Heat pumps can't take the cold? Nordics debunk the myth

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨L4s@lemmy.world [bot]⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-cold-nordics-debunk-myth.html

Heat pumps can’t take the cold? Nordics debunk the myth::By installing a heat pump in his house in the hills of Oslo, Oyvind Solstad killed three birds with one stone, improving his comfort, finances and climate footprint.

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onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It never ceases to amaze me how people don’t read past the title 🤦 There are people debating about -10 to -30C when the article clearly states that it works in those temperatures. Not only does it work, it’s twice as efficient as electrical heating at those temperatures.

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- Zeshade@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I think it does, and it seems to work because of a defrosting feature that earlier models didn’t have. But I wouldn’t say it does so very clearly. Unless I missed it.
  
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- dorkage@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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  - NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Electric heat is not always 99.9% efficient, resistive heating is.
    
    Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient(compared to resistive heating)
    
    It’s not bs, because we are moving heat, not creating it. You thinking it is bullshit will not change the laws of thermodynamics. Try to think about it this way.
    
    “Cold” is a made up human concept, it really is a lack of heat energy. The coldest is 0K, but even a Midwest winter is waaaaaay above that. Heat pumps (and all refrigerant-based systems) work by changing the phase of the refrigerant from liquid to gas to cool, or by compressing a gas to a liquid. This phase change takes energy from the surrounding air (think about computer duster, the can gets cold) and then pipes it inside, where it can be compressed to release the heat it just picked up from outside. In the summer you flip the reverse switch to cool your house.
    
    Here is an explanation from someone much more eloquent than myself:youtu.be/7J52mDjZzto?si=sYlNlpvGnJs16lwk
    
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  - Kazumara@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    I just don’t buy this twice as efficient bullshit.
    
    Do you understand how heat pumps work? The heat you’re drawing on is the the heat of the out5side compartment on the outside, therefore the heat moved to the inside can be more than just the heat equivalent of the electric energy you put in. That’s how these achieve more than 100% efficiency, in general.
    
    Now the trick to moving heat from a cold outside compartment to a warmer inside compartment lies in the compression. If you draw even a moderate amount of heat energy into your medium, then compress it, it will turn quite hot allowing you to dump heat into your warm inside compartment. Then as the medium flows out you let it expand and it turns really cold, cold enough that it can draw in heat from the cold outside.
    
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  - Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    So you’d rather trust your feelings? Just loon into it if you’re that skeptical.
    
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  - geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Arrogantly uninformed. It’s an impressive combination
    
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  - justJanne@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    “at those temperatures”
    
    well, to a heat pump even -40° is still 230K, which is plenty of energy to move around and work with. It may be cold to you, but to a heat pump it’s not.
    
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  - MisterFrog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Don’t you just love it when people decide things are true because they feel it’s true?
    
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overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Good Lord - $2600 for a whole house system? I think that’s what my local (mid-Atlantic US) HVAC shop is getting for a single-room mini-split.

Wait until people find out about ground-source heat pumps and water heater heat pumps. What you get out of those is more consistent year round, too. It’s almost like leveraging technology has benefits over just burning carbon and hydrogen to make heat.

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- happyhippo@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  2600 is dirt cheap even by Euro standards, trust me.
  
  Here in Italy a single room split would cost you around 1k to 2.5-3k depending on the brand.
  
  A whole house system you’re probably looking at 10k and then some.
  
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- douglasg14b@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I got a quote in rural America for a single room minisplit, $10,300.
  
  Absolutely bonkers.
  
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  - Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That is absolutely bonkers. I put one in myself for my one room garage that I converted to a place to hang. Cost 720$ after tax for a Pioneer mini split. It’s entering its third year in use and I love it. That being said, I wouldn’t be so risky as to put my own in when its task was heating or cooling my home. Just my garage is my problem, the rest is my family, and so I paid. But I got a whole home solution, two floors, Carrier units, for about $15k.
    
    I believe what you’re looking for is out there and not ridiculous price.
    
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  - calavera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The guy you quoted just want to make his monthly paycheck on you alone, because that’s way over anything reasonable
    
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  - NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Also in rural America. How did you get someone not to laugh at you when you asked? God I fucking hate the small mindedness around me, but I couldn’t stand the city either. I cannot find someone to put one in my house so I’m going to have to install it myself next summer.
    
