the compressor stops and electric heater takes over or what else the aux heater are.
Canadian here. I have installed 300 heatpumps in mainly 100 year old houses in Toronto over the last few years and I have to say that satisfaction is very high. Running cost was lower than gas and this is in a place where we have very cheap gas. These are a mix of air to air heatpumps and air to water. Yes, we would like to have a few more radiators (I always want more) but we also use a bit of backup electricity when needed. Luckily, it is not needed much.
One thing they also dont talk about is the temperature limitations. Heat pumps struggle when the outside temp is lower than about -15C to -25C. For much of the world thats not an unmanageable limitation - you can get electric room heaters for the few cold days. But in Canada where I live it can go days or weeks without the daily high going above -25C and hit -35 or colder at night.
Heat pumps might save some green house gasses, but Canadians still need effective central heating to back up the current heat pump technology for those cold days.
they also don't work very well when the heat rises very high, a heat pump in the place I live is totally useless because it only works 3 months out of the year, and the rest of the time you're still either using heaters or AC anyway
Same in Finland, heat pumps are auxiliary unless they are ground heat pumps integrated to central heating. Then the heat pump alone is fine.
Canadian here. I converted to a ducted air-to-air central heat pump in 2016 in my 1950's-era home. I've saved a lot of money compared to the oil burner I used to have. I have a 10kW heat coil to augment the heat pump when temps go lower than -21C. Yes, this costs $$$ but it is still much less expensive than the oil burner I had and takes care of those few weeks of very frigid temps. Comparatively, cooling in the summer is very inexpensive - we get temps of 30C+ quite often in the summer and this unit keeps the whole home at a comfortable temperature. I set the thermostat in the spring and fall and don't need to adjust it again. Don't let anyone tell you they are suitable for any or every build - just like any HVAC product, insulation and building envelope integrity matter. I cannot understand why these products are controversial, in my experience heat pumps are a great product.
Simple solution is ground source. That's what you see in e.g. Sweden. Yes, drilling costs money but when it gets seriously cold, it's a no-brainer. Ground is a very stable source of heat. Especially when you don't need cooling in summer and you can drill deep (relatively speaking). It's when you have milder temperatures that drilling is debatable. The benefit just isn't that big. In those cases, ground to water heat exchanger is a decent middle ground.
We built a new home in 2019. Instead of a whole home heating cooling solution with a multi room heatpump system, I got installed 2 smaller heatpumps. These 2 heat and cool the home very well, and keep it at a comfortable 22C most year round. They are 1 at 4.5kw rated and a smaller at 2.5kw rated. The running cost of the 2 pumps is less than the cost of 1 big unit. It also has alot more area to exchange the heat with as well. We have not yet had one freeze up that we have noticed. Our average electricity usage is 9000 kWh per year including my hobby room. Last year we installed solar power grid tied. During the summer the sunshine is powering the pumps to keep the house cool. In winter it assists in keeping the house warm. Our system in winter provides 1/2 of the power we use in the day in May/June/July. The other 1/2 is exported and we get credit. For us, we have no electric bill what so ever. The solar will be breaking even after just over 72 months. Hamilton, NZ
I have had heat pumps installed in 3 properties, 2 terraced houses (one built c.1910, one built in late 1950s) and a bungalow (built in 1969). Fortunately all houses were well insulated. In all cases the occupiers are delighted with the results BUT without a government grant the payback period for the work required would have been around 20 years.
Biggest problem here in the UK is the capabilities of building contracting industry, there are just so many cowboys and incompetents offering to install heat pumps - many of them are incapable of installing loft insulation correctly - and the number of true expert installers in frighteningly small
Of course you did. You should of saved money and bought a new gas boiler👍
@@Isclachau The village in which the properties were has no connection to the gas grid so there was no possibility of putting in gas boilers
@@justinstephenson9360 I feel your pain. Hope one day they will sort it🙏
In Texas, most new housing uses cheap central HVAC heat pumps, "cheap" meaning sized according to the cooling mode (AC cooling is life saving in our summers) and costing about $1,000 more than a unit for AC only at about $6,000 (an outside compressor and coils unit plus an inside attic air handler fan and coils). These are air to air heat pumps, optimized for cooling, but equipped with a refrigerant flow reversing valve, that enables pumping heat into the house from the outside. The "cheap" part that can sink the electric grid is the back-up electric resistance heater strips, that start kicking on as the outside temperature falls below 30 F. Our three and four ton energy rated units each have 10 kW of heater strips (room for 15 kW for colder climes...like Dallas). Figure Texas has a roughly once a decade extreme cold invasion with the average temperature at about fifteen F for a few days...now many millions of houses are each pulling 10 kW...supposing ten million housings, the heating would represent 100,000 mWe of load (compare to the 1 to 2 kW load in normal weather).
Another problem we see from our hilltop house: the developments of large tract housing below us in the valley send us rising heat (and sometimes awful fireplace smoke) during cold still winter nights...we stay above freezing while the valley housing sparkles with deep frost in the morning sun...and the temperature reading driving down hill falls to 16 F. Wow! On average, it's supposed to be 25 F. Their heat pumps have fought each other all night for whatever heat can be gleaned, even condensing low humidity moisture into a frosting condition. The natural gas distribution people had a joke years ago...a heat pump will find and suck the warmth out of your litter of puppies in the garage.
