WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:09.176 I completely shut off my heat when it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit outside for an entire 24 hours to prove a point: 00:00:09.176 --> 00:00:12.714 my home’s heating system is wildly oversized 00:00:12.714 --> 00:00:21.642 and replacing that equipment with more modern technology will be much less involved than Local HVAC Company X probably thinks. 00:00:21.642 --> 00:00:24.173 One day in the not-too-distant future, 00:00:24.173 --> 00:00:30.608 I will undoubtedly be replacing my gas-fired forced-air furnace with an electric heat pump. 00:00:30.608 --> 00:00:37.148 Heat pumps, despite what your Uncle on Facebook might be yelling at you, are much better for the planet, and eventually 00:00:37.148 --> 00:00:43.650 (if not right now but due to variations in local energy supply  costs I cannot give a blanket statement yet) 00:00:43.650 --> 00:00:46.308 they'll be better for your wallet, too. 00:00:46.308 --> 00:00:50.193 But if someone were to look at my current heating system, 00:00:50.193 --> 00:00:56.035 and that someone assumes my current heating system is actually appropriate for my home, 00:00:56.035 --> 00:01:01.897 which they very well might assume because it was  specced and installed by industry professionals, 00:01:01.897 --> 00:01:10.175 they might conclude that I will need a very large  heat pump capable of matching my current system’s heat output. 00:01:10.175 --> 00:01:12.015 Here’s the thing, though - 00:01:12.015 --> 00:01:13.162 I don’t. 00:01:13.162 --> 00:01:15.257 Not by a longshot! 00:01:15.257 --> 00:01:21.522 My current heating system is between three and four times larger than it actually needs to be. 00:01:21.522 --> 00:01:24.764 And now I have solid proof to back it up. 00:01:24.764 --> 00:01:26.298 Which I will be showing you. 00:01:26.298 --> 00:01:29.001 That is indeed the point of this video. 00:01:29.001 --> 00:01:33.626 Before we continue, though, with this video,  I want to try something different. 00:01:33.626 --> 00:01:36.438 The video you’re currently watching won’t be that different: 00:01:36.438 --> 00:01:41.990 it’ll still be a wild ride where I explain way too much in my typically cantankerous fashion. 00:01:41.990 --> 00:01:45.529 But you may have noticed the runtime. 00:01:45.529 --> 00:01:51.456 Yeah, we’re covering a lot - also, I’ll apologize up-front, the teaser about shutting off my heat? 00:01:51.456 --> 00:01:53.817 It’ll be a little bit before we get there. 00:01:53.817 --> 00:01:59.687 But truthfully, the conclusions here are important and I want this to spread beyond my normal audience. 00:01:59.687 --> 00:02:07.288 So I will be releasing a condensed version tailored to a more general audience alongside this one on the second channel. 00:02:07.288 --> 00:02:10.328 If there are people in your life you wish to share this with, 00:02:10.328 --> 00:02:14.115 or you’re just short on time, that might be a better fit. 00:02:14.115 --> 00:02:16.912 There’s a link in the description and right there. 00:02:16.912 --> 00:02:20.030 But for the rest of ya, well here we go. 00:02:20.030 --> 00:02:23.056 In the intro, I used the word "oversized." 00:02:23.056 --> 00:02:29.758 That’s really what this video is about: determining the correct HVAC system sizing. 00:02:29.758 --> 00:02:34.515 By size, I mean the system’s total heating and cooling capacity. 00:02:34.515 --> 00:02:42.691 Systems come in different sizes because every home is different and how much heating and cooling that home needs depends on many factors. 00:02:42.691 --> 00:02:43.706 How big is it? 00:02:43.706 --> 00:02:45.042 How tall are the ceilings? 00:02:45.042 --> 00:02:45.959 How many floors? 00:02:45.959 --> 00:02:46.655 Where is it? 00:02:46.655 --> 00:02:47.993 What’s the local climate? 00:02:47.993 --> 00:02:49.702 Which direction are the windows facing? 00:02:49.702 --> 00:02:50.530 How many are there? 00:02:50.530 --> 00:02:51.458 How big are they? 00:02:51.458 --> 00:02:52.942 What’s their R-value? 00:02:52.942 --> 00:02:54.345 Are they low-E windows? 00:02:54.345 --> 00:02:56.737 Is there shading from trees or other structures? 00:02:56.737 --> 00:02:59.135 What building materials is the home made from? 00:02:59.135 --> 00:02:59.998 How old is it? 00:02:59.998 --> 00:03:02.507 How much insulation does it have and where? 