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- ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  $2600 is utter bullshit. I had several quotes for a 1000sf house, not a single one was under 16000 installed, after rebates. My payback period was going to be almost 20 years even against a medium efficiency gas furnace.
  
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  - timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    And this is why the comments here miss the point- sure, heat pumps nowadays can work that low but in a lot of places the payoff period is well outside what anyone is looking at.
    
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- the_third@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah, no. German here, if your house already is all prepared, ideally with large radiators or heated floors and you really just have to switch out the source of heat from whatever to a heatpump, then you’re maybe looking at 15k€ including work. The man probably collected a properly dimensioned subsidy.
  
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  - Nobsi@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    You’re just repeating what all the gas installers keeep repeating so they don’t lose business.
    Every House built after 1990 or houses that have had insulation makovers in the past 20 years are perfectly fine to heat with a heatpump.
    
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- kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I don’t think Geothermal makes much sense unless you live in one of the extremes, mainly the cold one, For example I an from Slovakia and I don’t think the temperature here went under -20C in the last few years, I barely remember any days going under - 10C, so you would be paying quite a premium for a geothermal heat pump for rather marginal gains, it would certainly need quite a good analysis if the difference in performance would ever pay for the price difference, especially with better insulation and heat recuperation systems becoming mandatory.
  
  There are also things like heat pump based driers now on the market btw.
  
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  - overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I suspect it’s mostly a function of mass availability. Even here in the states ground source heatpumps are rare, even though the systems are more reliable (since there is no equipment exposed to weather) and a shallow borehole isn’t excessively expensive.
    
    I’d forgotten about heat pump clothes dryers. Those are fascinating, and really interesting for older buildings or locations without close access to exterior venting.
    
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  - barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Shallow geothermal is basically dead in most of the world because it’s too much hit and miss, the geology is simply too complex and involved (and underground) to predict. There’s also a fuckton of issues with water ingress, minerals that like to expand when getting wet and such. You can’t really take Iceland as an example for countries not straddling a continental rift.
    
    Deep geothermal is utterly reliable but for the longest time drilling that deep was just too expensive. Plasma deep drilling is a solution but it’s still in its infancy.
    
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- Avg@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Half of my house was 8k, the other side I’m planning to install myself because I don’t have that kind of money just waiting to be spent anymore.
  
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- Desistance@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Even the Diy mini splits, you’re paying $600 to $1000 easily for just one single unit.
  
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- DigitalFrank@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Paid $6700 in May to replace mine.
  
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- tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah similar in the UK. £3k for a single room mini split. £6k for a two room, etc. There’s no way you’re doing a whole house for less than bend-over money.
  
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- regbin_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Wow that’s really pricey. Here in Malaysia a 2 HP mini split with inverter costs roughly RM 2400 including installation (around $500).
  
  Granted the average salary here is much lower but it’s amazing how much the prices differ given that they all basically come from the same factory.
  
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Pogbom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Hell yeah, we’ve got a heat pump and we’re in Canada where it can get to -40°C (which is coincidentally also -40°F) and that thing works like a beast. Fortunately we also have the cheapest electricity in North America so the decision was easy.

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- Chetzemoka@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Electricity monopoly in the US = they can price gouge, and this is literally the only reason I installed a dual fuel system with a less efficient heat pump. The Eversource electricity price hikes last year probably would have meant I couldn’t afford to heat my home in the worst parts of winter here in Massachusetts.
  
  This is how policies are killing the planet. Socialize electric utilities, upgrade the electric grid, subsidize the use of electric heat pumps so they’re actually affordable for all end users, and of course more people would adopt them.
  
  As it is, I run my heat pump as much as I can, which is like 9 months a year. Better than only having gas heat at least.
  
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  - Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The US has some of the lowest electricity prices in the world though. Only a couple pennies per kWh higher than Canada. And MUCH lower than pretty much all of Europe.
    
