My heat pump: a personal story about a broken heating industry

The author doesn&#x27;t mention brands but I found that the majority of the cost difference was due to it. I got two Daikin installed and it costed me 15k$ CAD. Simiilar models in Chinese brands run at half that price. Mine also run at 100% efficiency at -15C where most just run 100% at -5C. If you want -25C ones they become much more expansive though.<p>I got quotes from 4 vendors. None were technical enough for my liking they all just told bullshit marketing stuff. One tech did a better job and convinced me, but I still think like the author that they don&#x27;t really understand the science behind all of it.<p>But this is nof the only industry, I DIY renovated my whole house and I can tell you everything is over the top these days. Another quick example is electricians still wire light circuits like in the incandescent days (max 8-12 bulbs per circuit) where bow LED consumme a fraction of it.

I&#x27;ve had a heat pump in my home in the US for the past five years, and it&#x27;s worked pretty well, but one of the things I&#x27;ve found frustrating is that either the pumps or the installers assume you need to run every indoor unit simultaneously.<p>I have a 24,000 BTU outdoor pump and one indoor unit for the first floor and another unit for the master bedroom. After COVID, we started using our second bedroom as an office, so we wanted an additional indoor unit.<p>I knew that a third indoor unit would be beyond the capacity of our outdoor pump, but we would never need to run all three indoor units at once, so I hoped it would work.<p>The installer said that they can&#x27;t connect a third unit to our outdoor pump. They claimed that the system maxes out at two even if only two need to be on at once. I couldn&#x27;t tell if it was bad design by the outdoor unit or if the installer just didn&#x27;t want to sell me a single unit instead of replacing my whole system, but I was disappointed.

I think we could bring the price of these down tenfold if they were sold like dishwashers and other appliances.<p>Make a building code that has a universal plug and play interface so they can be connected like a washing machine.<p>The costs explode when you have to buy through installers.<p>(Yes, there are lots of reasons they are not plug and play but let’s figure it out!)

&gt; but because my installer looked at the data, it needed no major new pipework<p>How about if we start with this? What data, and how do you collect it? The site links to [1] which looks like it has some great info. But any potential adoptee will still need to translate that into some actionable steps to gather the data needed to know how to size the heat pump system

Innovation in building and tech is going too fast for these small installation type companies. Zigbee, sensors, switches, motion sensors, per room heating, insulation, decentralized heat recovering ventilation, heat recovering sewage pipes, (noisy?) heat pumps, CO2 sensors, particle sensors, hybrid heating systems, house batteries, solar panels, heat panels, car chargers, vehicle to grid, smart appliances, variable electricity rates, dc subgrids…<p>An enthusiast can make a home so much better, more comfortable and efficient. But non of it is easily obtained the way we obtain our old gas heating systems.<p>And it drives me crazy, it’s so complex, it costs me so much time, but I just see so many “professionals” contradicting each other, I hate that I have to make all these choices.

This article doesn&#x27;t mention one of the main points heat pump gurus have been banging on about for ages - <i>temperature compensation</i>. Essentially, the colder it is outside the hotter you run the flow temperatures. You ideally want this setup so that there is very little intervention from an external thermostat, the balance of flow temperature and heat loss can be set such that one perfectly offsets the other.<p>It&#x27;s the secret sauce which can take the heat pump from expensive toy to practical replacement for gas. The payoff time is still too long but at least it exists!

Does anyone else find it interesting how overrepresented the topic of heat pumps are on hacker news lately?

My personal experience, new home (construction completed circa 2017):<p>- MANY design errors, some I spot at project stage, I was told they are not errors, it turn out I was right;<p>- sizing is an issue because the climate may vary MUCH. Three years ago today in the morning there was -22℃ today +10℃ to be in comfort we need to been able to heat (or cool) in much above&#x2F;below the average cases, so well... I&#x27;m not much against pay for extra margins;<p>- my sanitary hot water heater (Daikin&#x2F;Rotex M2O EKHHP) break after 5 years, a leak from the sanitary water pipe heat-exchanger, two month for a fix, BUT being provident I&#x27;ve put aside a very small resitive heater classic boiler (50 liters) so I have had exactly ZERO &quot;service interruption&quot;, in that case the problem is that something is cheap to back up, something is definitively not...<p>For instance I have one of the first thermodynamic VMC (a double-flux VMC with a heat pump heat exchanger instead of a passive one) and being in a new home I can&#x27;t stay without a VMC for more then few hours or I have to open the windows no matter the outside temp. Well, I&#x27;ve also choose to have a backup but it&#x27;s just a passive VMC since spending 4k€ to keep a secondary cold spare it&#x27;s definitively wasted money. The small resistive water heater was just 150€ in total plumbing materials included, mounted by myself so a reasonable backup. Similarly the main heating (water-water heat pump) have no electrical backup, I&#x27;ve chosen AND I REGRET a small wood stove for modern homes (Jøtul Scan-66) and I keep a bit of wood (used in the spring to cook pizzas outside, so it remain moderately &quot;fresh&quot; since it&#x27;s renewed any two&#x2F;three years). I regret because for not much more I&#x27;ve should better chose a wood based boiler and a LARGE insulated reservoir to make hot water in few hours for an entire day and the small p.v. LFP batteries suffice for a pump. Long story short: most technicians do NEVER think about when something goes wrong and most do not even have at their own home the &quot;new&quot; systems they design so they do not really know them beside theory.

Reading the comments, and I find it amazing that people really do pay $5000-15,000 USD for a heat pump. They are super expensive in the USA at $2000-4000, but you can DIY in 1 hour. Really. The labor is truly fabricated.<p>In Asia, I&#x27;ve bought more then I could count, and they typically go for $500-700 for 2hp units, inverter, etc. I&#x27;ve debated bringing somme from Thailand or HK to USA because ven the cost in cargo on a plane makes it cheaper. Daikin for example are manufactured in Thailand, and also JP.

I had a similar problem 18 years ago. I had bought a house with a heat pump connected to the water heater. When it failed, I could not find a local technician competent enough in both plumbing and air conditioning who would touch it. I ended up with two discrete systems.

I’d love for someone to make a portable standalone heat pump for a swimming pool.<p>Why not make it solar powered with fold out panels. With 400% efficiency 1500 watts of solar power could get you 6000 watts of heating.

Geothermal is even better but can be cost prohibitive. Unlike a boiler, geothermal wells don’t “wear out” and with a steady supply of ground heat, are even more energy efficient.