One more problem...back to those heater strips...you have rolling blackouts...when power is to be restored, all those heater strips are ready to provide instant load...sometimes the substation transformer explodes. When there is a gas distribution system for gas heaters...there too is an instant load which may drop the line pressure low enough to cause a district valve cut-off. Now a big problem there also.
Check out Technology Connections to see that most if not all HVAC units are massively oversized.
How about a gas backup system, instead of relying on electric resistance strips on the occasional very cold days?
Thank you for your post. Its nice to hear from people who actually know what they're talking about.
>XmarkedSpot : What's so bad about being oversized? Doesn't that reduce the duty cycle, so the unit is off more? (No energy used while it's off, compensating for the extra energy used while it's on.)
@@brothermine2292 Larger heat pumps typically have a lower COP. Though more costly, zoned heat pumps can get a much better overall COP than a central unit with ductwork
3:00 I think its worth pointing out: Traditional Heating generates energy by burning fuels or using resistance coils in case of electric. Heat pumps move energy. Its typically cheaper to move that thermal energy than it is to generate.
It might be so but the efficiency drops as the temperature difference increases. Also it depends what the source of electricity is. During the winter when the need for heating is high there is very little "renewable" production so, most of the energy comes from gas power plants. They burn the gas and make electricity with about 50% efficiency, about 20% gets lost in transportation remaining about 40% from the initial energy then we power a heat pump which has a cop of 2-2.5 when the weather is cold and we are where we started, we could simply burn the gas directly.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 I agree completely and then you have to factor in the heat pumps complexity, higher purchase and maintenance cost plus the unending governmental regulations regarding refrigerants which cost trillions and only fills the landfills with more precious materials. I truly believe we'd be better off burning the the fuels directly for heat.
@@jbar6618 Just continue and don't adapt is the easy way and also the way that will lead us to more problems. I think fossil fuels have diminished our creativity to do much with limited tools.
But electricity is way more expensive than gas! So if the gas bill is like $150 in winter how is an electric bill 3X that going to be cheaper?? Plus it may not even work when it gets super cold? Or with ice storms? Minus 20 F outside?? Or lower? People cannot afford $450 electric bill. That is the food money than!
Thanks, really great explanation of the issue. Basically, we use gas and oil boilers to quickly heat a room or area only as and when we need it, so a draughty poorly insulated property is less of an issue, whereas with a heat pump you have to continuously heat the room or area to ensure it is warm, so thermal leakage is a much bigger issue. Many people in the UK live in older properties, so to make them suitable they need insulation, and this is a much bigger topic than most realise. The best form of insulation is probably external cladding, but even if you can get planning permission to alter the exterior, it may require the roof extending, which is not always possible. If you have a cavity, you can have that insulated, but the risk is you create a bridge between the external and internal wall allowing water to percolate through. For older properties with solid walls, they rely on the internal warmth to dry the wall out, so if you insulate inside, they remain wet. As you say, for a well-insulated property a heat pump is great, otherwise it cannot keep up.
Something you didn't mention Sabine: most heatpumps can also provide cooling during heatwaves, installations based on the burning of fossil fuels can obviously only add heat inside the house. Yes, heat loss is key. It's not only about the ammount of insulation but also about the size and type of building.
Insulation is a separate issue, a gas boiler is not going to work well if the house is not insulated either. You're still going to have the same leakage of energy, but the gas boiler will cost you more and also produce co2.
It's not going to work well, no, but it's going to work, that's the point.
Upfront costs of installing it in my house are so large that it would take about 20 years for it to pay itself off.
The real reward is saving the planet ;-)
JOHN CLAUSER RUclips
When I bought my old house I knew I would have to renew the roof, insulation and heating system. Which I have done. Living doesn't come for free.
And it won't even last 20 years
@@mrj774 Numbers please. Around here 20 years is the expected service life.
This is an excellent discussion of the pros and cons of heat pump installations in existing homes. Massachusetts has a program which is funded by taxes that people pay in their energy bills.
The program pays $10,000 toward the cost of heat pumps and pays 75% of the cost of additional insulation in existing homes. We used this program. It replaced an oil hot water furnace with Mini-Split heat pumps. We had already replaced the windows and doors which are much tighter than were the original 1950s windows and doors. The additional insulation was done properly. This is not only my opinion, it is the inspector's opinion. The heat pumps cost us more than the program paid. This cost, plus the Insulation, and removal the old furnace and oil tank cost us over $6,000. This omits the cost of the new windows and doors since they were completed more than 7 years ago.
Your research is certainly correct. Our house will now save considerable money on air conditioning cots, which will eventually recoup the money that we spent. Electricity is expensive in Massachusetts. Your point that heat pumps in older dwellings might not heat the house sufficiently to make up for the heat loss is correct. They will work in older dwellings, if the insulation is improved and the windows and doors are replaced. The type of heating/cooling system might need to be completely renewed for heat pumps to work effectively. The costs could be $30.000 to $50,000 for a modest home. My costs were for a 70 m2 home with a basement.