1 00:00:00,049 --> 00:00:07,566 I completely shut off my heat when it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit outside for an entire 24 hours 2 00:00:07,566 --> 00:00:09,456 in order to prove a point: 3 00:00:09,456 --> 00:00:17,599 my home’s heating system, a furnace which was installed and specced for the structure by professioanls in the HVAC industry, 4 00:00:17,599 --> 00:00:20,837 is way too big for my home! 5 00:00:20,837 --> 00:00:23,021 Why did it get installed? 6 00:00:23,021 --> 00:00:30,943 I can only speculate, but it means that my current heating system absolutely should not be considered as any kind of baseline 7 00:00:30,943 --> 00:00:33,438 when it comes time to replace it. 8 00:00:33,438 --> 00:00:36,669 And many of you are probably in that same boat. 9 00:00:36,669 --> 00:00:40,429 If you are looking to make a change to your home’s heating and cooling system, 10 00:00:40,429 --> 00:00:44,669 especially if that change is moving from one heating technology to another, 11 00:00:44,669 --> 00:00:50,629 it pays to find out what heating and cooling capacity you actually need for your home. 12 00:00:50,629 --> 00:00:53,765 And the good news is that it’s not that hard anymore. 13 00:00:53,765 --> 00:01:00,500 Before we get to that, though, this is a tweaked and condensed version of a longer video on my main channel. 14 00:01:00,500 --> 00:01:03,955 If you’d like some additional context and plenty more runtime 15 00:01:03,955 --> 00:01:08,229 you can check that out there or through the link in the description. 16 00:01:08,229 --> 00:01:10,440 And I’d like to begin this version 17 00:01:10,440 --> 00:01:14,680 by letting you in on a secret the industry doesn’t want you to know. 18 00:01:15,076 --> 00:01:17,810 I’m not really joking, despite the cliche. 19 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:19,295 Here goes: 20 00:01:19,295 --> 00:01:22,989 those fancy heat pumps they keep talking about on the news? 21 00:01:22,989 --> 00:01:25,219 Well it turns out, those heat pumps … 22 00:01:25,219 --> 00:01:27,719 ARE JUST AIR CONDITIONERS! 23 00:01:27,719 --> 00:01:29,425 That’s all they are. 24 00:01:29,425 --> 00:01:37,784 They’re just air conditioners equipped with an extra valve which allows them to operate in reverse to produce heating in addition to cooling. 25 00:01:37,784 --> 00:01:39,986 That's all that a heat pump is! 26 00:01:39,986 --> 00:01:45,159 Everyone in the HVAC industry knows this, at least I sure hope they do, 27 00:01:45,159 --> 00:01:49,590 but because heat pumps are hyped up right now and people are interested in them, 28 00:01:49,590 --> 00:01:57,726 in areas where they haven't been common they are often painted as fancier and more exotic machines than they really are. 29 00:01:57,726 --> 00:02:05,780 The only truly new things on the scene are cold-climate heat pumps which operate efficiently even in very cold weather, 30 00:02:05,780 --> 00:02:09,211 but those just have little tweaks to the underlying technology 31 00:02:09,211 --> 00:02:16,138 and are not fundamentally different from the commodity equipment that’s been getting installed the world over for decades. 32 00:02:16,138 --> 00:02:20,269 So watch out for price gouging - it’s rampant right now. 33 00:02:20,269 --> 00:02:28,114 And for reference, poke around on HVAC wholesale sites to get an idea of how much more a heat pump system should cost 34 00:02:28,114 --> 00:02:31,330 compared to a new furnace and air conditioner. 35 00:02:31,330 --> 00:02:34,910 You’ll quickly find out it’s not much at all. 36 00:02:34,910 --> 00:02:37,791 If you already have an air conditioner and furnace, 37 00:02:37,791 --> 00:02:45,809 the most expensive and frankly only different task when installing a heat pump is running a new circuit for backup resistive heating. 38 00:02:45,809 --> 00:02:51,459 And that’s not always even necessary anymore depending on your local climate or your backup heat source. 39 00:02:51,459 --> 00:02:54,879 There’s a lot of nuance here which I’m skipping over for time, 40 00:02:54,879 --> 00:03:02,850 but bottom line, $20,000 quotes to install a heat pump are ridiculous outside weird circumstances. 41 00:03:02,850 --> 00:03:05,666 But this video isn’t so much about price gouging, 42 00:03:05,666 --> 00:03:11,319 it’s about figuring out how much of a heat pump (or other heating system) you actually need. 43 00:03:11,319 --> 00:03:15,055 I live in a fairly new townhome in the Chicago area. 44 00:03:15,055 --> 00:03:21,050 Because it was built to recent codes and I'm sharing walls with neighbors, it’s pretty energy efficient. 