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I completely shut off my heat when it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit outside
for an entire 24 hours to prove a point:

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my home’s heating system is wildly oversized

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and replacing that equipment with more modern technology will be much less involved than Local HVAC Company X probably thinks.

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One day in the not-too-distant future,

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I will undoubtedly be replacing my gas-fired forced-air furnace
with an electric heat pump.

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Heat pumps, despite what your Uncle on Facebook might be yelling at you,
are much better for the planet, and eventually

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(if not right now but due to variations in local energy supply 
costs I cannot give a blanket statement yet)

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they'll be better for your wallet, too.

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But if someone were to look at my current heating system,

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and that someone assumes my current heating system
is actually appropriate for my home,

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which they very well might assume because it was 
specced and installed by industry professionals,

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they might conclude that I will need a very large 
heat pump capable of matching my current system’s heat output.

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Here’s the thing, though -

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I don’t.

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Not by a longshot!

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My current heating system is between
three and four times larger than it actually needs to be.

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And now I have solid proof to back it up.

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Which I will be showing you.

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That is indeed the point of this video.

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Before we continue, though, with this video, 
I want to try something different.

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The video you’re currently watching won’t be that different:

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it’ll still be a wild ride where I explain way too much
in my typically cantankerous fashion.

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But you may have noticed the runtime.

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Yeah, we’re covering a lot - also, I’ll apologize up-front,
the teaser about shutting off my heat?

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It’ll be a little bit before we get there.

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But truthfully, the conclusions here are important
and I want this to spread beyond my normal audience.

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So I will be releasing a condensed version tailored to a more general audience alongside this one on the second channel.

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If there are people in your life you wish to share this with,

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or you’re just short on time, that might be a better fit.

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There’s a link in the description and right there.

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But for the rest of ya, well here we go.

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In the intro, I used the word "oversized."

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That’s really what this video is about:
determining the correct HVAC system sizing.

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By size, I mean the system’s total heating and cooling capacity.

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Systems come in different sizes because every home is different
and how much heating and cooling that home needs depends on many factors.

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How big is it?

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How tall are the ceilings?

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How many floors?

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Where is it?

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What’s the local climate?

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Which direction are the windows facing?

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How many are there?

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How big are they?

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What’s their R-value?

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Are they low-E windows?

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Is there shading from trees or other structures?

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What building materials is the home made from?

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How old is it?

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How much insulation does it have and where?

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What kind of home is it?

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Single-family?

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00:03:04,734 --> 00:03:05,546
Multi-family?

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Is there a basement?

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Crawlspace?

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Slab?

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Attic?

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And on and on and on.

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All of that actually matters when determining the heating and cooling demand a home will need,

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and that demand should dictate the equipment that gets installed.

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But that’s a lot of variables to juggle,

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and if there’s one thing I know about humans,

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it’s that we’d rather things be easy than correct.

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So way more often than not

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(at least in literally all of my experience thus far)

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the main and quite possibly only variable that is considered
is the home’s total floor area

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and HVAC system capacities get chosen using simple rules of thumb
based on the geographic area you’re in,

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possibly tweaked by a sales rep’s observations if you're lucky.

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And that simply isn’t good enough any longer for many, many reasons.

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Which brings me to me!

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A while ago I moved into a fairly new townhome.

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That term is kind of regional so in case you’re not familiar
or it means something else where you live,

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it’s a kind of multi-family housing where one large structure 
is subdivided into multiple housing units which share one or more walls,

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but each housing unit has its own private exterior entrances.

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You might call it a rowhouse or something like that
but they can be in many different styles.

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Since my home is fairly new and I’m sharing walls with neighbors,
it’s pretty energy-efficient!

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My average gas bill in the winter is about $70

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and my average electric bill in the summer
(which includes driving by the way since I have an electric car) is about…

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actually that’s just about $70, too.

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Wild what denser housing options and efficient construction methods
can do for our resource needs and thus wallets, eh?

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Before this turns into an urban planning video, though,  

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my home’s current heating and cooling system is the 
very-typical-for-much-of-the-US-but-especially-here-in-the-Midwest

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centrally-ducted natural gas-fired forced-air furnace with central air conditioning.

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The furnace is rated for 60,000 BTU/hr,
and the air conditioner is a two-ton unit

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(which just means it can produce 24,000 BTU/hr of cooling).

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Now, the air conditioner was actually sized appropriately.

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Based on how last summer went, 
2 tons of cooling is just about right for my home.

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But the furnace?

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It’s way too big!

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The heat barely ever needs to run even in very cold weather.

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It’s almost comical how little my furnace runs.

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Lest you think I’m just being hyperbolic or perhaps unobservant,

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I have a smart thermostat which allows me to look at exactly how long
it has commanded the heating and cooling system to run over a day.

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And I know for a fact that in the winter the heat is barely ever running.

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Here’s what a typical winter day looks like 
with my current heating system:

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00:06:02,614 --> 00:06:07,721
January 5th was a cloudy day
with the temperature hovering right around freezing point.

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With essentially no help from the sun,
my furnace was providing the only heat to keep me warm and it needed to run for…

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3 hours and 10 minutes total.

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That’s all.

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We see this large spike in the morning when my program raises the set point to 69, 
but otherwise the furnace ru- sorry,

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*nice*

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- but otherwise the furnace runs for about 10 minutes per hour.

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At 10:00 at night my set point drops to 65,

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and then it didn’t run again until the next morning.

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With 24 hours in a day, and the heat only running for 3.16 of them,

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then the furnace only needed to produce about 13% of its total capacity.

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If you know a thing or two about HVAC system design,

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then you should know that this is ridiculous.

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The heating system is oversized to an absurd degree
if it’s performing like that when temps are around freezing.

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But... this is Chicago.

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It gets a lot colder than that.

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How about we look at that cold snap we had two Christmases ago?

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December 23rd, 2022 started out at a balmy -8 degrees
(which is -22 for those who speak Metric).

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Despite it being that frigid, the furnace ran for 6 hours total.

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6 hours of 24 is a nice 25%,

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so even in that weather the furnace is barely taxed at all.

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Keen-eyed viewers may notice we don’t see that morning spike in this data -

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I was actually away from home during this period,
so the thermostat was  only maintaining 62 degrees (or not-quite 17 celsius) inside.

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That does mean that if it were maintaining my normal set point
it would need to run a bit more, but not much -

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maintaining 62 in this weather is still fighting a 70 degree differential,

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so this is roughly equivalent to if I were home
and the outside temp was 0 Fahrenheit, -18 Celsius.

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Also important, since nobody was home,

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there weren’t any other heating sources in action 
like cooking appliances or human bodies to skew this data.

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Zooming out to look at more days, well it turns out that six hours is the most my furnace has ever run in a 24 hour period.

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Since it’s only spending at most ¼ of the time in a day heating, even in extreme cold,

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that suggests the furnace is oversized by a factor of four.

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It’s four times larger than it needs to be.

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But, to account for the lower set-point and the fact that it was “only” -8 out there, 
I’ll fudge that and say that the furnace is oversized by a factor of three.

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Now, I wish I could tell you that my home is some kind of fluke.

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But truthfully, I can’t - I have run across oversized heating equipment
in pretty much every home I have ever been in around here.

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00:09:02,976 --> 00:09:07,482
A friend of mine has a furnace which is so ridiculously oversized for their ductwork

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that they can’t even partially close any registers 
at all to help balance heat output between rooms

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without the thing tripping out on the high limit safety switch.

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I’m pretty sure that install was a hack job, so I don’t want to put too much weight on it,

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but even respectable, well-known installers in my area are routinely putting way more heating capacity into homes than those homes actually need.

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You might ask, is that really a problem, though?

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00:09:37,630 --> 00:09:40,972
So what if you have more heat than you need?

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00:09:40,972 --> 00:09:45,790
Well, strictly speaking, it’s usually not a functional problem.

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Oversizing cooling equipment can lead to nasty issues -

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just ask my other friend who has a small two-bedroom
slab-on-grade house built about 20 years ago

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and who just had a well-respected HVAC company conclude that three tons of cooling was appropriate for that little house.

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00:10:02,790 --> 00:10:07,220
You bet that sucker short-cycles and can’t dehumidify worth a darn!

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00:10:07,220 --> 00:10:14,599
Anyway, with heating equipment, having way more heat on-tap
than is truly necessary doesn’t typically matter,

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especially with gas-fired heating equipment where energy efficiency isn’t impacted by cycle times much if at all.

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When your heat source is gas, installers can get away with being quite sloppy.

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00:10:26,925 --> 00:10:29,842
They just have to err on the side of too much heat.

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00:10:29,842 --> 00:10:32,424
Nobody’s gonna complain about having too much,

147
00:10:32,424 --> 00:10:41,226
and older homes which are poorly insulated will need more than newer homes,
so leaning on the high side is generally the safe bet.

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But this habit needs to die.

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We’re not gonna be heating our homes with gas forever.

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00:10:47,260 --> 00:10:49,988
Pick whatever reason you’d like, there are plenty.

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Heat pumps are in the news so much these days because they allow us to
capture ambient heat energy from outside, concentrate it, and move it inside.

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That process is so efficient that we can end up with 3 or sometimes even 4 times as much energy inside our homes than we spend to collect it.

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That is why they are such a big deal - it’s a way we 
can get more heat with less energy expenditure,

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00:11:16,246 --> 00:11:19,705
and doing more with less is always a good idea.

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For that reason alone, more and more people will be using heat pumps
as their primary or possibly only source of heat.

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They just make way too much sense.

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00:11:30,952 --> 00:11:38,898
And when speccing a heat pump system,
actually installing the correct equipment with the correct capacity is very important!

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More than it’s ever been.

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00:11:41,079 --> 00:11:42,349
Why?

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Well for the simplest of starts, you don’t want to pay for more than you need.

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Larger equipment is more expensive, but not just to purchase it.

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00:11:51,829 --> 00:12:00,040
Since heat pumps are electric sources of heating and cooling,
larger systems require more electrical capacity to run them,

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00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:06,091
and that makes everything from installation to 
considerations of backup power needs harder to manage!