    In 2020 (last year I could find from Canada specifically) Canada averaged 11.25¢ per kWh. The US averaged 13.04¢. The UK averaged 21.91¢, France averaged 19.91¢, Finland 20.56¢, Spain 28.77¢, and Germany 33.39¢.
    
    www.electricity.ca/…/electricity-rates/
    
    It’s more that Canada uses a LOT of hydro power which is cheap.
    
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- ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  What’s your heat pump? I’ve been looking into them and I can’t find one that’s willing to say it works past about -15.
  
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  - bbbbb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The Mitsubishi Hyper heat can work down to -13F, The absolutely best resource I’ve found for heat pump research is the NEEP database which will you give you actual BTU outputs at various ambient temperature readings: ashp.neep.org/#!/product_list/ Also worth considering a geothermal heat pump depending on your geography, as then you have a guarantee of efficiency all year round
    
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- praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  What’s NOT cheap in Canada? Genuine question.
  
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  - FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Housing, food, car insurance and alcohol are all pretty expensive in Canada
    
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  - PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Cellphone plans, internet plans, seriously look into the cost of living in Canada.
    
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  - Magister@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Wine and cheese, damn it’s expensive compared to Europe!!!
    
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  - bjorney@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Electricity is also pretty expensive everywhere in Canada other than quebec
    
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  - Hotdogman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Tim Horton. It’s cheap, but not cheap.
    
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- SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Can you just start saying “America” that way it includes south America and Central America, also?
  
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  - QueriesQueried@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    When the context is involving climate, electricity rates, and money, there is little overlap between all of the Americas. It makes sense to tighten it down to the top half (more similar climates, etc) or bottom half (electricity rates for example). Canada has the wealth and the electricity rates to make heat pumps extremely viable, and for the most part climate too. The USA shares a lot of this. The Central/South Americas do not overlap like this with Canada.
    
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  - Pogbom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    But that wouldn’t be accurate because there are South American countries with even cheaper electricity than here, so it’s only the cheapest in North America.
    
    Also not to be too pedantic but central America isn’t technically a continent, and it all falls under North America.
    
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obinice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
How is this a myth? Nobody with more than two braincells thinks that heat pump heaters don’t work in the cold.

If we start comparing everything that idiots think to a mythological mystery worthy of note, we’ll be here for an eternity.

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- Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is not a myth but a fact, heat pumps don’t work at extreme cold temperatures.
  What temperature exactly depends on the coolant used.
  
  The efficiency also degrades as the temperature nears the minimum it works at.
  
  This is a random example of first hit I got on a heat pump.
  heatnow.dk/produkt/altech-sirius-9-varmepumpe/
  
  Notice the effect drops dramatically below -20 C°.
  
  But this is a pump sold for the Scandinavian market, therefore it is of course designed to work at low temperatures. It doesn’t state the minimum, but I’m guessing it would be around -40 C°. Which is very good compared top older models.
  
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    But that’s not sufficient. As the temperature gets colder, it’s not just less efficient but produces much less heat. At the lower temperatures, it may not be able to keep up. Since it would be wasteful most of the year, heat pumps aren’t sized for that
    
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- PizzasDontWearCapes@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The heat pump I just had installed in SW Ontario hands over heating duty at -10C to the gas furnace
  
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  - whoisearth@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    How much did it cost and what rebates are available? I’d love to say fuck Enbridge.
    
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- MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It really depends on the type of heat pump. Air-sourced heat pumps generally don’t produce heat below -30C and below -10C they generally lose enough efficiency that you’re better off using electric baseboard heating.
  
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  - Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    My air sourced heat pump keeps my house warm just fine in the Finnish winter where temperatures of -30C aren’t unheard of. I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I assume there’s coils that’ll produce the the if nececcary, making it at worst as efficient as direct electric heating, which is what I’d use otherwise. Here like every other house has a heatpump like that and I don’t remember hearing anyone ever complaining that it’s not working.
    
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- Iamdanno@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s not that people think they don’t work in the cold, it’s that they are less suited for the areas or days of extreme cold.
  
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  - OminousOrange@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Which is why you have a backup system. I have a net zero house in Saskatchewan, Canada. My Carrier heat pump will operate to -15C, and switches to electric heating coils in the air handler if it’s colder outside. It’s a rather extreme climate here, but in most other places, you’d be fine with some baseboard heaters as backup.
    