45 00:03:21,050 --> 00:03:25,239 Yet whoever specced its heating system was apparently not given the memo! 46 00:03:25,239 --> 00:03:31,880 It’s been equipped with a bog-standard 60,000 BTU/hr furnace and 2-ton air conditioner. 47 00:03:32,038 --> 00:03:36,716 The air conditioner, miraculously, is actually close to right-on-the-money. 48 00:03:36,716 --> 00:03:39,319 But the furnace is way too effin' big! 49 00:03:39,319 --> 00:03:42,694 It is barely running even in extreme cold. 50 00:03:42,694 --> 00:03:44,105 How do I know that? 51 00:03:44,290 --> 00:03:50,690 Eyes and ears are pretty helpful here but even more helpful is the fact that I have a smart thermostat. 52 00:03:50,690 --> 00:03:57,695 Since I have a simple singe-stage heating system which is only ever heating at its full output or not heating at all, 53 00:03:57,695 --> 00:04:05,264 a log of how much time it spent heating in a day could be used to determine how much heating output it actually produced that day. 54 00:04:05,766 --> 00:04:11,495 And wouldn’t ya know it, the smart thermostat logs what it tells the furnace to do over the course of a day 55 00:04:11,495 --> 00:04:15,591 and my user account retains that data for well over a year. 56 00:04:15,591 --> 00:04:18,567 So with a quick look in my thermostat’s app 57 00:04:18,567 --> 00:04:22,848 (but not the Nest app, the Google Home app… don’t get me started) 58 00:04:22,848 --> 00:04:26,960 I can look back in time to see what it did on any particular day. 59 00:04:26,960 --> 00:04:28,250 So let’s do that. 60 00:04:28,250 --> 00:04:31,472 Here’s what a typical winter day looks like weather-wise: 61 00:04:31,472 --> 00:04:36,740 January 5th was a cloudy day with the temperature hovering right around freezing point. 62 00:04:36,740 --> 00:04:42,657 With essentially no help from the sun, my furnace was providing the only heat to keep the house warm 63 00:04:42,657 --> 00:04:46,820 and it needed to run for 3 hours and 10 minutes total. 64 00:04:46,820 --> 00:04:51,644 That right there makes it obvious the furnace is much bigger than it needs to be, 65 00:04:51,644 --> 00:04:54,000 but this is Chicago. 66 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:56,437 It gets a lot colder than just freezing. 67 00:04:56,437 --> 00:04:58,720 Like two Christmases ago. 68 00:04:58,720 --> 00:05:06,000 December 23rd 2022 started out at a balmy -8 degrees (which is -22 for those who speak Metric). 69 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:08,525 Despite it being that frigid, though, 70 00:05:08,525 --> 00:05:12,250 the furnace only ran for 6 hours total. 71 00:05:12,250 --> 00:05:16,238 6 hours of 24 in the day is only 25% 72 00:05:16,238 --> 00:05:19,480 (or 1/4th for those of you that speak fractions). 73 00:05:19,480 --> 00:05:27,562 Running only a quarter of the time in weather like that suggests the furnace is in fact four times larger than it needs to be. 74 00:05:28,222 --> 00:05:30,435 Now, I wasn’t home that day. 75 00:05:30,435 --> 00:05:37,137 That’s good in that there weren’t any other sources of heat like cooking appliances or hot water usage to skew the data, 76 00:05:37,137 --> 00:05:42,940 but it’s bad in that the set point was only 62 degrees and not what I normally keep it at. 77 00:05:42,940 --> 00:05:46,732 Since it can get a bit colder than -8 degrees ‘round these parts 78 00:05:46,732 --> 00:05:50,369 and since normally I keep it a little warmer when I’m at home, 79 00:05:50,369 --> 00:05:55,780 I’ll go ahead and fudge that and say my furnace is 3 times oversized. 80 00:05:55,780 --> 00:05:59,500 Since my current system produces 60,000 BTU/hr, 81 00:05:59,500 --> 00:06:05,169 then apparently I only really need 20,000 BTU/hr of heating available. 82 00:06:05,169 --> 00:06:09,679 Which, in heat pump speak, is not even two tons. 83 00:06:09,679 --> 00:06:12,130 That’s pretty wild. 84 00:06:12,130 --> 00:06:17,840 If that’s true, then I actually need about the same heating output in the dead of winter 85 00:06:17,840 --> 00:06:21,428 as I need cooling output in the hottest parts of summer. 86 00:06:21,428 --> 00:06:25,740 Which, admittedly, feels kinda wrong. 