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00:12:06,091 --> 00:12:13,856
You really don’t want to be installing systems that are bigger than necessary 
but this old habit just keeps happening.

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00:12:13,856 --> 00:12:19,073
It just happened last spring to my parents,
a story I’ll be telling later on in this video.

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00:12:19,073 --> 00:12:21,502
Why does this keep happening?

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00:12:21,502 --> 00:12:25,120
Well, if you’ll permit me this speculative indulgence,

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00:12:25,120 --> 00:12:30,999
I believe that a big problem today is the structure of many HVAC companies.

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00:12:30,999 --> 00:12:40,172
Any moderately-sized residential HVAC business 
seems to have separated the role of sales from those of service and installation.

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00:12:40,172 --> 00:12:45,669
This might seem like a good thing - trained and licensed technicians only have so much time in a day,

171
00:12:45,669 --> 00:12:50,012
and their skills are too valuable to waste on free consultations.

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00:12:50,012 --> 00:12:59,518
But I gotta tell ya, I think this division of roles and focus on speed over accuracy is causing a lot of headaches for everyone.

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Perhaps separating your team into sellers, fixers, and installers is efficient on paper - and maybe it is more profitable.

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00:13:07,738 --> 00:13:12,674
But it also makes it difficult or impossible for anyone
within those cordoned-off roles

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00:13:12,674 --> 00:13:20,472
to develop the big picture perspectives necessary
to correctly determine the best course of action for any given situation.

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00:13:20,472 --> 00:13:29,383
Another problem which is particularly rampant in cold parts of the country like mine where heat pumps aren’t yet common is, well,

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dishonesty.

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00:13:31,108 --> 00:13:35,592
See, here’s a secret the industry doesn’t want you to know:

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Despite the cliche, I’m not really joking.

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00:13:39,244 --> 00:13:42,276
Those fancy heat pumps we’ve been talking about?

181
00:13:42,276 --> 00:13:44,600
Turns out, heat pumps …

182
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ARE JUST AIR CONDITIONERS!

183
00:13:46,874 --> 00:13:48,342
That’s all they are!

184
00:13:48,342 --> 00:13:54,837
They’re just air conditioners equipped with an extra valve
so they can operate in reverse to produce heat!

185
00:13:54,837 --> 00:13:59,608
Shout it from the rooftops, put it on a T-shirt,
annoy your friends, and spread the word.

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00:13:59,608 --> 00:14:04,096
They are not magic technology or even new technology!

187
00:14:04,096 --> 00:14:14,320
They’re the same basic machines these companies have been installing
for well over half a century with a few extra parts and, these days, smarts.

188
00:14:14,320 --> 00:14:16,259
Everyone in the industry knows this,

189
00:14:16,259 --> 00:14:18,172
at least I sure hope they do,

190
00:14:18,172 --> 00:14:24,040
but salespeople wouldn’t be good at their jobs 
if all they did was provide you with honest information.

191
00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:31,794
Price gouging on heat pump systems is abhorrent right now, 
and I have countless stories both personally and from conversations online

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00:14:31,794 --> 00:14:42,479
of people getting $20,000 or even $30,000 quotes to install equipment
which you can buy from online HVAC wholesalers for about 4 grand shipped.

193
00:14:42,479 --> 00:14:47,065
And sure, there’s installation costs - people need to get paid, I know that.

194
00:14:47,065 --> 00:14:56,596
But there’s some magic money math going on when a central heat pump system 
costs 3 or 4 times as much as a new furnace and AC replacement.

195
00:14:56,596 --> 00:15:01,591
Because the heat pump part IS THE SAME THING as an AC replacement.

196
00:15:01,591 --> 00:15:08,433
One of the reasons I suspect people are getting such wildly expensive quotes
to install heat pump equipment is that,

197
00:15:08,433 --> 00:15:14,057
due to the whole separation of duties I just went over
and the old habits which just refuse to die,

198
00:15:14,057 --> 00:15:20,178
the folks coming out to give consultations are simply looking at the equipment 
that’s currently in the home and,

199
00:15:20,178 --> 00:15:23,547
so long as the homeowner doesn’t voice complaints about its performance,

200
00:15:23,547 --> 00:15:27,773
speccing a heat pump system to match the current system’s output.

201
00:15:27,773 --> 00:15:33,868
That is precisely what happened to my friend with the 3-ton AC
in the two-bedroom house.

202
00:15:33,868 --> 00:15:37,129
A 3-ton was there before so just slap a new one in, right?

203
00:15:37,129 --> 00:15:38,852
That’ll do.

204
00:15:38,852 --> 00:15:41,968
This tactic makes sense on the surface,

205
00:15:41,968 --> 00:15:51,900
but the problem is that seemingly nobody is doing a sanity check to determine whether or not the current equipment is actually appropriate for that home.

206
00:15:51,900 --> 00:15:56,234
And in my case, nobody did that when the home was built, either!

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00:15:56,234 --> 00:16:00,508
Another thing I want to touch on is something that I keep hearing online.

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00:16:00,508 --> 00:16:09,087
Many people with centrally-ducted systems who want to get a heat pump
have been told that their ducts are too small to have a heat pump.

209
00:16:09,087 --> 00:16:13,387
I’m sure that this is true in some cases, but…

210
00:16:13,387 --> 00:16:19,630
if the person who told them that didn’t check to see
if their current heating system is actually sized correctly,

211
00:16:19,630 --> 00:16:25,433
well then maybe those ducts are too small for 
the heat pump that person *thinks* they need

212
00:16:25,433 --> 00:16:29,409
but they’re fine for the heat pump that they *actually* need.

213
00:16:29,409 --> 00:16:32,301
Keep that in mind as we continue this discussion.

214
00:16:32,301 --> 00:16:35,149
So, then, the next question of course is…

215
00:16:35,149 --> 00:16:39,871
how do you determine what’s actually appropriate for any given home?

216
00:16:39,871 --> 00:16:42,635
Well, here’s what's really frustrating -

217
00:16:42,635 --> 00:16:47,305
We have more and more tools to figure this out and it ain’t that hard.

218
00:16:47,305 --> 00:16:53,717
First, let’s discuss the increasingly common piece of tech 
which got this ball rolling in the first place:

219
00:16:53,717 --> 00:16:55,566
a smart thermostat.

220
00:16:55,566 --> 00:16:58,504
Having one can be extremely valuable.

221
00:16:58,504 --> 00:17:05,946
Certainly I’m not going to tell you to rush out and get one
and, also, I’m not particularly loyal to one system over another.

222
00:17:05,946 --> 00:17:10,723
Trust me, I get plenty frustrated with some of the asinine things they do -

223
00:17:10,723 --> 00:17:14,868
ask me about their ridiculous implementations of a hold function.

224
00:17:14,868 --> 00:17:16,990
If they even have one.

225
00:17:16,990 --> 00:17:19,481
And  while we're at it, Google -

226
00:17:19,481 --> 00:17:21,101
here’s a question for you:

227
00:17:21,480 --> 00:17:28,065
HOW ARE YOUR LOCATION SERVICES AND HOME/AWAY ASSIST FUNCTIONS
**STILL** SO INCREDIBLY BAD‽‽‽

228
00:17:28,065 --> 00:17:33,272
If my Android phone - A Pixel! With your own dang SOC!

229
00:17:33,272 --> 00:17:38,450
On which I have given the Google Home app full,
unrestricted location access

230
00:17:38,450 --> 00:17:41,729
with precise location and WiFi scanning turned on

231
00:17:41,729 --> 00:17:46,350
happens to find itself on the same WiFi network
as the Google Nest thermostat

232
00:17:46,350 --> 00:17:49,456
which is WIRED TO MY FURNACE and CAN'T MOVE

233
00:17:49,456 --> 00:17:54,995
oh, AND the phone can also can see all of those
Chromecast-enabled devices on the same network, too,

234
00:17:54,995 --> 00:17:59,757
which you know belong to that home
because the Home app is what manages all that crap,

235
00:17:59,757 --> 00:18:03,311
well then surely I must be home, right?

236
00:18:03,311 --> 00:18:10,201
I can’t have moved a mile or two down the road - in my sleep - with
all that stuff still in-range of the phone, right?

237
00:18:10,201 --> 00:18:12,041
RIGHT‽

238
00:18:12,267 --> 00:18:14,553
[clears thoat]
Despite their irritations,

239
00:18:14,553 --> 00:18:21,756
a smart thermostat’s ability to log and tell you
what it did over a day throughout the year is tremendously useful.

240
00:18:21,756 --> 00:18:26,214
That information alone, when combined with your heating system information,

241
00:18:26,499 --> 00:18:31,407
can get you extremely close to the actual heating load of your home.

242
00:18:31,407 --> 00:18:37,004
All you need to do is find a day where it was extremely cold 
and look at how long it ran.

243
00:18:37,004 --> 00:18:41,090
With a simple, single-stage gas-fired centrally-ducted furnace,

244
00:18:41,090 --> 00:18:47,514
how long that furnace runs over a given period of time
tells you how much heating it actually produced.

245
00:18:47,514 --> 00:18:49,362
It’s that simple.

246
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:52,567
But perhaps you noticed there were some qualifiers there.

247
00:18:52,567 --> 00:18:58,459
Some fancy heating systems can actually run at two output levels, perhaps more.

248
00:18:58,459 --> 00:19:05,459
If you’re  in that boat, data from a thermostat isn’t necessarily useless
but it’s going to require more consideration than I can address.

249
00:19:05,459 --> 00:19:12,331
And certain kinds of heating systems won’t necessarily 
give you such clean data at all,

250
00:19:12,331 --> 00:19:19,047
plus if you have zoned heating and individual room thermostats this 
all gets pretty complicated pretty quickly.

251
00:19:19,047 --> 00:19:25,749
But for many millions of you in North America,
you have the same four-wire thermostat system that I do

252
00:19:25,749 --> 00:19:27,806
which only offers heating with fire,

253
00:19:27,806 --> 00:19:29,278
cooling with AC,

254
00:19:29,278 --> 00:19:30,652
blowing with fan,

255
00:19:30,652 --> 00:19:32,783
or nothing with off.