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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It just comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the universe operates.
  
  They say oh well it’s cold outside so how can it make it warm inside? They say this because they have absolutely no understanding of where the concept of a temperature comes from. They think that if it’s 10° outside then there is 10° of energy outside presumably out to some arbitrary distance, because some places are warmer, but they don’t really think that bit through. They don’t realise that’s not how it works.
  
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  - pedalmore@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    MFers need a refresher on the concept of absolute zero.
    
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Magister@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It depends on the model (and the price), I’m in Québec when we have -30°C (-22F) about every winter, my heatpump is mid-range, and works fine until -20C (-4F) so 95% of the time. It is set to 23C (73F) and it’s between 21-23 everywhere in the house. The electric baseboard are set to 21C (70F) as backup.

So yeah, heat pumps can works great in winter, no problem.

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- NightAuthor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Makes sense to me that they could theoretically work all the way down to near 0 kelvin, just depends on their efficiency. Just so long as there is heat to be had…
  
  Also, not sure energy star really means much.
  
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  - applebusch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    They theoretically could, but the coefficient of performance would go below 1 long before you get close to zero Kelvin. That means it would cost more energy to pump the heat than is pumped, so you’d be better off using an electric heater.
    
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tmjaea@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Same with EVs. Don’t work in cold weather. Except in the Nordics.

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- mazelado@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  EVs work fine in cold weather. I live in Minnesota and drive an EV. It loses about 10-20% of the total range in the winter, but most of that appears to be from generating heat for the passengers.
  
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  - tmjaea@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I was being sarcastic. I’m from Germany and most “car people” constantly talk about EVs being not reliable, especially during winter …
    
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    “Fine” is subjective. It’s fine for most people. Not so for others.
    
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- dojan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The problem isn’t that EVs don’t work in the winter, it’s that their range gets significantly reduced. We had issues with people literally up and abandoning their vehicles because their batteries ran flat.
  
  In these cases the issue is less that the range is lost, and more that with snowy and cold weather traffic gets unpredictable. You can end up in long queues and that’s where the issues start.
  
  When I went on a work trip up in the far north I never saw a single EV. Asked my colleagues about it and none of them thought EVs particularly feasible as a primary vehicle.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    We had issues with people literally up and abandoning their vehicles because their batteries ran flat.
    
    Do gas cars have infinite fuel tanks in your area?
    
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rubythulhu@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
my heart goes out to the three little birds

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- kicksystem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Feast your heart on this:
  
  en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling
  
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- AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Better than 15 birds in 5 fir trees.
  
  Their feathers were fanned by a firey breeze
  
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kent_eh@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s notso much a myth as it is old informationthst is no longer accu

The heat pumps that were available 20-30 years ago weren’t effective/efficienct enough at low outdoor temperatures to be practical.

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whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Was it necessary to kill birds th?

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- Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Birds aren’t real.
  
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- AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yes. Goddamn dinosaurs biding their time until we kill ourselves off, just to build a new golden age of dinosaurs
  
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HelixDab2@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
There is a really, really big caveat here.

While all of this is true, and while heat pumps are definitely more efficient than gas/oil/electric heat, you MUST have a well-insulated home without drafts. If your home is not well insulated, or is drafty, then heat pumps likely will not keep your home at a comfortable temperature.

A standard furnace works by kicking on when heat drops below the set point of your thermostat, and then it blasts heated air until the whole space is a certain temperature above the set point on your thermostat, and then shuts off. The most efficient heat pumps are constantly trickling a little heat at a time, rather than cycling on and off. If your home is poorly insulated or drafty, then you can end up losing heat faster than the heat pump can bring it in. The better your insulation and the better sealed your home is, the better your results with a heat pump will be.

Unfortunately, my home is largely uninsulated and pretty drafty; without doing a pretty significant amount of work, at a fairly steep cost, I can’t retrofit to a heat pump.

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- Fudgethenumbers@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is my first comment, but since it’s my job might as well:
  
  The fact that you need a well insulated house for a heat pump is absolutely not true. What you need is a house where the expected heat loss at the design temperature can be added to the house using low temperature heating such as in floor heating. You can live in a cardboard box for all intends and purposes, if you can keep your house warm with (loads of) 35-40C water you are fine. Your energy bill will be enormous, but it would be as well if you would burn gas in a stove.
  