87 00:06:25,740 --> 00:06:31,621 In the winter, I have to fight an 80 or 85 degree temperature differential in those arctic blasts 88 00:06:31,621 --> 00:06:39,288 but we rarely ever crack 100 degrees in the summer and most of the time we are only fighting a 15 or 20 degree differential. 89 00:06:39,288 --> 00:06:42,690 But, well, the data doesn’t lie. 90 00:06:42,690 --> 00:06:45,789 However, there are some reasons to be cautious. 91 00:06:45,789 --> 00:06:50,567 Firstly, while my furnace is rated for 60,000 BTU per hour, 92 00:06:50,567 --> 00:06:58,461 that’s actually it’s input rating - it only releases 92 percent of the heat energy in the gas it’s burning into my home 93 00:06:58,461 --> 00:07:00,400 (the rest is wasted in the exhaust), 94 00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:03,898 so in reality it’s output is slightly less. 95 00:07:03,898 --> 00:07:08,369 But that’s presuming it’s working correctly, which I don’t have a way to confirm. 96 00:07:08,369 --> 00:07:12,212 It could be outputting more heat than it’s designed to. 97 00:07:12,212 --> 00:07:19,543 There are also two other minor sources of data fuzziness which reduce the accuracy of a data-logging thermostat. 98 00:07:19,543 --> 00:07:24,082 The raw energy content of natural gas varies somewhat from day to day, 99 00:07:24,082 --> 00:07:31,720 so even if I knew for a fact that my furnace were operating perfectly, its actual heat output won’t be quite consistent. 100 00:07:32,116 --> 00:07:35,858 Also, the thermostat logs how long it calls for heat, 101 00:07:35,858 --> 00:07:41,443 but at every start-up, there’s actually a delay while the furnace goes through its ignition sequence 102 00:07:41,443 --> 00:07:45,569 so the thermostat is slightly overreporting total energy output. 103 00:07:45,569 --> 00:07:53,777 Now, to be clear, these little sources of error are little and unlikely to amount to much, plus two of them work in my favor anyway. 104 00:07:53,777 --> 00:07:59,426 But it does mean that my 20,000 BTU/hr conclusion probably isn’t perfect, 105 00:07:59,426 --> 00:08:03,629 especially because I fudged it a bit to account for not being home. 106 00:08:03,629 --> 00:08:08,169 I still know my furnace is wildly oversized no matter what, 107 00:08:08,169 --> 00:08:13,020 but I wanted to know exactly what sort of heat I needed in extreme weather. 108 00:08:13,522 --> 00:08:16,056 And I knew a trick to find out: 109 00:08:16,056 --> 00:08:17,965 Just get a bunch of space heaters. 110 00:08:18,229 --> 00:08:20,508 See, since heat is heat 111 00:08:20,508 --> 00:08:23,765 you can convert between units as much as you like. 112 00:08:23,765 --> 00:08:29,096 20,000 BTU/hr is equivalent to 5.86 kW. 113 00:08:29,096 --> 00:08:33,702 And an ordinary space heater like this can pump out 1.5 kW. 114 00:08:33,702 --> 00:08:37,577 So assuming my thermostat data and math are correct, 115 00:08:37,577 --> 00:08:42,490 simply running four space heaters on high (which would produce 6 kilowatts of heat) 116 00:08:42,490 --> 00:08:49,256 should actually provide more than enough heat to keep my home warm even in the most extreme weather we ever get. 117 00:08:49,256 --> 00:08:50,830 So… 118 00:08:50,830 --> 00:08:53,721 I thought, why not just wait for some extreme weather 119 00:08:53,721 --> 00:08:55,583 and then try that and see if it works? 120 00:08:55,583 --> 00:08:57,003 So I did! 121 00:08:57,003 --> 00:08:59,913 But - I used more than four heaters. 122 00:08:59,913 --> 00:09:02,576 And the setup was rather involved. 123 00:09:02,576 --> 00:09:04,181 And pretty risky. 124 00:09:04,181 --> 00:09:07,843 So first let me just say, don’t try this yourself. 125 00:09:07,843 --> 00:09:12,171 I took a number of big risks designing and performing this test. 126 00:09:12,171 --> 00:09:15,178 I could have ended up with frozen pipes if I wasn’t careful, 127 00:09:15,178 --> 00:09:22,808 and I put myself at risk of a fire using the space heaters, particularly because getting enough heat distributed in enough places 128 00:09:22,808 --> 00:09:27,298 required the use of extension cords, splitters, power strips, and even 129 00:09:27,298 --> 00:09:28,602 Christmas lights. 130 00:09:29,499 --> 00:09:30,616 Yeah. 131 00:09:30,616 --> 00:09:35,275 To save on time I’m not going into all the considerations I had to make for the test - 132 00:09:35,275 --> 00:09:38,926 you can check out the main channel video if you want more of those details. 