00:03:02.507 --> 00:03:03.995 What kind of home is it? 00:03:03.995 --> 00:03:04.734 Single-family? 00:03:04.734 --> 00:03:05.546 Multi-family? 00:03:05.546 --> 00:03:06.560 Is there a basement? 00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:07.323 Crawlspace? 00:03:07.323 --> 00:03:07.823 Slab? 00:03:07.823 --> 00:03:08.444 Attic? 00:03:08.444 --> 00:03:10.167 And on and on and on. 00:03:10.167 --> 00:03:16.616 All of that actually matters when determining the heating and cooling demand a home will need, 00:03:16.616 --> 00:03:21.758 and that demand should dictate the equipment that gets installed. 00:03:21.758 --> 00:03:24.420 But that’s a lot of variables to juggle, 00:03:24.420 --> 00:03:27.030 and if there’s one thing I know about humans, 00:03:27.030 --> 00:03:31.228 it’s that we’d rather things be easy than correct. 00:03:31.228 --> 00:03:33.349 So way more often than not 00:03:33.349 --> 00:03:37.179 (at least in literally all of my experience thus far) 00:03:37.179 --> 00:03:43.450 the main and quite possibly only variable that is considered is the home’s total floor area 00:03:43.450 --> 00:03:50.590 and HVAC system capacities get chosen using simple rules of thumb based on the geographic area you’re in, 00:03:50.590 --> 00:03:55.454 possibly tweaked by a sales rep’s observations if you're lucky. 00:03:55.454 --> 00:04:01.108 And that simply isn’t good enough any longer for many, many reasons. 00:04:01.108 --> 00:04:03.337 Which brings me to me! 00:04:03.337 --> 00:04:07.232 A while ago I moved into a fairly new townhome. 00:04:07.232 --> 00:04:12.239 That term is kind of regional so in case you’re not familiar or it means something else where you live, 00:04:12.239 --> 00:04:20.354 it’s a kind of multi-family housing where one large structure  is subdivided into multiple housing units which share one or more walls, 00:04:20.354 --> 00:04:24.498 but each housing unit has its own private exterior entrances. 00:04:24.498 --> 00:04:29.345 You might call it a rowhouse or something like that but they can be in many different styles. 00:04:29.345 --> 00:04:35.615 Since my home is fairly new and I’m sharing walls with neighbors, it’s pretty energy-efficient! 00:04:35.615 --> 00:04:38.435 My average gas bill in the winter is about $70 00:04:38.435 --> 00:04:45.191 and my average electric bill in the summer (which includes driving by the way since I have an electric car) is about… 00:04:45.191 --> 00:04:48.036 actually that’s just about $70, too. 00:04:48.036 --> 00:04:55.268 Wild what denser housing options and efficient construction methods can do for our resource needs and thus wallets, eh? 00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:57.920 Before this turns into an urban planning video, though,   00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:04.393 my home’s current heating and cooling system is the  very-typical-for-much-of-the-US-but-especially-here-in-the-Midwest 00:05:04.393 --> 00:05:09.977 centrally-ducted natural gas-fired forced-air furnace with central air conditioning. 00:05:09.977 --> 00:05:16.127 The furnace is rated for 60,000 BTU/hr, and the air conditioner is a two-ton unit 00:05:16.127 --> 00:05:20.806 (which just means it can produce 24,000 BTU/hr of cooling). 00:05:20.806 --> 00:05:24.787 Now, the air conditioner was actually sized appropriately. 00:05:24.787 --> 00:05:29.997 Based on how last summer went, 2 tons of cooling is just about right for my home. 00:05:29.997 --> 00:05:31.597 But the furnace? 00:05:31.597 --> 00:05:34.023 It’s way too big! 00:05:34.023 --> 00:05:38.287 The heat barely ever needs to run even in very cold weather. 00:05:38.287 --> 00:05:41.713 It’s almost comical how little my furnace runs. 00:05:41.713 --> 00:05:45.250 Lest you think I’m just being hyperbolic or perhaps unobservant, 00:05:45.250 --> 00:05:52.740 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. 00:05:52.740 --> 00:05:58.134 And I know for a fact that in the winter the heat is barely ever running. 00:05:58.134 --> 00:06:02.614 Here’s what a typical winter day looks like  with my current heating system: 00:06:02.614 --> 00:06:07.721 January 5th was a cloudy day with the temperature hovering right around freezing point. 00:06:07.721 --> 00:06:15.111 With essentially no help from the sun, my furnace was providing the only heat to keep me warm and it needed to run for… 00:06:15.111 --> 00:06:18.164 3 hours and 10 minutes total. 