256
00:19:32,783 --> 00:19:41,606
As we’ve already determined, apparently my heat 
will only ever run ⅓ of the time at most in the coldest weather we ever get,

257
00:19:41,606 --> 00:19:47,231
which means I only really need ⅓ of my current heating system's capacity.

258
00:19:47,231 --> 00:19:51,438
Since currently I have 60,000 BTU/hr at my disposal,

259
00:19:51,438 --> 00:19:57,083
my actual heating load appears to be 20,000 BTU/hr at most.

260
00:19:57,083 --> 00:20:04,601
And since heat is heat, we can convert that to a continuous power output of 5.86 kW.

261
00:20:04,601 --> 00:20:09,416
If I’ve done the math right and reality is as it appears to be,

262
00:20:09,416 --> 00:20:14,930
that’s the most heating power I should ever need
to keep the house comfortably warm.

263
00:20:14,930 --> 00:20:21,624
Assuming that is correct, then to completely 
eliminate gas for heating I only need a 2-ton heat pump,

264
00:20:21,624 --> 00:20:25,580
which is perfect because that’s what 
my air conditioner happens to be.

265
00:20:25,580 --> 00:20:31,941
This is why I said this is gonna be easier for me 
than Local HVAC company X probably thinks.

266
00:20:31,941 --> 00:20:38,577
I very much doubt many would believe that a home 
in Chicago would have the same cooling needs in summer

267
00:20:38,577 --> 00:20:44,891
as it does heating needs in the winter,
but the data and my math shows this to be true.

268
00:20:44,891 --> 00:20:46,997
But have I done my math right?

269
00:20:46,997 --> 00:20:49,291
Are my assumptions here correct?

270
00:20:49,291 --> 00:20:51,900
There are some reasons to be cautious.

271
00:20:51,900 --> 00:21:00,791
Firstly, while my furnace is rated for 60,000 BTU per hour,
I don’t have a way to confirm that it’s actually performing as-designed.

272
00:21:00,791 --> 00:21:06,951
Hopefully the installers hooked up a manometer to it
and adjusted the gas valve according to the manufacturer’s specifications

273
00:21:06,951 --> 00:21:09,933
but I don’t know for a fact that that occurred.

274
00:21:09,933 --> 00:21:14,995
Even if it did, though, well there are still confounding factors to consider.

275
00:21:14,995 --> 00:21:19,943
For one, the 60,000 BTU rating on my furnace is its input.

276
00:21:19,943 --> 00:21:29,766
With an annual fuel utilization efficiency of 92 percent, 
it’s only really outputting 55,200 BTU/hr when it runs.

277
00:21:29,766 --> 00:21:34,740
If anything that makes my math seem conservative, but it’s important to keep in mind.

278
00:21:34,740 --> 00:21:42,147
There are also two other minor sources of data fuzziness
which reduce the accuracy of a data-logging thermostat.

279
00:21:42,147 --> 00:21:51,952
If you’ve ever noticed that your gas meter measures the gas flowing through it in a unit of volume but you’re billed for your gas consumption in units of energy,

280
00:21:51,952 --> 00:21:58,638
that’s because natural gas is just some crap we get out of the ground
and its purity (and thus energy content)

281
00:21:58,638 --> 00:22:03,962
varies somewhat from day to day which your gas utility corrects for when billing you.

282
00:22:03,962 --> 00:22:12,513
So even if I knew for a fact that my furnace were working perfectly, its actual heat output won’t be perfectly consistent.

283
00:22:12,513 --> 00:22:21,909
Also, the thermostat logs how long it calls for heat, but at every start-up, 
there’s a delay while the furnace goes through its ignition sequence

284
00:22:21,909 --> 00:22:26,298
so the thermostat is slightly overreporting total energy output.

285
00:22:26,298 --> 00:22:31,602
Now, to be clear,
all these little sources of error are unlikely to amount to much,

286
00:22:31,602 --> 00:22:34,401
and two of them work in my favor anyway.

287
00:22:34,401 --> 00:22:41,028
But it does mean that my 20,000 BTU/hr conclusion probably isn’t perfect.

288
00:22:41,028 --> 00:22:44,966
I still know my furnace is wildly oversized no matter what,

289
00:22:44,966 --> 00:22:49,602
but for now, let’s set the conclusions from the thermostat to the side.

290
00:22:49,602 --> 00:22:54,254
That’ll also make it fair for those of you without central heating
or more elaborate setups.

291
00:22:54,254 --> 00:22:58,230
How else could you determine your actual heating needs?

292
00:22:58,230 --> 00:23:00,764
Why, with science!

293
00:23:00,764 --> 00:23:06,528
It’s time I introduce you to a little thing called a block load calculation.

294
00:23:06,528 --> 00:23:13,465
Turns out, very few homes are built with exotic materials - 
and even then, with almost no exceptions

295
00:23:13,465 --> 00:23:18,498
we know the thermal properties of the construction materials we use to build homes.

296
00:23:18,498 --> 00:23:22,774
Insulation has an R-value which tells you its resistance to heat transfer.

297
00:23:22,774 --> 00:23:30,404
Windows have R-values, too - plus low-e coatings 
help reduce solar heating in the summer and reduce radiant losses in the winter.

298
00:23:30,404 --> 00:23:37,655
The materials on the exterior of the home have an influence, too - an influence which those science people have quantified.

299
00:23:37,655 --> 00:23:46,566
And to tie this all together we have these tools called 
measuring tapes which let us gauge the size of walls and windows.

300
00:23:46,566 --> 00:23:50,520
If you actually take the time to assess these variables,

301
00:23:50,520 --> 00:24:00,274
you can do a load calculation which will tell you how much heating (and cooling)
your home actually needs depending on where you live and how it was built.

302
00:24:00,274 --> 00:24:04,296
For grins and giggles, I went and did one of these for my home!

303
00:24:04,296 --> 00:24:07,124
I used an online Manual-J calculator

304
00:24:07,124 --> 00:24:12,395
(manual-J is essentially the industry standard 
for how to do a block load calculation)

305
00:24:12,395 --> 00:24:16,598
and after inputting all my measurements,
it told me that I’d need…

306
00:24:16,598 --> 00:24:24,461
19,000 BTU/hr of heating
with a design temperature of -15 and an indoor setpoint of 70 degrees.

307
00:24:24,461 --> 00:24:28,638
That’s awful-darn close to what my thermostat just told me, innit?

308
00:24:29,411 --> 00:24:36,073
Now, you may notice I have not shown you the results of this calculation
(or even the calculation itself).

309
00:24:36,073 --> 00:24:44,310
That’s because I don’t really want to share too many details of my home’s specifications but also and equally importantly…

310
00:24:44,310 --> 00:24:47,242
I closed out the tab and don’t feel like doing it again.

311
00:24:47,242 --> 00:24:55,288
Plus, the site I used was very clunky and homebrew, 
and to be honest I’m kind of afraid of unleashing all of you on it.

312
00:24:55,288 --> 00:24:57,685
It seemed… fragile.

313
00:24:57,685 --> 00:25:04,923
I’d love to point you all to a good resource 
but honestly the way the calculation is performed is pretty intimidating,

314
00:25:04,923 --> 00:25:11,540
especially if you have the same visceral dread reaction
that I do whenever I accidentally open Excel.

315
00:25:11,540 --> 00:25:16,864
A more easy-to-use and guided manual-J calculator would be a very welcome thing,

316
00:25:16,864 --> 00:25:22,194
literally any of you watching who might have those skills
and be inclined to build such a tool.

317
00:25:22,194 --> 00:25:24,429
I think, as the kids say,

318
00:25:24,429 --> 00:25:26,981
there should be an app for that.

319
00:25:26,981 --> 00:25:33,583
I’d love to play with it but more importantly,
an easy-to-use tool for professionals in the field is very overdue.

320
00:25:33,583 --> 00:25:36,412
It has to be easy or it just won’t happen.

321
00:25:36,412 --> 00:25:40,833
You may have noticed me use the term design temperature just a bit ago.

322
00:25:40,833 --> 00:25:46,853
Heating a home (or any structure for that matter)
is a never-ending battle against heat loss.

323
00:25:46,853 --> 00:25:51,214
If it’s warmer inside than out, heat will seep out through walls and windows.

324
00:25:51,214 --> 00:25:53,679
Entropy’s just annoying like that.

325
00:25:53,679 --> 00:25:57,661
And to maintain a consistently warmer temperature inside than out,

326
00:25:57,661 --> 00:26:01,964
you have to match that heat loss with a source of replacement heat.

327
00:26:01,964 --> 00:26:07,086
How quickly your home loses heat
depends on all those factors I was talking about earlier,

328
00:26:07,086 --> 00:26:11,078
so one size definitely does not fit all.

329
00:26:11,078 --> 00:26:14,720
If there’s one thing to take away from this video, it’s that.

330
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:18,041
But there is one factor that is universal:

331
00:26:18,041 --> 00:26:23,308
the greater the temperature difference between inside 
and outside, the faster heat will leave.

332
00:26:23,308 --> 00:26:29,552
Doesn’t matter how big the home is or how well-insulated it is,
that’s just physics doing physics things.

333
00:26:29,552 --> 00:26:33,468
Ultimately, that boils down to a simple temperature differential.

334
00:26:33,468 --> 00:26:41,401
A given heating system in a given home can only possibly 
make the indoor temperature X degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature.

335
00:26:41,401 --> 00:26:49,472
The design temperatures are simply a way to relate that theoretical limit
to your local weather conditions and a chosen indoor setpoint,

336
00:26:49,472 --> 00:26:55,218
so for instance around here,
-15 Fahrenheit is about the coldest we ever experience,

337
00:26:55,218 --> 00:27:00,551
and if I want to be able to maintain 
a 70 degree indoor temperature in those conditions,

338
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:02,714
well those are my design temperatures.

339
00:27:02,714 --> 00:27:06,281
-15 outdoors and 70 indoors.