133 00:09:38,926 --> 00:09:45,445 But the bottom line was I had about 6,500 watts of resistive heat distributed throughout my home. 134 00:09:45,445 --> 00:09:52,092 The heat sources were powered through digital temperature controllers so I could properly maintain a consistent temperature with them, 135 00:09:52,092 --> 00:10:00,120 and they were all metered through energy monitors so I could total up how much energy was actually used during the test. 136 00:10:00,120 --> 00:10:03,825 I set up each temperature controller to maintain the same temperature band 137 00:10:03,825 --> 00:10:08,275 that my furnace normally does in each room when set to 69 degrees, 138 00:10:08,275 --> 00:10:14,259 and with the setup finalized and in-place, all that was left to do now was reset the energy monitors, 139 00:10:14,259 --> 00:10:15,944 turn on all those heaters, 140 00:10:15,944 --> 00:10:17,973 and shut off the furnace. 141 00:10:17,973 --> 00:10:19,787 So that’s what I did. 142 00:10:19,787 --> 00:10:28,250 The test began at 8 AM on January 14th when the outside temperature was -11°F (or -24 Celsius). 143 00:10:28,250 --> 00:10:32,378 With the furnace disabled, the heaters would have to hold their own. 144 00:10:32,378 --> 00:10:36,687 Before long the temperature controllers had switched them all on but then - 145 00:10:36,687 --> 00:10:39,070 they all started going off. 146 00:10:39,070 --> 00:10:42,956 This meant that the heaters were sufficient to raise the indoor temperature 147 00:10:42,956 --> 00:10:46,700 despite it being 80 degrees colder outside than inside. 148 00:10:46,700 --> 00:10:52,089 So clearly, that 6.5kW of heat on tap was more than enough. 149 00:10:52,089 --> 00:10:58,665 And 24 hours later, the heaters had used a grand total of 110.76 kWh, 150 00:10:58,665 --> 00:11:06,530 representing an average power draw of only 4.61 kW or 15,729 BTU/hr. 151 00:11:08,166 --> 00:11:12,680 Now, the whole 24 hour span included some sources of noise. 152 00:11:12,680 --> 00:11:17,978 For one, it was a bright sunny day during the test so the sun was helping to heat my home a bit, 153 00:11:17,978 --> 00:11:23,029 and I did prepare food which added some heat not accounted for by the meters. 154 00:11:23,029 --> 00:11:27,489 However, I was taking readings from all of the meters every four hours, 155 00:11:27,489 --> 00:11:34,697 and between 8PM (long after I made dinner and the sun had set) and 8AM the next day (just after sunrise), 156 00:11:34,697 --> 00:11:38,504 the heaters used 61.38 kWh 157 00:11:38,504 --> 00:11:47,277 representing a continuous draw of 5.115 kW, or 17,452 BTU/hr. 158 00:11:47,277 --> 00:11:53,102 The outdoor temperature during that period was fluctuating between -9 and -11 degrees, 159 00:11:53,102 --> 00:11:57,582 which is just a teensy bit warmer than the coldest temps we typically experience. 160 00:11:58,215 --> 00:12:00,013 So - there we go. 161 00:12:00,013 --> 00:12:01,296 That’s the number. 162 00:12:01,296 --> 00:12:11,337 17,452 BTU/hr is the actual heating load of my home when it’s -10 outside and about 70 inside. 163 00:12:11,337 --> 00:12:15,698 Which means that sure enough, my furnace is triple oversized. 164 00:12:15,698 --> 00:12:18,039 Actually a bit more than that. 165 00:12:18,039 --> 00:12:21,788 For me and my home, this is excellent news! 166 00:12:21,788 --> 00:12:26,676 Because I’m in a townhome which was built assuming everything that could be gas would be gas, 167 00:12:26,676 --> 00:12:30,420 I only have 100A electrical service which is limiting. 168 00:12:30,420 --> 00:12:41,019 But even using resistive heat, as I did in the test, I only need just a hair over 5 kW to stay warm which is only a 20A electrical load. 169 00:12:41,019 --> 00:12:46,940 A heat pump will use even less power so long as it can operate with a coefficient of performance above 1, 170 00:12:46,940 --> 00:12:51,394 which these cold climate heat pumps can do well into negative temperatures. 171 00:12:51,394 --> 00:13:00,436 So when it comes time to replace my furnace, a 2-ton heat pump (which can normally produce 24,000 BTU/hr or 7 kW of heat) 172 00:13:00,436 --> 00:13:07,964 will be just fine and 5kW of backup heat strips will be more than enough to supplement the heat pump when required 173 00:13:07,964 --> 00:13:12,000 or even function as my only heat source in an emergency. 174 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:15,352 But my experiment, although it was extremely valuable, 175 00:13:15,352 --> 00:13:17,733 was also absurd. 