00:06:18.164 --> 00:06:19.935 That’s all. 00:06:19.935 --> 00:06:26.879 We see this large spike in the morning when my program raises the set point to 69, but otherwise the furnace ru- sorry, 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:27.803 *nice* 00:06:27.803 --> 00:06:31.448 - but otherwise the furnace runs for about 10 minutes per hour. 00:06:31.448 --> 00:06:34.680 At 10:00 at night my set point drops to 65, 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:37.688 and then it didn’t run again until the next morning. 00:06:37.688 --> 00:06:42.719 With 24 hours in a day, and the heat only running for 3.16 of them, 00:06:42.719 --> 00:06:48.397 then the furnace only needed to produce about 13% of its total capacity. 00:06:48.397 --> 00:06:52.131 If you know a thing or two about HVAC system design, 00:06:52.131 --> 00:06:55.435 then you should know that this is ridiculous. 00:06:55.435 --> 00:07:02.494 The heating system is oversized to an absurd degree if it’s performing like that when temps are around freezing. 00:07:02.494 --> 00:07:05.348 But... this is Chicago. 00:07:05.348 --> 00:07:08.072 It gets a lot colder than that. 00:07:08.072 --> 00:07:11.825 How about we look at that cold snap we had two Christmases ago? 00:07:11.825 --> 00:07:19.720 December 23rd, 2022 started out at a balmy -8 degrees (which is -22 for those who speak Metric). 00:07:19.720 --> 00:07:24.320 Despite it being that frigid, the furnace ran for 6 hours total. 00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:27.622 6 hours of 24 is a nice 25%, 00:07:27.622 --> 00:07:32.188 so even in that weather the furnace is barely taxed at all. 00:07:32.188 --> 00:07:36.466 Keen-eyed viewers may notice we don’t see that morning spike in this data - 00:07:36.466 --> 00:07:45.884 I was actually away from home during this period, so the thermostat was  only maintaining 62 degrees (or not-quite 17 celsius) inside. 00:07:45.884 --> 00:07:52.751 That does mean that if it were maintaining my normal set point it would need to run a bit more, but not much - 00:07:52.751 --> 00:07:58.020 maintaining 62 in this weather is still fighting a 70 degree differential, 00:07:58.020 --> 00:08:05.791 so this is roughly equivalent to if I were home and the outside temp was 0 Fahrenheit, -18 Celsius. 00:08:05.791 --> 00:08:08.264 Also important, since nobody was home, 00:08:08.264 --> 00:08:14.802 there weren’t any other heating sources in action  like cooking appliances or human bodies to skew this data. 00:08:14.802 --> 00:08:23.663 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. 00:08:23.663 --> 00:08:30.070 Since it’s only spending at most ¼ of the time in a day heating, even in extreme cold, 00:08:30.070 --> 00:08:34.284 that suggests the furnace is oversized by a factor of four. 00:08:34.284 --> 00:08:38.029 It’s four times larger than it needs to be. 00:08:38.029 --> 00:08:48.957 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. 00:08:48.957 --> 00:08:53.540 Now, I wish I could tell you that my home is some kind of fluke. 00:08:53.540 --> 00:09:02.976 But truthfully, I can’t - I have run across oversized heating equipment in pretty much every home I have ever been in around here. 00:09:02.976 --> 00:09:07.482 A friend of mine has a furnace which is so ridiculously oversized for their ductwork 00:09:07.482 --> 00:09:14.034 that they can’t even partially close any registers  at all to help balance heat output between rooms 00:09:14.034 --> 00:09:17.733 without the thing tripping out on the high limit safety switch. 00:09:17.733 --> 00:09:22.919 I’m pretty sure that install was a hack job, so I don’t want to put too much weight on it, 00:09:22.919 --> 00:09:33.950 but even respectable, well-known installers in my area are routinely putting way more heating capacity into homes than those homes actually need. 00:09:33.950 --> 00:09:37.630 You might ask, is that really a problem, though? 00:09:37.630 --> 00:09:40.972 So what if you have more heat than you need? 00:09:40.972 --> 00:09:45.790 Well, strictly speaking, it’s usually not a functional problem. 00:09:45.790 --> 00:09:49.557 Oversizing cooling equipment can lead to nasty issues - 00:09:49.557 --> 00:09:54.935 just ask my other friend who has a small two-bedroom slab-on-grade house built about 20 years ago 00:09:54.935 --> 00:10:02.790 and who just had a well-respected HVAC company conclude that three tons of cooling was appropriate for that little house. 