I don't know if it's a boosterism thing or just ignorance but all the articles I'm reading about soon-to-come domestic heat pumps that work down to -20°F seem to just completely ignore what Asian manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Daikin, Fujitsu etc. build right now. Today. As in now. And to be clear, I mean today. Like, right now. They exist now.
This isn't to say we don't need much more heat pump manufacturing, and it would be cool if the US giants like Carrier, Lennox, York, etc. make heat pumps that work like Japanese ones but conform more to American tastes (let's be real, to American eyes the slim outdoor units look strange).
It's just really frustrating that people paint this as a groundbreaking achievement when it's really just, like, we are embarrassingly late.
@TechConnectify we had an ASHP installed in our property as part of a Welsh Government scheme to make homes more energy efficient (ours was built 1880 at the absolute latest, i found a bill of sale from then but can't find anything older) and the paperwork for that says it works down to something like -20
@TechConnectify Extrapolating the context of what you are saying, it sounds like these may be advertorials versus news. They are promoting products or services as new, noteworthy, or groundbreaking but have been around for a long time.
I believe advertorials should have a disclaimer that it such because people do confuse them for legitimate news.
@TechConnectify What’s American taste in heat pumps? Add a speaker to produce loud fake engine noises and from time to time spit out a large black smoke cloud? 😂
@alex "aren't commonly available" is the entire crux of this.
Obviously the technology to make this work exists, and it's understandable that Asian manufacturers don't produce drop-ins for American systems because that's outside their scope.
But I'm tired of people pretending that cold climate heat pumps are this magic soon-to-come thing. They are already here, but domestic manufacturers are dragging their feet.
@thomasfuchs no I just mean a barrel-style condensing unit. I genuinely think that people view things like Mitsubishi units to be kind of odd-looking, and I'd bet there's an HOA out there that forbids them for that reason
@TechConnectify I only learnt that heat pumps were not a thing in the US via your videos. I was shocked (and also, warm, thanks to my AC / heat pump installed in the late 90s).
@TechConnectify I wonder if a different design would push us out of a rut enough to rethink some of our norms.
I mean, I know the answer is no. But we are so stuck in our ways. It’s depressing.
@eliocamp to be clear they are not "not a thing" but historically they've been limited to special cases and/or climates that are mild.
Up here in the Midwest they are extremely rare, same goes for the Northeast
@thomasfuchs @TechConnectify lol, I'm amused by the idea that what America needs is an American flag or a racing stripe on them 😆
@TechConnectify any thoughts on the conundrum I’ve hit where to get adequate heating capacity, one ends up with an excess of cooling capacity?
@TechConnectify Is there some benefit to the classic US barrel-shaped heat exchanger unit? I always assumed they were that size because the cooling load of our large houses required that much coiling, but I admit I never actually checked to see if that's true.
@TechConnectify
-20F is about -28C. A quick Google search tells me that pretty much everyone says that "almost all great pumps made for Nordic climate work down to about -25C". Seemingly including rather old websites.
And indeed, heat pumps have been extremely popular for heating for many years here in Norway, which isn't known for its mild climate. But I'm sure American conditions are in some way exceptional...
@TechConnectify my new building is all heat pumps and electric stoves, no gas! 👍 now we just need induction (and the window frames are solid pieces of metal that make incredible thermal bridges)
@TechConnectify i think there’s just a lot of “we don’t commonly install them here so they don’t exist.”
Even in new build installations in New York I see mostly “works down to -5” setups and we have several weeks of nights below that every winter!
@TechConnectify Temperature control shower taps. We had to import ours from the EU.
There's a shockingly broad range of things which are omitted from North America for seemingly no reason. Things that are largely "comfort features" I'd think Americans would be all over.
Huh, do people install this kind of devices on their homes? I've only seen them on the roof of or outside commercial/industrial buildings, the "Asian" slim style seem to be the default on smaller buildings here.
Seems like it would be able to turn anything into a fridge/sauna!
@TechConnectify many people only want the most high tech thing, if this is what we need to do to activate that crowd let’s do it.
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs one advantage of the horizon heat pump in cold climates is that snow doesn’t accumulate on the fan. I have a Mitsubishi unit in New England.
@TechConnectify The next time I need an AC replacement I'm definitely going with a heat pump. Since I'll still have a furnace for back up heat, it just seems like a no brainier.
@TechConnectify At such temperatures (apart from places with significant ground movement), why would anyone use a heatpump with cold end in air? It seems to me that digging a well for a ground heatpump would be very quickly cost-effective.
@TechConnectify I'm staying with my aunt in Florida right now and I was annoyed that their 5 year old house doesn't have a heat pump. In Florida, where the lowest it gets is like 40. Why!?! 🤯 It drives me insane. 😅
@TechConnectify I wish I had known that before I bought a Hallowell Acadia in ~2007 (which died a quick death because of a bad design provided to Hallowell by the pump manufacturer Bristol). The other heat pump many people recommended at the time was the Mitsubishi Zuba-Central but it was only sold in Canada, not the US. Replaced it with some Rheem which works (and hasn't died) but is not quite as good in the really low temps.
@TechConnectify To me, they look underpowered. Surely, the big cube condenser looks like it moves a lot more heat than the slim units.
So the solution appears to be the big cube units, but reversible.