176 00:13:17,733 --> 00:13:23,993 It is not a thing anybody should do and the good news is - nobody has to! 177 00:13:23,993 --> 00:13:27,771 You might find this hard to believe, but those scientists? 178 00:13:27,771 --> 00:13:33,474 The've figured out the thermal properties of the materials we use to build our homes! 179 00:13:33,474 --> 00:13:37,975 Insulation has an R-value which tells you its resistance to heat transfer. 180 00:13:37,975 --> 00:13:47,130 Windows have R-values, too - plus low-e coatings on the glass help reduce solar heating in the summer and reduce radiant losses in the winter. 181 00:13:47,130 --> 00:13:50,282 The materials on the exterior of the home have an influence, too - 182 00:13:50,282 --> 00:13:53,138 and we know all this information. 183 00:13:53,138 --> 00:13:55,962 To tie it all together into something useful, 184 00:13:55,962 --> 00:14:03,460 there are these tools out there called measuring tapes which allow us to gauge the size of walls and windows. 185 00:14:03,460 --> 00:14:06,620 If you actually take the time to assess these variables, 186 00:14:06,620 --> 00:14:16,043 you can perform a load calculation which will tell you how much heating (and cooling) your home actually needs depending on how it was built. 187 00:14:16,043 --> 00:14:19,070 Now, I am not here to show you how to do one. 188 00:14:19,070 --> 00:14:25,385 It’s not that complicated - you’re essentially just finding the total area of your home’s exterior surfaces 189 00:14:25,385 --> 00:14:28,149 (taking note of window and door dimensions, too), 190 00:14:28,149 --> 00:14:32,399 then plugging that information along with their R-values into a spreadsheet 191 00:14:32,399 --> 00:14:35,549 (and don’t forget to count the ceiling and floors, too). 192 00:14:35,549 --> 00:14:38,250 But it is pretty tedious. 193 00:14:38,250 --> 00:14:42,245 Still, for grins and giggles, I did one for my home. 194 00:14:42,245 --> 00:14:45,121 I used on online Manual J calculator 195 00:14:45,121 --> 00:14:50,318 (manual-J is essentially the industry standard for how to do a block load calculation) 196 00:14:50,318 --> 00:14:54,378 and after inputting all my measurements, it told me that I would need… 197 00:14:54,378 --> 00:15:03,348 19,000 BTU/hr of heating with an outdoor temperature of -15 and an indoor setpoint of 70 degrees. 198 00:15:03,348 --> 00:15:07,119 That’s within spitting distance of what my experiment just showed, 199 00:15:07,119 --> 00:15:15,580 and since it was a little warmer during the test than -15, coming in a tad higher than my experiment makes perfect sense. 200 00:15:15,580 --> 00:15:20,470 So rest assured those calculations do, indeed, work. 201 00:15:20,470 --> 00:15:24,913 If someone had actually done that calculation (and believed its results) 202 00:15:24,913 --> 00:15:29,849 they would never have put a 60,000 BTU/hr furnace in my home. 203 00:15:29,849 --> 00:15:33,260 That's just way more than my home needs. 204 00:15:33,260 --> 00:15:36,606 But I can feel your trepidation coming through the screen - 205 00:15:36,606 --> 00:15:41,521 why would I conclude that having just enough heat would be… enough? 206 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:45,990 Well, enough is by definition enough. 207 00:15:45,990 --> 00:15:49,321 When a heating system is properly sized to a given home, 208 00:15:49,321 --> 00:15:57,429 then when the weather outside gets frightful, the heating system will need to run nonstop, and that is actually normal. 209 00:15:57,429 --> 00:16:01,420 There’s a concept called design temperature which is important here. 210 00:16:01,420 --> 00:16:06,800 Where I live, -15 outside is about the coldest we ever experience. 211 00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:12,872 And 70 degrees inside is the warmest I’d ever need my primary heating system to keep the house. 212 00:16:12,872 --> 00:16:19,624 Those are my design temperatures: the absolute worst conditions a heating system should expect to fight, 213 00:16:19,624 --> 00:16:23,385 and they only show up once or twice a year - if that. 214 00:16:23,385 --> 00:16:30,571 There isn’t actually a need to have any more heat capacity available than what the design temperatures dictate - 215 00:16:30,571 --> 00:16:35,184 especially when, even if the weather happens to dip below the design temp, 216 00:16:35,184 --> 00:16:38,874 a wide variety of simple supplemental heat sources, 217 00:16:38,874 --> 00:16:41,388 such as all those space heaters I now own, 218 00:16:41,388 --> 00:16:43,690 are available to fill the gap. 219 00:16:43,690 --> 00:16:49,436 But actually sizing heating systems appropriately seemingly never happens. 