  Does insulation help? Obviously. The most energy efficient, sustainable and comfortable kWh of heat is the one you don’t need. Is it a requirement? Absolutely not.
  
  Source, ex aerospace engineer that advices and installs heat pumps for residential buildings
  
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- Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  A standard furnace works by kicking on when heat drops below the set point
  
  So does a heat pump, and you can get Air to Water heat pumps that work almost exactly as a furnace.
  
  The most efficient heat pumps are constantly trickling a little heat at a time, rather than cycling on and off.
  
  Our stoker wood pellet furnace does the same is possible, can’t go below 25% capacity, because it doesn’t burn right at lower capacities. So at certain temperatures, it maintains a steady state, but at others it has to turn on and off.
  
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- kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  what does insulation have to do with heat pumps?
  
  heat energy is heat energy, where you get it from doesn’t matter, if your house isn’t well insulated the heat loss will be the same regardless what pumps in the heat.
  
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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Not sure I would call this a “myth”. It’s just that technology has progressed to the point that it’s less of an issue.

Mine stopped working when it got <20*F

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Sodis@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I mean, it’s not about them not working, it’s the efficiency. Most models will switch to a normal electric heater, if they can’t extract anymore heat from the surroundings. At which temperature that happens, depends on your type of heat pump.

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ianovic69@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
As always, these are brilliant but need to be affordable. In the UK they are not. New builds are starting to get them, just, but home building is an absolute shit show here.

Additionally, I’m coming round to the idea of solar for my property. It’s not clear if it can work for me financially though, and my roof type prohibits it until at least the end of next year at best.

If only our government would do the right things with renewables. Or anything else for that matter.

Ho hum.

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hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I bought into the heat pump hype until I bought a house with a furnace. Up until then I lived in apartments with heat pumps. I was stunned about how much better it was than any place I’ve lived before. It was used for it taking forever to get warm and always feeling colder than the thermostat would indicate. With a furnace it got warm quick, and it truly felt warm once it reached temperature. My power+heat bill was significantly lower per sqft than my power bill in my apartment.

I’ve lived in the Midwest, the Mountain West, and the South. I experienced the shortcomings of heat pumps in every place.

This article, which I believe to be geared at convincing US readers that heat pumps are great, also does some things that are extremely disingenuous.

For one, most heat pumps in Norway are geothermal heat pumps. Those are extremely different units that are well known to both be more energy efficient and function at much lower temperatures than air source heat pumps that are typically pushed in the US. The example where they interview a guy with an air source heat pump seems like an almost intentional misdirection.

Second, the author uses a comparison to electric furnaces. That has been widely known for years to be hilariously inefficient. As such it’s fairly rare to see in the US. The most common sources of heat in the US are air source heat pumps (in places like AZ and Texas), oil radiators, and gas furnaces. Depending on energy prices, these could be significantly cheaper depending on utility cost. I understand Norway has specific conditions that make oil and gas usage much less appealing but, again, this article is clearly targeted towards westerners.

I feel like this is EVs all over again. Heat pumps have a lot of potential. They will one day before the de facto standard almost everywhere. However they have serious shortcomings and the idea that they are ready to be a drop in replacement in the vast majority of cases is hopium.

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RedAggroBest@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
So my question with heat pumps is more how much does humidity effect the efficiency? Where I live is high elevation, has cold winters, but the air is dry as fuck. Single digit humidity for a month wouldn’t be unusual.

My understanding is that heat pumps work best with humidity since moving moisture is part of how the heat is produced. When does a reasonably priced heat pump start falling off in efficiency?

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Pretzilla@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I want to understand what happens when it’s too cold out. And just running in pure air sourced HP mode, without supplemental heat.

Does it keep running at 100% but produces no heat? Limited heat? Does the house get colder and colder until everyone turns into a popsicle?

Or does it only heat the house to 18c instead of 20c?

In a climate where the low is -10c, how well does it work?

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Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
No that’s just my shitty heat pump. Sigh…

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