340
00:27:06,281 --> 00:27:13,395
Really, though, that just means I want enough heat on-tap
to keep the home 85 degrees warmer inside than outside.

341
00:27:13,395 --> 00:27:17,683
And here’s something I get the sense relatively few people know.

342
00:27:17,683 --> 00:27:23,793
When a heating system is properly sized to a given home 
and its chosen design temperatures,

343
00:27:23,793 --> 00:27:31,846
then when we hit those design temps outside, 
the heating system will need to run nonstop - and that is normal.

344
00:27:31,846 --> 00:27:34,535
It might sound weird. But think about it -

345
00:27:34,535 --> 00:27:40,179
the design temperatures are the absolute worst conditions
a heating system should expect to fight,

346
00:27:40,179 --> 00:27:43,541
and they only show up once or twice a year - if that.

347
00:27:43,541 --> 00:27:50,751
There isn’t actually a need to have any more heat capacity available
than what the design temperatures dictate -

348
00:27:50,751 --> 00:27:55,137
especially when, even if the weather
happens to dip below the design temp,

349
00:27:55,137 --> 00:28:01,991
a wide variety of simple supplemental heat sources,
such as space heaters, is available for you to fill the gap.

350
00:28:01,991 --> 00:28:08,404
That means, though, that there is at least one true benefit
to oversizing a heating system.

351
00:28:08,404 --> 00:28:12,777
If you’re like me and like to turn the heat down at night to sleep a little cooler,

352
00:28:12,777 --> 00:28:21,210
a properly-sized heating system will take ages to get back to your daytime setpoint when the weather hits its design conditions.

353
00:28:21,210 --> 00:28:27,195
I’m of the mind that since this is a very uncommon circumstance over a year,
that’s not really a problem.

354
00:28:27,195 --> 00:28:36,094
But some folks would probably be angry if they needed to whip out an extra heater in a cold snap to get the indoor temperature to rise quickly in the morning.

355
00:28:36,094 --> 00:28:41,634
This is undoubtedly another reason HVAC companies 
are prone to going overboard,

356
00:28:41,634 --> 00:28:45,755
and some manner of customer education is probably warranted here.

357
00:28:45,755 --> 00:28:52,109
The good news is that with heat pump systems,
auxiliary back-up heating can be and often is installed

358
00:28:52,109 --> 00:28:59,306
and that can work alongside the heat pump to quickly raise the temperature when desired, at least if configured properly.

359
00:28:59,306 --> 00:29:05,579
Anyway, we now have two sources of data
that are telling me the furnace is about triple oversized.

360
00:29:05,579 --> 00:29:10,515
There’s what my thermostat has said
with all of the home’s variables accounted for in-situ,

361
00:29:10,515 --> 00:29:15,771
and what the manual J calculation
(which accounts for all those variables on paper) determined.

362
00:29:15,771 --> 00:29:22,771
The fact that they were within 5% of each other is pretty impressive,
but both are still not quite what I’d call perfect.

363
00:29:22,771 --> 00:29:28,548
To completely verify them, I wanted a way to be exact.

364
00:29:28,548 --> 00:29:34,368
No fudge factor, no guesswork, no weird variables - exact.

365
00:29:34,368 --> 00:29:37,550
And I knew just the trick!

366
00:29:37,550 --> 00:29:39,770
Through the magic of buying...

367
00:29:39,770 --> 00:29:44,003
[sigh]
seven space heaters, I could design a test

368
00:29:44,003 --> 00:29:51,057
to find out exactly how much energy is needed
to heat my home in the most extreme of weather.

369
00:29:51,057 --> 00:29:57,389
All I needed now was a bunch of kill-a-watts,
digital thermostatic controls, and some extreme weather.

370
00:29:57,389 --> 00:29:59,890
So I got some digital thermostatic controls,

371
00:29:59,890 --> 00:30:01,217
a bunch of kill-a-watts,

372
00:30:01,217 --> 00:30:05,216
and eventually the ol’ Polar Vortex turned up in the forecast.

373
00:30:05,216 --> 00:30:09,804
On January 14th we were in for quite the arctic blast.

374
00:30:09,804 --> 00:30:14,940
And I do mean quite the - low temperatures of -15 were predicted

375
00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:17,169
(that’s -26 for the French)

376
00:30:17,169 --> 00:30:20,307
and that’s just about as cold as it ever gets here.

377
00:30:20,307 --> 00:30:22,313
So I set to work.

378
00:30:22,313 --> 00:30:26,019
And now - here comes an important disclaimer.

379
00:30:26,019 --> 00:30:30,728
I will not show you exactly how I set this test up.

380
00:30:30,728 --> 00:30:34,916
I’ll explain the gist and go over the many considerations I had to make,

381
00:30:34,916 --> 00:30:43,525
but I took a number of fairly big risks performing this test
which could have ended up with frozen pipes or even a fire.

382
00:30:43,525 --> 00:30:50,520
I did everything I could to stay safe, and am happy to report 
that nothing happened but some good ol’ fashioned data gathering.

383
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,987
But, do not try this yourself.

384
00:30:53,987 --> 00:30:57,240
It may not even be possible depending on your home’s wiring.

385
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:01,177
So… why use space heaters?

386
00:31:01,177 --> 00:31:05,114
Well, electric resistive heat is as dumb as it gets.

387
00:31:05,114 --> 00:31:12,795
A watt is a watt is a watt, and with a watt-hour meter I can quantify
how much heat was actually produced by one of these things

388
00:31:12,795 --> 00:31:18,424
because the heater simply turns all of the electricity it consumes into heat.

389
00:31:18,424 --> 00:31:23,927
Space heaters here in the US are nearly all capable of outputting 1,500 watts of heat.

390
00:31:23,927 --> 00:31:32,139
And since apparently I don’t even need 6 kW of heat output,
four of them running continuously should be all that I need to heat my home

391
00:31:32,139 --> 00:31:35,159
even in the worst weather we ever experience.

392
00:31:35,159 --> 00:31:37,254
But there are a few problems:

393
00:31:37,254 --> 00:31:42,077
first, I have more than four locations I need heat to come from.

394
00:31:42,077 --> 00:31:47,017
I have 10 heat registers around the home
and they were all placed where they were for good reason,

395
00:31:47,017 --> 00:31:49,777
though a couple are technically redundant.

396
00:31:49,777 --> 00:31:58,602
Second, while space heaters are rated for 1,500W,
that rating usually assumes a line voltage of 125V.

397
00:31:58,602 --> 00:32:05,454
I typically get a little less than 120V at my receptacles,
and after the bit of voltage drop caused by the heater itself,

398
00:32:05,454 --> 00:32:11,454
in my home the actual output of a resistive space heater 
tends to be around 1300 watts.

399
00:32:11,454 --> 00:32:15,087
So only having four might not be enough.

400
00:32:15,087 --> 00:32:17,459
But most importantly to setting up the test,

401
00:32:17,459 --> 00:32:24,224
a space heater maxes out the safe continuous load capacity 
of an ordinary 15A electrical circuit,

402
00:32:24,224 --> 00:32:30,053
and even 20A circuits cannot run
two space heaters at the same time without the breaker tripping.

403
00:32:30,053 --> 00:32:39,040
So before I could run this test, I would need to identify locations
where I could actually plug all these space heaters in which were not sharing circuits.

404
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:41,272
This was easy enough for me to figure out...

405
00:32:41,272 --> 00:32:46,420
after discovering that one of the outlets in the garage
is on the same circuit as the bonus room the hard way,

406
00:32:46,420 --> 00:32:52,894
and I eventually identified five places where I could get power from
and not worry about tripping anything.

407
00:32:52,894 --> 00:32:56,481
But it still required the use of extension cords.

408
00:32:56,481 --> 00:32:58,606
♫ DUN DUN DUNNNNNN ♫

409
00:32:58,606 --> 00:33:02,126
Extension cords and space heaters‽

410
00:33:02,126 --> 00:33:03,534
Oh even worse!

411
00:33:03,534 --> 00:33:06,272
Remember how I bought seven space heaters?

412
00:33:06,272 --> 00:33:08,142
That’s more than five.

413
00:33:08,142 --> 00:33:13,515
And actually I already had two and was using nine during the test!

414
00:33:13,515 --> 00:33:18,504
Which meant that splitters and power strips were involved, too!

415
00:33:18,504 --> 00:33:23,799
I wasn’t kidding when I said I took some big risks
and said you shouldn’t do this yourself.

416
00:33:23,799 --> 00:33:25,518
So let me just say that again -

417
00:33:25,518 --> 00:33:28,237
do not do this yourself!

418
00:33:28,237 --> 00:33:31,983
But what sort of space heaters did you use, I hear you asking?

419
00:33:31,983 --> 00:33:35,111
Well - the cheapest kind you can buy!

420
00:33:35,111 --> 00:33:42,760
And not just because I’m a cheapskate, but because
these are actually the best kind for simply heating a room for a test like this.

421
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,417
The fan churns up the air to mix it around well

422
00:33:45,417 --> 00:33:53,120
and the resistive wire elements don’t produce much radiant heat so you don’t
have to worry about weird hot spots or losses through a window.

423
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:58,160
But even better, these cheap fellas are really useful
given the constraints I had to work with

424
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:02,260
and helped reduce the risks of a fire from those extension cords.

425
00:34:02,260 --> 00:34:09,844
These basic fan-forced heaters usually contain two heating elements:
a 600W element and a 900W element.

426
00:34:09,844 --> 00:34:17,432
That allows them to offer a low, medium 
(labeled "ECO" in this case because space heater manufactsss… nevermind)

427
00:34:17,432 --> 00:34:21,982
and high by using one, the other, or both elements together.

428
00:34:21,982 --> 00:34:28,648
Since the fan draws a measly 10 watts,
that means you can safely use two of these on the same circuit

429
00:34:28,648 --> 00:34:33,827
assuming they are both on low
or one is on low and the other is on medium.

430
00:34:33,827 --> 00:34:37,902
And since, in that case, the most one will draw is about 8 amps,

431
00:34:37,902 --> 00:34:41,195
using an extension cord isn’t quite so scary.