220 00:16:49,436 --> 00:16:57,169 The HVAC industry is currently stuck in a habit where they build tremendous amounts of margin into a home’s heating system. 221 00:16:57,934 --> 00:17:01,721 To be fair to them, there are some good reasons to do that: 222 00:17:01,721 --> 00:17:06,301 when you only have a single source of heat, then when the weather hits design temps, 223 00:17:06,301 --> 00:17:15,935 a properly-sized heating system will take a long time to increase the temperature if, say, you’re like me and like to turn the heat down a bit at night. 224 00:17:15,935 --> 00:17:20,680 But the main reason they’re always going so overboard is that… 225 00:17:20,680 --> 00:17:22,284 that's easy. 226 00:17:22,284 --> 00:17:24,996 Particularly when you have gas at your disposal, 227 00:17:24,996 --> 00:17:31,857 you can just use simple rules of thumb such as a home’s footprint and number of floors to pick out a furnace - 228 00:17:31,857 --> 00:17:35,490 then choose the next size up, just in case. 229 00:17:35,490 --> 00:17:42,000 I can all but guarantee that’s how my home ended up with such an oversized heating system. 230 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:45,234 But this habit needs to die. 231 00:17:45,234 --> 00:17:48,650 We’re not gonna be heating our homes with gas forever. 232 00:17:48,650 --> 00:17:51,684 Pick whatever reason you’d like, there are plenty! 233 00:17:51,684 --> 00:17:58,579 Heat pumps are in the news so much these days because they allow us to capture ambient heat energy from outside, 234 00:17:58,579 --> 00:18:01,831 concentrate it, and move it inside. 235 00:18:01,831 --> 00:18:03,902 That process is so efficient 236 00:18:03,902 --> 00:18:12,534 that we can end up with 3 or sometimes even 4 times as much energy inside our homes than we spend running the heat pump to collect it. 237 00:18:12,534 --> 00:18:19,838 That is why they are such a big deal - it’s a way we can get more heat with less energy expenditure, 238 00:18:19,838 --> 00:18:23,526 and doing more with less is always a good idea. 239 00:18:23,526 --> 00:18:32,060 For that reason alone, more and more people will be using heat pumps as their primary or possibly only source of heat. 240 00:18:32,060 --> 00:18:36,430 They just make way too much sense to not use. 241 00:18:36,430 --> 00:18:38,813 And when speccing a heat pump system, 242 00:18:38,813 --> 00:18:45,083 actually installing the correct equipment with the correct capacity is very important! 243 00:18:45,083 --> 00:18:46,853 More than it’s ever been. 244 00:18:47,144 --> 00:18:50,540 There are a whole bunch of reasons that this is the case. 245 00:18:50,540 --> 00:18:54,111 For one, heat pumps are electric sources of heating and cooling, 246 00:18:54,111 --> 00:18:58,750 so larger systems require more electrical capacity to run them. 247 00:18:58,750 --> 00:19:02,994 Therefore, concluding that you need a bigger heat pump than you actually do 248 00:19:02,994 --> 00:19:10,970 can come with a whole host of potential headaches including the need to upsize circuits or potentially even get a service upgrade. 249 00:19:10,970 --> 00:19:14,299 So you absolutely don’t want to go overboard. 250 00:19:14,669 --> 00:19:20,814 Plus, if you want a backup generator or even a whole home battery system which are getting more and more popular, 251 00:19:20,814 --> 00:19:26,661 bigger heat pumps will need bigger generators, batteries, transfer switches, and all that jazz. 252 00:19:26,661 --> 00:19:30,630 Having more than you need can be a legitimate problem. 253 00:19:30,630 --> 00:19:35,546 Plus, I keep running across folks who have been told by HVAC contractors 254 00:19:35,546 --> 00:19:40,541 that their home’s current ductwork isn’t big enough to have a heat pump. 255 00:19:40,541 --> 00:19:52,794 Maybe that’s true, but if that contractor hasn’t done a load calculation or any sort of sanity check on whether the home’s current heating system is actually appropriate, 256 00:19:52,794 --> 00:19:58,370 then the contractor simply doesn’t have enough information to be making that conclusion. 