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs
That's odd. I've always thought the slim ones looked nicer (as the resident of a house with HVAC split between a barrel-type air-source pump and a geothermal system, I've always thought the air-source barrel looked kind of bad when compared to the practical invisibility of the other system)
@MysteriousBenji @TechConnectify funny, we were super close to getting geothermal at our last house (in Pennsylvania) but we decided to move to Arizona where heat pump + solar is like ultra-amazing
@TechConnectify Also I would prefer companies NOT cater to Americans that aren't used to slim units. I'd rather Americans get used to the much nicer slim form factors.
@TechConnectify I’d be happy if they could just settle on a refrigerant for a bit. R-22 is finally in the rear view but R-410a is scheduled to be phased out.
@TechConnectify I mean frankly the slim units look much nicer.. but if making it look the same as what we had gets more people to buy them and more HVAC companies to install them, I'm all for it.
@TechConnectify The looking weird thing is also 100% true in the opposite direction - we have a lot of Japanese air conditioning units (generally always with reverse cycle for heating too) here in Australia, and locally manufactured ones (like ActronAir) look very similar to those. To my eyes, a brand new AC/heat pump outdoor unit in the US looks to me like it is out of the late 80s... Same with the electrical switchboards, where modern ones from the US look kind of old to me (ours are pretty similar to the UK and Europe).
@TechConnectify why do the "slim" units seem strange to americans?
Are they *that* used to "big thing strong" that they can't envision something small doing something equally as powerful?
@TechConnectify And have existed for several years too. Ours is >6yrs old and can work down to -4F.
We just added a second unit this month for upstairs as well. So simple, it’s fantastic.
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs HOAs annoy me. In theory, it should be good to get a larger share of governance closer to the people it serves. But I've never heard of a HOA where that works in practice.
@TechConnectify
I would love to hear what CoP they claim at -30°C.
I have tried finding numbers before and failed. Heat storage or ground source heat pumps sound like a sensible idea especially for American homes with larger plots of land.
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs I personally love my Mitsubishi m-series!
Mine is only rated down to -13F, and it did have to call for supplemental heating for a 43hr period on the 23rd-24th this year.
It tends to be 2-3 days per year on average here in Ohio we dip below that.
I think the slim unit is a much improved look over my old barrel unit, and my neighbor on that side said it looked neat too.
(No HOA to deal with thankfully!)
@TechConnectify I do find the American standard in HVAC to be far behind the times compared to the rest of the world. Mini-split units with individual zone controls, inverter/synchronous motors, and reversible heat pumps are only just becoming popular, whereas these have been popular in other countries for a decade or two now.
@TechConnectify US being embarrassingly late to the rest of the world in infrastructure is sadly the norm
@TechConnectify in Seattle I’ve only seen Japanese-style units because they take up minimal space. They’re easy to mount on the side of a building or in other dead space where a natural gas meter would be
@TechConnectify @thomasfuchs as a data point my HOA was fine with a Samsung slim unit, and streamlined my approval because I’d done the noise impact research (in large part due to the TC video!)
@TechConnectify Had an interesting conversation over the holidays with a relative about, of all things, heat pumps. He'd been leaning towards getting one with a natural gas furnace as backup heat, but when getting quotes the tech convinced him that it would fail much earlier than the 15 year old dinosaur it was replacing, due to running twice as much (winter and summer). Any thoughts on this? #HeatPumps
@TechConnectify Agreed! Really disappointed that my Trane outdoor unit doesn’t work very well when the temperature drops below 10F, forcing me to switch to my gas auxiliary.
@TechConnectify My relatively new gas furnace honestly barely functions as expected below +20°F, so I rue that our equally new A/C condenser is a single direction Carrier CONSTANTLY.
@thomasfuchs @TechConnectify East Coast US seem to be far more interested in heat pumps, though still the big cube version of them. An uncle of mine got them installed on his house 15 years ago? Actually, 3 of them in a mini-split, but weirdly still central air style. He’d built 2 extensions on his house each with their own furnace and chiller unit.
I added AC to my current house 10 years ago, and the quote for a heat pump was 2x getting AC only… for “reasons”.
@bgolus @TechConnectify So messed up as it’s literally the same thing with like an extra pipe and two more wires or something
@thomasfuchs @TechConnectify Yep. All the extra cost was in the condenser unit itself. Zero extra work for the people installing it, but the cost of adding that extra valve ... 2x cost increase.
They sell $50 conversation kits for my AC to turn it into a heat pump, because it's literally the same box as the heat pump version with an extra valve and a different control board. But they're illegal in my state.
@TechConnectify In my travels abroad I’ve learned decisively that while we are fed a narrative of American exceptionalism it couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course Americans need to be told we invented or perfected the tech, so no doubt why your observation makes sense. Even in food tech we lag behind!
@TechConnectify I first noticed this with wind turbines. Saw an English article talking about this now wind turbine being installed in the states and how it was going to be the largest one in the world. But the number seemed silly to me. So I looked up European turbines. I couldn’t tell how they were measuring the American one, height or blade length, but it didn’t matter because neither would have made it even exceptionally large.
@TechConnectify somewhat related, I finally got around to running the numbers again and my heat pump is currently more cost effective than my furnace everywhere in its operating range (down to -5F)!
@TechConnectify have you by chance worked out what differentiates a cold climate heat pump from a normal one? I’m assuming it’s something to do with the maximum operating pressure of the compressor / the ability to operate efficiently across a range of pressures but I’ve yet to see it spelled out anywhere.