432
00:34:41,195 --> 00:34:44,814
But actually I used two more space heaters!

433
00:34:44,814 --> 00:34:46,174
Of a sort...

434
00:34:46,174 --> 00:34:52,506
Since I was shutting my heating system entirely off,
there were two more things I had to worry about:

435
00:34:52,506 --> 00:34:58,403
the pipes in the cabinet under the kitchen sink
(which is on an outside wall and above the unconditioned garage)

436
00:34:58,403 --> 00:35:02,541
and the insulated crawlspace where my water comes into the home.

437
00:35:02,541 --> 00:35:09,913
Normally those areas get a bit of heat from the ducts running near or through them,
but they wouldn’t during the test.

438
00:35:09,913 --> 00:35:13,276
So, I bought a couple of those little wireless weather stations

439
00:35:13,276 --> 00:35:18,444
and put their outdoor sensors in said crawlspace
and under said sink so I could monitor them,

440
00:35:18,444 --> 00:35:21,155
and to provide those areas with a bit of heat,

441
00:35:21,155 --> 00:35:23,949
I threw in some incandescent Christmas lights.

442
00:35:23,949 --> 00:35:28,118
Who says you can’t be risky and festive at the same time?

443
00:35:28,118 --> 00:35:34,513
Those lights provided about 100 watts of heat in the crawlspace
and 80-ish under the kitchen sink,

444
00:35:34,513 --> 00:35:37,744
and the weather station thingies proved that was sufficient.

445
00:35:37,744 --> 00:35:45,206
Now, every single one of these heat-producing devices
eventually got plugged into one of five... these things:

446
00:35:45,206 --> 00:35:50,026
these digital temperature controllers 
allowed me to control the temperature digitally.

447
00:35:50,026 --> 00:35:56,429
They simply take readings from their remote sensing probes
 and control the electrical outlet on the front through a relay.

448
00:35:56,429 --> 00:36:00,761
You tell it a turn-on temperature and a turn-off temperature and boom!

449
00:36:00,761 --> 00:36:06,149
You’ve got yourself a proper thermostat which can
~supposedly~ handle 15A of load.

450
00:36:06,149 --> 00:36:08,207
But 16 in Europe!

451
00:36:08,207 --> 00:36:10,149
Yet only 10 in Australia.

452
00:36:10,149 --> 00:36:12,398
But 13 in the UK!

453
00:36:13,211 --> 00:36:18,999
Are there any safety certifications on - that’s not important, 
what’s important is the house didn’t burn down

454
00:36:18,999 --> 00:36:21,876
and these allowed me to control the space heaters...

455
00:36:21,876 --> 00:36:24,603
and Christmas lights with precision!

456
00:36:24,603 --> 00:36:29,681
For the test, to hopefully mimic the heating characteristics of my central system,

457
00:36:29,681 --> 00:36:33,732
I put the actual space heaters near to where the heat registers in my home are

458
00:36:33,732 --> 00:36:38,714
(which is along outside walls near windows and doors as they should be.
They got that part right!).

459
00:36:38,714 --> 00:36:43,451
Then I set the temperature controllers up
in the five locations I was powering everything from

460
00:36:43,451 --> 00:36:49,139
and positioned their sensing probes in central areas of each room
away from the heaters.

461
00:36:49,139 --> 00:36:51,762
And, of course (and of utmost importance),

462
00:36:51,762 --> 00:36:59,058
each one of those was plugged into an energy monitor
so I could see how much energy was used by each set of heaters.

463
00:36:59,058 --> 00:37:04,697
Total them all up over 24 hours and I could get a near-perfect figure.

464
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:08,370
In pursuit of that perfection, the night before the test began,

465
00:37:08,370 --> 00:37:15,240
I observed the measured temperature of each controller 
both when my furnace began heating and then stopped,

466
00:37:15,240 --> 00:37:20,174
then I programmed the controllers to keep the rooms they were in
within that same temperature band.

467
00:37:20,174 --> 00:37:26,720
I did this to mimic the little room-to-room variations
that naturally occur due to the system being centralized.

468
00:37:26,720 --> 00:37:34,678
And for good measure, I had some of my trusty data loggers set up to verify for you that the heaters were actually doing their job.

469
00:37:34,678 --> 00:37:42,480
Oh, I also put one outside to measure the outdoor air temperature for myself in addition to pulling data from Weather Underground.

470
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:49,545
With the final setup, I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 
6,500 watts of heat distributed throughout my home.

471
00:37:49,545 --> 00:37:53,873
Based both on my thermostat data and the manual J calculation,

472
00:37:53,873 --> 00:38:00,435
this should not only be enough to keep everything warm,
but the heaters shouldn’t even need to run nonstop.

473
00:38:00,435 --> 00:38:05,061
All that was left now was to wake up the next day and start the test.

474
00:38:05,061 --> 00:38:08,775
At 8:00 AM, the observed temperature outside was -11,

475
00:38:08,775 --> 00:38:15,680
and after resetting all of the energy monitors,
it was time to switch on the heaters and switch off the furnace.

476
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:19,857
Before long, the temperature controllers had all started turning on their heaters

477
00:38:19,857 --> 00:38:24,520
(and Christmas lights)
and now, all that was left to do was watch.

478
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:32,663
And, as expected, despite it being extremely unpleasant outside
(and pretty windy, too) the heaters were more than enough.

479
00:38:32,663 --> 00:38:38,895
Before long, the first temperature controller was satisfied 
and the heaters it controlled had shut off.

480
00:38:38,895 --> 00:38:40,557
Then the next one.

481
00:38:40,557 --> 00:38:42,112
And then the next one.

482
00:38:42,112 --> 00:38:48,513
Of course, they kicked back on, too, but the fact that 
the heaters were sufficient to raise the indoor temperature -

483
00:38:48,513 --> 00:38:52,138
even when the outside temp was 80 degrees colder than inside

484
00:38:52,138 --> 00:38:54,183
- was very good news.

485
00:38:54,183 --> 00:38:58,175
However, when I began this test, the sun was up.

486
00:38:58,175 --> 00:39:05,095
The one consolation we typically get here
when the arctic blasts rear their ugly heads is that the sky tends to be cloudless,

487
00:39:05,095 --> 00:39:09,815
so it may be life-threateningly cold out there but hey!
At least it’s a bright sunny day!

488
00:39:09,815 --> 00:39:16,956
This also meant I’d be getting a bit of solar heating, though, 
and where exactly I’d get it would vary throughout the day.

489
00:39:16,956 --> 00:39:21,985
This didn’t matter for the data - I was taking measurements 
from each energy monitor every four hours,

490
00:39:21,985 --> 00:39:24,995
so I could remove the daytime period if desired.

491
00:39:24,995 --> 00:39:32,409
But it did mean that I had to fiddle a lot with the setup - 
especially on the main floor which is mostly one big room.

492
00:39:32,409 --> 00:39:40,407
Two thermostats and their heaters were in that room on opposite sides,
and that meant that they’d fairly often influence each other in odd ways.

493
00:39:40,407 --> 00:39:44,596
Eventually, with some adjustments to the set points, I got them to cooperate.

494
00:39:44,596 --> 00:39:47,613
But then, night fell.

495
00:39:47,613 --> 00:39:50,967
With no more sun coming through the windows, what would happen?

496
00:39:50,967 --> 00:39:53,132
Would the heaters be enough?

497
00:39:53,986 --> 00:39:55,298
Yes. They were.

498
00:39:55,298 --> 00:40:02,531
The two on the main level did need to run nearly continuously
but the heaters upstairs were cycling on and off all night -

499
00:40:02,531 --> 00:40:06,910
by my rough estimation they were only on about 60% of the time.

500
00:40:06,910 --> 00:40:11,451
Oh but wait, I don't need any rough estimation,
I know exactly how much energy was used during the test!

501
00:40:11,451 --> 00:40:14,029
And the answer was - drumroll please

502
00:40:14,029 --> 00:40:14,854
[extremely brief drumroll]

503
00:40:14,854 --> 00:40:23,293
110.76 kWh, representing an average power draw of only 4.61 kW.

504
00:40:23,293 --> 00:40:25,260
Excluding the daytime hours,

505
00:40:25,260 --> 00:40:30,468
from 8PM to 8AM the heaters drew 61.38 kWh

506
00:40:30,468 --> 00:40:39,020
representing an average draw of 5.115 kW, or 17,452 BTU/hr.

507
00:40:39,020 --> 00:40:45,496
That timeframe was also long after I had made dinner 
so no additional sources of heat were present.

508
00:40:45,496 --> 00:40:54,340
According to my probe the outdoor air temperature was between -9 and -11 degrees, which matches nicely to the data gathered at O’Hare.

509
00:40:54,340 --> 00:40:59,584
This means our Manual-J calculation was only 1,500 BTUs/hr off,

510
00:40:59,584 --> 00:41:04,730
but since the test occurred with outdoor temps
just a little higher than my design temperatures,

511
00:41:04,730 --> 00:41:07,440
I mean I’m gonna call that spot-on.

512
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:09,748
Whaddya know, science works!

513
00:41:09,748 --> 00:41:11,309
Spread the word!

514
00:41:11,309 --> 00:41:13,937
And here is what the indoor probes show us.

515
00:41:13,937 --> 00:41:17,093
This probe was placed next to my home’s thermostat.

516
00:41:17,093 --> 00:41:22,292
During the day, the moving sun
and all my fiddling to deal with that caused this dip here

517
00:41:22,292 --> 00:41:30,028
but after the sun set the measured temperature was right smack dab in the middle
of what the thermostat and furnace normally maintains.

518
00:41:30,028 --> 00:41:34,606
And in the other two rooms we see the same thing - in fact it’s even more consistent.

519
00:41:34,606 --> 00:41:42,175
Also note that I did not adjust the thermostats overnight - 
they nicely maintained 69 degrees all night long.

520
00:41:42,175 --> 00:41:47,396
So - given that a real-world, actual test with actual data just occurred,

521
00:41:47,396 --> 00:41:59,440
I can state confidently that just a hair over 5 kW is in fact the actual amount of heating output I need to keep my home comfortable in any weather condition

522
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:06,339
which verifies both what my thermostat was telling me
and what a Manual-J block load calculation determined.