00:10:02.790 --> 00:10:07.220 You bet that sucker short-cycles and can’t dehumidify worth a darn! 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, 00:10:14.599 --> 00:10:21.574 especially with gas-fired heating equipment where energy efficiency isn’t impacted by cycle times much if at all. 00:10:21.574 --> 00:10:26.925 When your heat source is gas, installers can get away with being quite sloppy. 00:10:26.925 --> 00:10:29.842 They just have to err on the side of too much heat. 00:10:29.842 --> 00:10:32.424 Nobody’s gonna complain about having too much, 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. 00:10:41.226 --> 00:10:44.341 But this habit needs to die. 00:10:44.341 --> 00:10:47.260 We’re not gonna be heating our homes with gas forever. 00:10:47.260 --> 00:10:49.988 Pick whatever reason you’d like, there are plenty. 00:10:49.988 --> 00:10:59.925 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. 00:10:59.925 --> 00:11:09.765 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. 00:11:09.765 --> 00:11:16.246 That is why they are such a big deal - it’s a way we  can get more heat with less energy expenditure, 00:11:16.246 --> 00:11:19.705 and doing more with less is always a good idea. 00:11:19.705 --> 00:11:27.705 For that reason alone, more and more people will be using heat pumps as their primary or possibly only source of heat. 00:11:27.705 --> 00:11:30.952 They just make way too much sense. 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! 00:11:38.898 --> 00:11:41.079 More than it’s ever been. 00:11:41.079 --> 00:11:42.349 Why? 00:11:42.349 --> 00:11:46.927 Well for the simplest of starts, you don’t want to pay for more than you need. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:51.829 Larger equipment is more expensive, but not just to purchase it. 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, 00:12:00.040 --> 00:12:06.091 and that makes everything from installation to  considerations of backup power needs harder to manage! 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. 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. 00:12:19.073 --> 00:12:21.502 Why does this keep happening? 00:12:21.502 --> 00:12:25.120 Well, if you’ll permit me this speculative indulgence, 00:12:25.120 --> 00:12:30.999 I believe that a big problem today is the structure of many HVAC companies. 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. 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, 00:12:45.669 --> 00:12:50.012 and their skills are too valuable to waste on free consultations. 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. 00:12:59.518 --> 00:13:07.738 Perhaps separating your team into sellers, fixers, and installers is efficient on paper - and maybe it is more profitable. 00:13:07.738 --> 00:13:12.674 But it also makes it difficult or impossible for anyone within those cordoned-off roles 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. 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, 00:13:29.383 --> 00:13:31.108 dishonesty. 00:13:31.108 --> 00:13:35.592 See, here’s a secret the industry doesn’t want you to know: 00:13:36.121 --> 00:13:39.244 Despite the cliche, I’m not really joking. 00:13:39.244 --> 00:13:42.276 Those fancy heat pumps we’ve been talking about? 00:13:42.276 --> 00:13:44.600 Turns out, heat pumps … 00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:46.874 ARE JUST AIR CONDITIONERS! 00:13:46.874 --> 00:13:48.342 That’s all they are! 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! 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. 00:13:59.608 --> 00:14:04.096 They are not magic technology or even new technology! 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. 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:16.259 Everyone in the industry knows this, 00:14:16.259 --> 00:14:18.172 at least I sure hope they do, 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. 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 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. 00:14:42.479 --> 00:14:47.065 And sure, there’s installation costs - people need to get paid, I know that. 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. 00:14:56.596 --> 00:15:01.591 Because the heat pump part IS THE SAME THING as an AC replacement. 