257 00:19:58,370 --> 00:20:05,167 Those ducts may be perfectly fine for the heat pump that’s actually appropriate for that home. 258 00:20:05,167 --> 00:20:10,399 Additionally, and this is something that everyone in the industry should know very well, 259 00:20:10,399 --> 00:20:15,456 oversizing a heat pump can lead to nasty moisture problems in the summer months: 260 00:20:15,456 --> 00:20:20,597 if you have too much cooling capacity, the heat pump might short-cycle 261 00:20:20,597 --> 00:20:25,045 and that means it won’t run long enough to actually dehumidify the air. 262 00:20:25,045 --> 00:20:30,266 What I personally think the industry needs to get more comfortable with - quickly - is that 263 00:20:30,266 --> 00:20:36,110 secondary heat sources will become much more common as we transition to heat pumps. 264 00:20:36,110 --> 00:20:43,179 And those are going to function as the margin that traditionally gets figured into gas-fired systems. 265 00:20:43,179 --> 00:20:47,910 I mentioned backup heat strips previously - those are just old-fashioned heating elements 266 00:20:47,910 --> 00:20:51,088 (not unlike the wire elements in these space heaters) 267 00:20:51,088 --> 00:20:55,027 that get tucked into the air handler to provide additional heat. 268 00:20:55,027 --> 00:20:58,919 They are often referred to as auxiliary heat or emergency heat. 269 00:20:58,919 --> 00:21:00,932 And both of those terms are apt: 270 00:21:00,932 --> 00:21:05,037 the heat strips provide an emergency backup in case the heat pump fails, 271 00:21:05,037 --> 00:21:12,492 but if the heat pump is working, they can work alongside it to boost the total system output when required. 272 00:21:12,492 --> 00:21:14,239 If configured correctly, 273 00:21:14,239 --> 00:21:19,441 then when the temperatures are approaching design conditions and the heat pump is only barely adequate, 274 00:21:19,441 --> 00:21:23,644 the thermostat can command the heat strips to work alongside the heat pump 275 00:21:23,644 --> 00:21:29,760 to perhaps double the system output and quickly raise the indoor temperature when requested. 276 00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:36,532 And even if the temperature dips below design conditions, meaning the heat pump is no longer sufficient on its own, 277 00:21:36,532 --> 00:21:39,860 modern cold-climate heat pumps don’t just stop pumping. 278 00:21:39,860 --> 00:21:43,356 They’ll keep on working well into the negative temperatures. 279 00:21:43,356 --> 00:21:50,749 They probably won't be putting out much heat, but it will be something - so the heat strips won’t be working alone. 280 00:21:50,749 --> 00:21:56,242 In other words, there is still a margin - it just looks a little different now. 281 00:21:56,242 --> 00:22:01,719 So to recap - first of all, heat pumps are not magic machines! 282 00:22:01,719 --> 00:22:05,462 Don't let anyone convince you they're revolutionary technology, 283 00:22:05,462 --> 00:22:14,283 they’re just reversible air conditioners and they should only cost marginally more than a conventional heating and cooling system to purchase and install, 284 00:22:14,283 --> 00:22:19,554 with the only major potential hiccup being provisions for backup heating if necessary. 285 00:22:19,554 --> 00:22:23,684 If you’re getting a $20,000 quote for a central heat pump, 286 00:22:23,684 --> 00:22:28,657 ask why on Earth it’s so high and what sort of equipment they’ll be installing. 287 00:22:28,657 --> 00:22:33,289 Then poke around on those wholesale sites to see if their bid makes any sense at all 288 00:22:33,289 --> 00:22:39,370 or if they’re just playing amateur economist and testing to see just how far they can push what the market will bear. 289 00:22:40,030 --> 00:22:46,185 For those of you that don't have central heating systems, ductless mini-splits are gonna be great options 290 00:22:46,185 --> 00:22:50,360 but they are going to be more expensive because they involve more work. 291 00:22:50,360 --> 00:22:54,558 Still, though, the equipment itself isn’t very expensive 292 00:22:54,558 --> 00:22:56,814 and the work isn’t really that involved 293 00:22:56,814 --> 00:23:00,040 (I’ve done it myself and I’m just some schmuck on the Internet) 294 00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:02,551 so… shop around. 295 00:23:02,551 --> 00:23:09,968 Second, nobody should ever be sizing replacement equipment based on what is currently installed. 