523
00:42:06,339 --> 00:42:12,213
So sure enough, my furnace is more than three times larger than it needs to be.

524
00:42:12,675 --> 00:42:16,536
That is objectively silly, but it’s excellent news.

525
00:42:16,536 --> 00:42:22,910
Because I’m in a townhome which was built
assuming everything that could be gas would be gas, even the dryer,

526
00:42:22,910 --> 00:42:25,969
I only have 100A electrical service.

527
00:42:25,969 --> 00:42:32,910
Many folks would consider that an insurmountable barrier to electrification
(although, as I’ve already covered, there are many ways around that).

528
00:42:32,910 --> 00:42:39,910
But in my case, well now I know that the circuit for my two-ton air conditioner
is probably sufficient for the two-ton heat pump I’ll need,

529
00:42:39,910 --> 00:42:46,266
and for backup resistive heat, I only really need 5 kW available.

530
00:42:46,266 --> 00:42:50,975
That by itself would be sufficient to at least maintain a reasonable set point,

531
00:42:50,975 --> 00:42:55,816
but in a modern heat pump system the heat strips
and the heat pump will work together,

532
00:42:55,816 --> 00:43:02,570
so I’ll probably have at least 7 or 8 kW of total heat output whenever I need it,
which is more than enough.

533
00:43:02,570 --> 00:43:06,569
To be clear, it’s not like ditching gas will be painless for me.

534
00:43:06,569 --> 00:43:17,027
I’ll still need to run a new circuit to the furnace closet to have backup electric heat,
but 5kW of heat strips is only a 20 amp load which makes it much more manageable.

535
00:43:17,434 --> 00:43:20,795
"mmmbut what about the ductwork?"
I hear some of you asking.

536
00:43:20,795 --> 00:43:28,980
Since you used space heaters during your test and shut off the furnace, you couldn’t account for any losses from leakage in your ducting!

537
00:43:28,980 --> 00:43:32,093
Ah, that's very good point, except

538
00:43:32,093 --> 00:43:33,187
no it isn't.

539
00:43:33,187 --> 00:43:36,154
I don’t have any losses to account for.

540
00:43:36,154 --> 00:43:38,016
Why, you ask?

541
00:43:38,016 --> 00:43:41,097
Fair warning, I’m about to get snarky!

542
00:43:41,463 --> 00:43:43,954
See, I am a Midwesterner

543
00:43:43,954 --> 00:43:48,206
and I live in a home that was built by my fellow value-obsessed Midwesterners.

544
00:43:48,206 --> 00:43:55,937
And ya know what value-obsessed Midwesterners would never in a million years consider doing when designing a home’s heating system?

545
00:43:56,262 --> 00:44:00,414
Running its ductwork through an attic or a crawlspace.

546
00:44:00,414 --> 00:44:02,546
And ya know why we wouldn't do that?

547
00:44:02,546 --> 00:44:04,782
Because that makes no effin’ sense!

548
00:44:05,107 --> 00:44:10,500
OK sure, you’ll find that occasionally around here - 
sometimes compromises have to be made

549
00:44:10,500 --> 00:44:13,415
particularly when, like, doing additions or remodeling.

550
00:44:13,415 --> 00:44:16,214
But ya know where my ducts are?

551
00:44:16,214 --> 00:44:19,197
They’re inside the conditioned envelope!

552
00:44:19,197 --> 00:44:23,338
They go through wall and floor cavities all in the center of the structure,

553
00:44:23,338 --> 00:44:26,575
not once ever going above the ceiling into the attic,

554
00:44:26,575 --> 00:44:28,720
below the floor into a crawlspace

555
00:44:28,720 --> 00:44:30,576
or through outside walls.

556
00:44:30,576 --> 00:44:35,527
So, any heat that might leak out of them ends up where I want it anyway!

557
00:44:35,527 --> 00:44:38,143
It’s wild! Did you know you could do that?

558
00:44:38,143 --> 00:44:40,597
I know that some builders sure don’t.

559
00:44:40,597 --> 00:44:48,835
This may come as a surprise, but it turns out that if you put ALL the heaty cooly bits
inside the place that you're paying money to heat or cool,

560
00:44:48,835 --> 00:44:52,630
you get ALL of your money’s worth and not just most of it.

561
00:44:52,630 --> 00:44:56,110
And if you’re thinking
“oh, well he’s in the Midwest, he’s gonna have a basement” -

562
00:44:56,110 --> 00:44:59,372
get a load of this - I don’t have a basement!

563
00:44:59,372 --> 00:45:02,967
My home is slab-on-grade, so my furnace is just in this room!

564
00:45:02,967 --> 00:45:04,797
It’s in this closet!

565
00:45:04,797 --> 00:45:08,629
Just because you don’t have a basement
doesn’t mean it has to go in the attic - or a crawlspace.

566
00:45:08,629 --> 00:45:10,415
It never has to go there!

567
00:45:10,415 --> 00:45:14,574
It could just be here, inside your home, in a closet in a room

568
00:45:14,574 --> 00:45:17,862
and all the ducts it feeds can stay inside your home, too!

569
00:45:18,187 --> 00:45:25,815
This has always been an option and all it takes
is planning a space for this stuff to live and not making it an afterthought.

570
00:45:25,815 --> 00:45:32,249
I feel so sorry for HVAC technicians in parts of the country 
where you stuff all this crap in an attic.

571
00:45:32,249 --> 00:45:37,372
Crawling through a little access hatch and tiptoeing 
on the joists just to read an error code -

572
00:45:37,372 --> 00:45:39,739
it could be just… right here!

573
00:45:39,739 --> 00:45:44,853
Easily accessible in a utility closet
that's barely any bigger than your average bedroom closet.

574
00:45:44,853 --> 00:45:47,157
My water heater’s even in here!

575
00:45:47,157 --> 00:45:52,008
And guess what? If my AC drain clogs, it ain’t gonna ruin the ceiling.

576
00:45:52,008 --> 00:45:54,264
It’ll just puddle its way to the floor drain.

577
00:45:54,264 --> 00:45:56,022
Imagine that!

578
00:45:56,022 --> 00:45:57,739
And ya know what really gets me?

579
00:45:57,739 --> 00:46:03,390
This article on the Department of Energy website
makes it sound like this is some kinda revolutionary idea!

580
00:46:03,390 --> 00:46:08,611
“In recent years, energy-saving designs have sought to include ducts and heating systems in the conditioned space.” -

581
00:46:08,611 --> 00:46:11,252
pfft, recent years‽

582
00:46:11,252 --> 00:46:14,254
Listen, we figured that one out like…

583
00:46:14,254 --> 00:46:15,442
forever ago.

584
00:46:15,442 --> 00:46:17,679
How has it taken the rest of you so long?

585
00:46:17,679 --> 00:46:23,993
The house I grew up in will be 100 years old before too long 
and ya know where none of its ducts were going?

586
00:46:23,993 --> 00:46:25,934
THE ATTIC.

587
00:46:25,934 --> 00:46:29,461
Because the people who built it used their brains!

588
00:46:29,461 --> 00:46:32,268
And don’t give me any crap about ceiling vs. floor vents,

589
00:46:32,268 --> 00:46:34,182
"oh it’s better to have ceiling vents in warmer climates" -

590
00:46:34,182 --> 00:46:39,842
First of all, we need plenty of cooling here, too
and the floor vents are doing just fine.

591
00:46:39,842 --> 00:46:41,791
It’s forced air, y’know.

592
00:46:41,791 --> 00:46:44,282
Plus, ever heard of a ceiling fan?

593
00:46:44,282 --> 00:46:53,461
And if you absolutely insist that they be in the ceiling, 
you could be running ducts below the ceiling and enclosing them in decorative soffits

594
00:46:53,461 --> 00:46:57,517
and if you’re so vain that you’d rather it be pretty than efficient,

595
00:46:57,517 --> 00:46:59,645
you probably think this video is about you

596
00:46:59,645 --> 00:47:03,034
and also - look up what a plenum truss is.

597
00:47:03,034 --> 00:47:04,982
You can have both.

598
00:47:04,982 --> 00:47:07,807
There are so many better options than

599
00:47:07,807 --> 00:47:12,397
“stick the thing up in the attic and make a spaghetti octopus of flexiduct, that’ll do.”

600
00:47:12,397 --> 00:47:19,891
Thinking about how much energy is wasted — and money! — just because
sticking everything up in the attic is a bit prettier and cheaper

601
00:47:19,891 --> 00:47:22,946
is the kinda thing that keeps me up at night.

602
00:47:22,946 --> 00:47:25,622
Maybe you think that’s strange but I think I'm strange, too.

603
00:47:26,195 --> 00:47:28,756
I’m also a liar!

604
00:47:28,756 --> 00:47:33,876
I actually do have two runs of insulated ducting
going through soffits in the garage

605
00:47:33,876 --> 00:47:39,007
which is an insulated space but not technically a conditioned space.

606
00:47:39,007 --> 00:47:45,862
Those ducts feed the kitchen registers and,
since some heat does get lost to the garage through leakage,

607
00:47:45,862 --> 00:47:48,580
well that should ideally be accounted for.

608
00:47:48,580 --> 00:47:51,540
Now, good news, I did.

609
00:47:51,540 --> 00:47:56,133
I will also fight you on whether that run of ducting should count as a loss -

610
00:47:56,133 --> 00:48:01,750
if it keeps the garage marginally above freezing, which it does,
then I would call that a useful loss

611
00:48:01,750 --> 00:48:05,305
and is a useful loss even a loss at all?

612
00:48:05,305 --> 00:48:07,647
Yeah - chew on that one, philosophers.

613
00:48:07,647 --> 00:48:16,250
Anyway, during the test I had yet another heater
on yet another thermostatic control to keep the garage at 47 degrees,

614
00:48:16,250 --> 00:48:24,473
which I know for a fact is warmer than it would ordinarily stay
because I run that setup (with a more legit plug-in thermostat) all winter

615
00:48:24,473 --> 00:48:27,229
and it does indeed need to run from time to time.

