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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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My friend, there is nothing "new" about this technology. It has been around for ages. As a child I lived in a home with a heat pump, and that was in the late 80s. I'm gettin' pretty old here, and heat pumps are even older than me. Heat pumps are just air conditioners with one extra part: a reversing valve that allows the direction of flow to be switched so the hot side of the system can be inside in the winter and outside in the summer.
Heat pumps don't require further evolution to become practical, they're already practical. Beyond practical! It's a heating technology capable of efficiency greater than 100%. It's called a "heat pump" because the system doesn't create heat, it moves heat. From outside to inside in winter, and inside to outside in summer. Since a heat pump is not creating heat, instead moving energy that already exists, it's possible to get more energy out (in the form of heat) than the energy you put in (in the form of electricity). Generative heating technologies (natural gas or oil furnace, resistive electric heat) cannot match that as they will always be below 100% efficiency.
I live in Canada, I have a heat pump, and it is great. If you think heat pumps are bad, or not suited to northern climates, or not yet practical... I'm sorry, but you're misinformed.
What's new is that heat pumps capable of warming a house in truly cold weather became commercially available in the US
My heat pump does fine at 0F. And has done since the late 80s. And if it can’t it has electric backup heat.
This has been what's in my house/apartments since I was 8 and first learned about them when ours went out and my grandpa came over to fix it.
Heat pump, with 1-3 rows of coils for electric backup heat. Lowest Temps I've experienced were -20F and highest were 110F. Struggled to cool below 75 at the top, and heat above 60 at the lows. But those are rare extremes (on the low side anyway, I expect the high side to "peak" more often in coming years)
And none of the systems were younger than 2005.
Ground source or air?
Air. Just a bog-standard midrange heat pump, though it's probably grossly oversized.
So you have an integrated system that all the appliances I listed run on? Or you have an old fashioned forced air unit with its own condenser?
No, because that would be silly.
you are the one saying you had it in your childhood home.