296 00:23:10,179 --> 00:23:17,348 Depressingly often, what’s there now is oversized up the wazoo and blatantly inappropriate for that home - 297 00:23:17,348 --> 00:23:20,710 especially when a home is on its fourth or fifth system. 298 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:26,049 Imagine how out of control it can get when each installer keeps jumping to the next size 299 00:23:26,049 --> 00:23:27,442 just in case. 300 00:23:27,442 --> 00:23:34,857 There are many, many ways to do a sanity check on that equipment but it rarely ever happens. 301 00:23:34,857 --> 00:23:38,672 Just this past Spring my parents got a cold climate heat pump 302 00:23:38,672 --> 00:23:46,549 and the sales rep who came out somehow figured they’d need a 5-ton heat pump based on, as far as I can tell, 303 00:23:46,549 --> 00:23:51,167 nothing but a guess and maybe the output of their old system. 304 00:23:51,537 --> 00:23:55,043 But had that rep looked at the data from Nest, 305 00:23:55,043 --> 00:24:00,123 he would have seen that their old system had never run for more than 12 hours in a day 306 00:24:00,123 --> 00:24:08,440 so it was about double oversized and a three-ton heat pump (the same size as their existing air conditioner) would be sufficient. 307 00:24:08,651 --> 00:24:14,010 Luckily I was there for this process, showed him that data, and he listened to me. 308 00:24:14,010 --> 00:24:17,735 And sure enough, their 3-ton heat pump is working just fine 309 00:24:17,735 --> 00:24:24,000 and the heat strips were only required once this winter, and for just a few hours at that. 310 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,125 If you’ve got a smart thermostat, 311 00:24:26,125 --> 00:24:30,489 the historical data it provides can be tremendously useful. 312 00:24:30,489 --> 00:24:34,576 HVAC professionals really oughta be looking at that data (when it's available), 313 00:24:34,576 --> 00:24:39,311 And when it's not, they need to be doing proper load calculations! 314 00:24:39,311 --> 00:24:43,254 That needs to be wayyyy more common than it is right now, and somebody 315 00:24:43,254 --> 00:24:48,184 (perhaps even the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, the publishers of Manual J) 316 00:24:48,184 --> 00:24:53,521 should really build a guided tool to help professionals do this quickly. 317 00:24:53,627 --> 00:24:57,623 Bottom line, the tactics of yesterday are no longer appropriate. 318 00:24:57,623 --> 00:25:01,940 Everything is changing so habits need to, as well. 319 00:25:01,940 --> 00:25:08,262 Frankly, if you are in the HVAC business, you could really differentiate yourself from your competitors by 320 00:25:08,262 --> 00:25:16,490 1) actually investigating the performance of the equipment that’s already there to see if it’s correct, perhaps by looking at thermostat data if available, 321 00:25:16,490 --> 00:25:22,420 2) performing even just basic load calculations to check that you’re somewhere in the ballpark, 322 00:25:22,420 --> 00:25:26,551 3) educating your customers on how heat pump systems work 323 00:25:26,551 --> 00:25:31,236 and how the heat strips help to fill in any gaps and, most importantly, 324 00:25:31,236 --> 00:25:37,468 4) charging honest prices for heat pumps which will, get this, 325 00:25:37,468 --> 00:25:40,442 cause you to win all the bids! 326 00:25:40,442 --> 00:25:45,990 Honestly this industry is ripe for disruption, and it doesn’t need to come from outside. 327 00:25:45,990 --> 00:25:49,088 One of you just needs to wake up and smell the roses. 328 00:25:49,088 --> 00:25:51,817 Change is scary, and difficult! 329 00:25:51,817 --> 00:25:56,360 But one of the great things about heat pumps (and electric technologies in general) 330 00:25:56,360 --> 00:25:59,352 is that they are incredibly flexible. 331 00:25:59,352 --> 00:26:02,913 It’s not just fire in a box with air blowing through it, 332 00:26:02,913 --> 00:26:08,598 it’s a modular toolkit which can be configured in many ways and tailored to any home. 333 00:26:08,598 --> 00:26:11,577 And they’re only gonna get better and better as time goes on! 334 00:26:11,577 --> 00:26:18,000 Already they are appropriate in climates like mine which was unheard of not that many years ago. 335 00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,064 So why not learn some new tricks? 336 00:26:21,064 --> 00:26:23,155 Isn’t that what makes life fun? 337 00:26:24,238 --> 00:26:27,985 Thanks for watching, and more pumping more now!