616
00:48:27,229 --> 00:48:31,864
The furnace alone will not keep the garage at 47 when it gets extremely cold.

617
00:48:31,864 --> 00:48:34,474
With another energy monitor monitoring energy,

618
00:48:34,474 --> 00:48:40,446
I know that from 8 PM to 8 AM,
keeping the garage at 47 degrees entirely with a space heater

619
00:48:40,446 --> 00:48:42,973
(and I had my car unplugged, for the record)

620
00:48:42,973 --> 00:48:49,835
took 9.76 kilowatt-hours,
representing a continuous draw of about 800 watts.

621
00:48:49,835 --> 00:48:55,302
That’s probably pretty generous,
and I’ll bet the actual loss from those ducts is closer to 300 watts.

622
00:48:55,302 --> 00:48:57,051
Maybe not even that.

623
00:48:57,051 --> 00:48:58,090
So.

624
00:48:58,090 --> 00:49:04,116
Now comes the part where I ask -
why the heck is my furnace so big in the first place?

625
00:49:04,116 --> 00:49:12,106
Well, I don’t know for sure but I’ll bet the HVAC company hired to install this system just looked at the square footage figure for my home,

626
00:49:12,106 --> 00:49:15,925
maybe considered that it was a townhome but could very well not have,

627
00:49:15,925 --> 00:49:22,804
then just slapped in whatever furnace the supply house had handy and for cheap which was the next-size up from their ol' rules of thumb.

628
00:49:23,943 --> 00:49:26,182
That’s actually another problem here -

629
00:49:26,182 --> 00:49:29,739
because oversizing a gas heating system doesn’t matter that much,

630
00:49:29,739 --> 00:49:37,532
supply houses can just stock a few common sizes to take care of 99.9%
of all the housing stock in their area

631
00:49:37,532 --> 00:49:41,702
and that means they buy a lot of those machines,
economies of scale kick in,

632
00:49:41,702 --> 00:49:43,739
and everything is self-reinforcing.

633
00:49:43,739 --> 00:49:45,167
It's not great.

634
00:49:45,167 --> 00:49:51,680
In the case of my home, I wasn’t there for the process of speccing the equipment
so that is just speculation on my part.

635
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:55,283
But last Spring, I saw this very thing -

636
00:49:55,283 --> 00:50:00,407
HVAC folks shooting from the hip without any sort of thought - in action.

637
00:50:00,407 --> 00:50:05,797
My parents decided to join the revolution
and got themselves a cold-climate heat pump.

638
00:50:05,797 --> 00:50:15,336
Likely due to a combination of the fact that nobody knows what heat pumps are around here and the general character of the builder who built their all-electric home,

639
00:50:15,336 --> 00:50:16,968
they never had a heat pump.

640
00:50:16,968 --> 00:50:23,834
They just had a big ol’ air handler with 20kW of heat strips
which would come on like a giant hair dryer,

641
00:50:23,834 --> 00:50:27,448
and a 3-ton air conditioner provided cooling in the summer.

642
00:50:27,448 --> 00:50:29,335
When they inquired about a heat pump,

643
00:50:29,335 --> 00:50:35,557
the sales rep who came out to give them a quote
saw that 100A circuit powering the air handler and,

644
00:50:35,557 --> 00:50:43,235
likely assuming that that was actually appropriate for their home, 
determined that a 5-ton heat pump system would be necessary.

645
00:50:43,235 --> 00:50:48,582
But see, they, too, had a smart thermostat in control of their heating system.

646
00:50:48,582 --> 00:50:51,812
And by looking at historical data and system performance,

647
00:50:51,812 --> 00:50:59,498
I determined that the most heat output they’d ever needed 
was about 10 kW, which is 34,000 BTU/hr.

648
00:50:59,498 --> 00:51:02,871
In tonnage, that’s just shy of 3 tons.

649
00:51:02,871 --> 00:51:09,753
The heat pump series they were looking at is capable of maintaining
its full rated output at 5 degrees Fahrenheit,

650
00:51:09,753 --> 00:51:15,157
and in those temperatures their home probably only needs about 8 kW of heat.

651
00:51:15,157 --> 00:51:18,517
Since three-tons was sufficient for cooling in the summer,

652
00:51:18,517 --> 00:51:26,561
and a three-ton Bryant heat pump is supposedly able to
output almost exactly 10kW of heat even at 5 degrees,

653
00:51:26,561 --> 00:51:30,700
jumping up to a 5 ton would have just be overkill.

654
00:51:30,700 --> 00:51:38,210
Luckily, I was able to convince the sales rep that a 3-ton system
with 15kW of backup heat would be OK.

655
00:51:38,210 --> 00:51:40,091
And that’s what they installed.

656
00:51:40,091 --> 00:51:46,284
And I’m very happy (and, to be honest, relieved) 
to report that I was correct.

657
00:51:46,284 --> 00:51:48,576
They had no issues in the summer staying cool,

658
00:51:48,576 --> 00:51:54,194
(in fact this system can actually produce about 4 tons of cooling despite being classified as a three-ton)

659
00:51:54,194 --> 00:51:57,005
and in that cold snap I ran my test?

660
00:51:57,005 --> 00:52:00,857
Well, here’s what that looked like for them according to their thermostat.

661
00:52:00,857 --> 00:52:08,269
Even when the outdoor temperature was solidly below zero,
 their heat pump could produce all the heat they needed.

662
00:52:08,269 --> 00:52:16,618
To be sure, this was right on the edge - the thermostat was 
constantly calling for heat and I’m sure the heat pump wasn’t running very efficiently.

663
00:52:16,618 --> 00:52:22,646
But the thermostat didn’t call for backup heat until the outdoor temp had hit -12.

664
00:52:22,646 --> 00:52:30,733
Only then did the indoor temperature fall three degrees below desired,
and that’s the point where their thermostat is configured to kick on the heat strips.

665
00:52:30,733 --> 00:52:34,409
And even then, it only tickled them a few times in the dead of night.

666
00:52:34,409 --> 00:52:41,606
This cold snap was the only time this winter where the heat strips were 
truly necessary despite it being extremely cold

667
00:52:41,606 --> 00:52:44,985
and despite only having a 3-ton heat pump.

668
00:52:44,985 --> 00:52:49,087
A 5-ton unit would definitely have been overkill.

669
00:52:49,087 --> 00:52:54,003
So why did the sales rep think a 5-ton unit would be required?

670
00:52:54,003 --> 00:53:00,363
Well, based on how we used to build homes around here, 
and the general character of weather we get,

671
00:53:00,363 --> 00:53:04,681
it makes sense to assume you’re going to need more heating output than cooling,

672
00:53:04,681 --> 00:53:11,370
and that assumption would only reinforce using the existing 
heating system’s output as a valid benchmark.

673
00:53:11,370 --> 00:53:16,552
And remember, there is at least some benefit to oversizing the heat source -

674
00:53:16,552 --> 00:53:24,268
when you hit the design temp outside, a properly-sized heating system
cannot get your home any warmer than the indoor design temperature.

675
00:53:24,268 --> 00:53:32,263
That’s precisely what was going on in the data here - they had reached equilibrium where the heat added by the heat pump was exactly the same

676
00:53:32,263 --> 00:53:40,036
as the heat leaving through walls and windows
so it wasn’t making their home any warmer despite running constantly.

677
00:53:40,036 --> 00:53:48,972
Once it gets colder outside than that equilibrium point,
then the house starts to lose energy and some secondary source of heat is needed.

678
00:53:48,972 --> 00:53:55,542
With a fully-electric heat pump system,
that secondary source is your resistive backup heat - the heat strips.

679
00:53:55,542 --> 00:54:01,065
But if you only have a gas furnace, you usually don’t have a secondary heat source.

680
00:54:01,065 --> 00:54:10,018
So, rather than explain to their customers that it’s quite normal for your heat to kind of putter out when it’s 10 below outside, go get some space heaters if you’re too cold,

681
00:54:10,018 --> 00:54:16,851
installers can just chuck in a furnace
that’s a little bit bigger than it strictly needs to be and avoid complaints.

682
00:54:16,851 --> 00:54:19,507
Which, to be honest, is completely understandable.

683
00:54:19,507 --> 00:54:21,876
I get why that’s common practice.

684
00:54:21,876 --> 00:54:23,353
But here’s the rub:

685
00:54:23,353 --> 00:54:25,826
everything is changing.

686
00:54:25,826 --> 00:54:30,714
For a start, we have been building homes in a more energy-efficient fashion lately.

687
00:54:30,714 --> 00:54:32,365
At least around here.

688
00:54:32,365 --> 00:54:38,540
My mom and dad’s home is about 15 years old,
and it actually has the same heating demand in extreme winter weather

689
00:54:38,540 --> 00:54:41,426
as it does cooling demand in the height of summer.

690
00:54:41,426 --> 00:54:46,153
I’ll bet very few HVAC people would believe that to be true but… it is!

691
00:54:46,153 --> 00:54:48,223
I have the data to prove it.

692
00:54:48,223 --> 00:54:51,638
And sure enough, my new home is in the same situation.

693
00:54:51,638 --> 00:55:02,541
I have a 2-ton air conditioner right now which has proven perfectly fine, and, well,
now I know that a 2-ton heat pump will work just fine for heating, too!

694
00:55:02,541 --> 00:55:08,305
Remember, that’s especially good to know because 
I only have 100A electrical service.

695
00:55:08,305 --> 00:55:10,530
So where does this leave us?

696
00:55:10,530 --> 00:55:14,821
Well first, let me say this to the HVAC contractors of the world:

697
00:55:14,821 --> 00:55:18,707
You have got to stop using simple rules of thumb!

698
00:55:18,707 --> 00:55:22,492
The world is changing so your habits need to, as well.

699
00:55:22,492 --> 00:55:28,596
For one thing, a home built in the 1990’s or later
is a whole different animal from one built 50 or 60 years ago.

700
00:55:28,596 --> 00:55:36,083
But also, you can’t just be looking at someone’s current equipment
and assuming what they have now is actually correct or necessary.

701
00:55:36,083 --> 00:55:43,182
Of course people will be satisfied with a wildly oversized heating system - 
it’ll heat just fine, and fast!

702
00:55:43,182 --> 00:55:46,722
But just asking “does it heat well?” isn’t enough.

703
00:55:46,722 --> 00:55:50,972
At least around here, most people have heating systems
that are oversized up the wazoo.

704
00:55:50,972 --> 00:55:55,000
Which is making heat pumps seem a lot harder than they actually are.

705
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:57,610
As I hope to have shown in this video,

706
00:55:57,610 --> 00:56:04,051
there are several ways to concretely find out
what sort of heating and cooling system you actually need.

707
00:56:04,051 --> 00:56:08,292
You could do the crazy thing and set up a bunch of space heaters on kill-a-watts.

708
00:56:08,292 --> 00:56:12,127
You could also do an actual load calculation to work this out on paper.

709
00:56:12,127 --> 00:56:18,320
Or you can gather data from a logging thermostat,
verify the heating and cooling output of the equipment it’s controlling,

710
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:23,018
and actually find out what sort of heating and cooling
was needed in what sort of weather

711
00:56:23,018 --> 00:56:31,000
with all of the variables and vagaries of that home’s heating system, building materials, size, orientation to the sun, all that accounted for in-situ.  

712
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:35,252
That worked perfectly for my mom and dad and for me, too.

713
00:56:35,252 --> 00:56:41,193
Of course there are plenty of smart thermostats on the market right now
which will let you see this data, and hey,  

714
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:46,119
HVAC people, if you’re working with a homeowner 
who has a smart thermostat,

715
00:56:46,119 --> 00:56:52,028
you should learn how to get to this data (in case they don’t know how)
and ask them to show it to you!

716
00:56:52,028 --> 00:56:57,594
You are leaving extraordinarily valuable information on the 
table if you don’t look at what’s already there.

717
00:56:57,594 --> 00:57:01,446
Now, I get it - change is scary, and hard!

718
00:57:01,446 --> 00:57:04,926
It’s much easier to just do things as you’ve always done them,

719
00:57:04,926 --> 00:57:12,811
and these new heat pump systems are more complex with more variables to consider than the furnaces and air conditioners you’re used to.

720
00:57:12,811 --> 00:57:19,204
Plus, when you have customer satisfaction to be concerned with,
it is often a safer bet to go overboard.

721
00:57:19,204 --> 00:57:22,498
In my heart of hearts, I know this is what’s happening.

722
00:57:22,498 --> 00:57:30,085
I’ve spent my time in customer service,
and we all know there’s a particular kind of customer who just isn’t reasonable.

723
00:57:30,085 --> 00:57:34,885
That customer will simply never find a properly-sized 
heating system to be acceptable

724
00:57:34,885 --> 00:57:37,224
no matter how hard you try to explain to them that

725
00:57:37,224 --> 00:57:42,817
"yes, actually, it should be struggling when it gets extremely cold outside 
because it’s extremely cold outside!

726
00:57:42,817 --> 00:57:47,122
If you need more heat, plug in a heater or maybe just bundle up."

727
00:57:47,122 --> 00:57:54,571
And the worst part is you don’t know who that customer is gonna be
until it’s too late and they call to chew your head off.

728
00:57:54,571 --> 00:57:55,739
Trust me.

729
00:57:55,739 --> 00:57:57,126
I get it.

730
00:57:57,126 --> 00:57:59,213
But we have to push through this.

731
00:57:59,213 --> 00:58:00,791
We all do.

732
00:58:00,791 --> 00:58:05,542
Proper load calculations should be way more common than they are these days.

733
00:58:05,542 --> 00:58:10,811
Especially because there are more and more tools available 
to do a lot of the gruntwork for you.

734
00:58:10,811 --> 00:58:18,658
Perhaps you’ve seen those apps contractors are using where they just take photos of your house and it spits out extremely accurate dimensions.

735
00:58:18,658 --> 00:58:24,720
Somebody could build that for HVAC folks 
and your sales calls would probably impress.

736
00:58:25,155 --> 00:58:31,915
Also, for the love of all things holy, 
be honest with your customers about what heat pumps are!

737
00:58:31,915 --> 00:58:35,091
Yes, there’s government money on the table to help people get them

738
00:58:35,091 --> 00:58:41,810
but don’t be evil — that’s right, I said evil — and exploit that money
to pad your bottom line.

739
00:58:41,810 --> 00:58:44,047
Help people out.

740
00:58:44,047 --> 00:58:48,801
For reference,
this is essentially the same equipment that my parent’s just had installed.

741
00:58:48,801 --> 00:58:53,063
Yeah, it’s a different brand, but the OEM is almost certainly the same.

742
00:58:53,063 --> 00:58:55,039
Ever see that Tyler Perry movie?

743
00:58:55,039 --> 00:58:56,896
Midea Builds a Heat Pump?

744
00:58:56,896 --> 00:59:00,328
Anyway, this website will ship everything to you,

745
00:59:00,328 --> 00:59:05,036
including a lineset, a thermostat, and the heat strips, for about $4,000.

746
00:59:05,036 --> 00:59:08,798
They even sell Mitsubishi equipment for not much more.

747
00:59:08,798 --> 00:59:12,666
To be clear, I am not endorsing this product line or website…

748
00:59:12,666 --> 00:59:20,754
but if a contractor will replace your furnace and AC for you for $5,000 all-in
but wants $15,000 or $20,000 for a heat pump…

749
00:59:20,754 --> 00:59:22,809
well maybe show them this?

750
00:59:22,809 --> 00:59:24,812
Let them know you know what’s up.

751
00:59:24,812 --> 00:59:32,054
Even if they need to hire an electrician to run a circuit for heat strips,
some of these quotes I keep hearing about are pretty fishy.

752
00:59:32,257 --> 00:59:37,380
Another thing that we all need to consider 
is whether heat strips are even necessary any longer.

753
00:59:37,380 --> 00:59:42,100
With the development of cold-climate heat pumps,
in many places they just aren’t.

754
00:59:42,100 --> 00:59:46,710
Heck, they’re barely required here in the frozen tundra of Illinois.

755
00:59:46,710 --> 00:59:51,940
I’d personally still want them as a backup
in case something goes wrong with the heat pump itself,

756
00:59:51,940 --> 00:59:56,178
but remember that I kept my house warm with a few space heaters.

757
00:59:56,178 --> 01:00:01,619
If I had just set up four of them and left the HVAC fan on
to move heat around to the whole house,

758
01:00:01,619 --> 01:00:05,040
I mean that would work well enough in an emergency!

759
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:11,053
And if you just can’t bear the thought of not having 
a fossil-fuel at your disposal,

760
01:00:11,053 --> 01:00:15,214
just get yourself a Little Buddy heater and a grill bottle of propane.

761
01:00:15,214 --> 01:00:18,035
Then crack a window open ‘cause that’s nasty.

762
01:00:18,035 --> 01:00:22,169
I don’t really have a clean conclusion here, but thanks for watching anyway.

763
01:00:22,169 --> 01:00:29,271
I hope this doesn’t come across as too angry at HVAC professionals - 
you folks in the field all rock!

764
01:00:29,271 --> 01:00:35,385
Your companies and their practices… well I have my concerns
but I’m sure you do, too.

765
01:00:35,385 --> 01:00:37,780
And I didn’t even touch on insulation!

766
01:00:37,780 --> 01:00:41,069
Add more of that to your home and all this gets easier!

767
01:00:41,069 --> 01:00:45,576
It’s no doubt thanks to recent building codes
that I can get away with a 2-ton heat pump

768
01:00:45,576 --> 01:00:50,713
and my mom and dad, in a big, single family home mind you,
 can get away with a 3-tonner.

769
01:00:50,713 --> 01:00:58,612
There’s a lot to do when making any kind of change,
but first and foremost you need to see where you’re actually at.

770
01:00:58,612 --> 01:01:04,562
Professionals could - and I’d argue should - do that for you as a matter of course.

771
01:01:04,562 --> 01:01:08,826
But hopefully this video gives you some ideas on how to help yourself.

772
01:01:08,826 --> 01:01:11,599
And with that… the end.

773
01:01:12,656 --> 01:01:15,145
♫ appropriately smooth jazz ♫

774
01:01:16,101 --> 01:01:17,953
If my android phone,

775
01:01:17,953 --> 01:01:20,884
a Pixel with your own dang SOC,

776
01:01:20,884 --> 01:01:25,602
on which I have given the Google Home app full, unrestricted location permission

777
01:01:25,602 --> 01:01:29,161
with precise location and wifi scanning turned on,

778
01:01:29,161 --> 01:01:36,389
happens to be on the same wifi network as the 
Google Nest thermostat which is wired to my furnace and can’t possibly moved…

779
01:01:36,389 --> 01:01:38,365
ahhh!!!

780
01:01:38,365 --> 01:01:43,573
…kilowatt-hours, representing and average draw of 5.115 kW,

781
01:01:43,573 --> 01:01:47,569
or seventeen thousand four hundred fifty [ ] two BTU fuff

782
01:01:47,569 --> 01:01:50,111
They’ll be better for our wallet tt too.

783
01:01:50,111 --> 01:01:51,499
What happened there?

784
01:01:51,499 --> 01:01:54,448
…and I know for a fact that the winter.

785
01:01:54,448 --> 01:01:55,661
Fark!

786
01:01:55,661 --> 01:01:57,712
Are simply looking at the equipment that

787
01:01:57,712 --> 01:02:00,692
ke fphsasf asf fha!

788
01:02:02,685 --> 01:02:05,671
Get a load of this guy, talking about heating loads.

789
01:02:05,671 --> 01:02:09,232
He should really try a new heat pump on for size!

790
01:02:09,232 --> 01:02:13,291
OK, gonna level with you, running out of puns for this one.

791
01:02:13,291 --> 01:02:16,510
GOOD THING I'VE GOT AUXILIARY PUNS!

792
01:02:16,510 --> 01:02:19,633
I'm prepared for any condition.