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, 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, 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, 00:15:20.178 --> 00:15:23.547 so long as the homeowner doesn’t voice complaints about its performance, 00:15:23.547 --> 00:15:27.773 speccing a heat pump system to match the current system’s output. 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. 00:15:33.868 --> 00:15:37.129 A 3-ton was there before so just slap a new one in, right? 00:15:37.129 --> 00:15:38.852 That’ll do. 00:15:38.852 --> 00:15:41.968 This tactic makes sense on the surface, 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. 00:15:51.900 --> 00:15:56.234 And in my case, nobody did that when the home was built, either! 00:15:56.234 --> 00:16:00.508 Another thing I want to touch on is something that I keep hearing online. 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. 00:16:09.087 --> 00:16:13.387 I’m sure that this is true in some cases, but… 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, 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 00:16:25.433 --> 00:16:29.409 but they’re fine for the heat pump that they *actually* need. 00:16:29.409 --> 00:16:32.301 Keep that in mind as we continue this discussion. 00:16:32.301 --> 00:16:35.149 So, then, the next question of course is… 00:16:35.149 --> 00:16:39.871 how do you determine what’s actually appropriate for any given home? 00:16:39.871 --> 00:16:42.635 Well, here’s what's really frustrating - 00:16:42.635 --> 00:16:47.305 We have more and more tools to figure this out and it ain’t that hard. 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: 00:16:53.717 --> 00:16:55.566 a smart thermostat. 00:16:55.566 --> 00:16:58.504 Having one can be extremely valuable. 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. 00:17:05.946 --> 00:17:10.723 Trust me, I get plenty frustrated with some of the asinine things they do - 00:17:10.723 --> 00:17:14.868 ask me about their ridiculous implementations of a hold function. 00:17:14.868 --> 00:17:16.990 If they even have one. 00:17:16.990 --> 00:17:19.481 And  while we're at it, Google - 00:17:19.481 --> 00:17:21.101 here’s a question for you: 00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:28.065 HOW ARE YOUR LOCATION SERVICES AND HOME/AWAY ASSIST FUNCTIONS **STILL** SO INCREDIBLY BAD‽‽‽ 00:17:28.065 --> 00:17:33.272 If my Android phone - A Pixel! With your own dang SOC! 00:17:33.272 --> 00:17:38.450 On which I have given the Google Home app full, unrestricted location access 00:17:38.450 --> 00:17:41.729 with precise location and WiFi scanning turned on 00:17:41.729 --> 00:17:46.350 happens to find itself on the same WiFi network as the Google Nest thermostat 00:17:46.350 --> 00:17:49.456 which is WIRED TO MY FURNACE and CAN'T MOVE 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, 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, 00:17:59.757 --> 00:18:03.311 well then surely I must be home, right? 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? 00:18:10.201 --> 00:18:12.041 RIGHT‽ 00:18:12.267 --> 00:18:14.553 [clears thoat] Despite their irritations, 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. 00:18:21.756 --> 00:18:26.214 That information alone, when combined with your heating system information, 00:18:26.499 --> 00:18:31.407 can get you extremely close to the actual heating load of your home. 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. 00:18:37.004 --> 00:18:41.090 With a simple, single-stage gas-fired centrally-ducted furnace, 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. 00:18:47.514 --> 00:18:49.362 It’s that simple. 00:18:49.400 --> 00:18:52.567 But perhaps you noticed there were some qualifiers there. 00:18:52.567 --> 00:18:58.459 Some fancy heating systems can actually run at two output levels, perhaps more. 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. 00:19:05.459 --> 00:19:12.331 And certain kinds of heating systems won’t necessarily  give you such clean data at all, 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. 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 00:19:25.749 --> 00:19:27.806 which only offers heating with fire, 00:19:27.806 --> 00:19:29.278 cooling with AC, 00:19:29.278 --> 00:19:30.652 blowing with fan, 00:19:30.652 --> 00:19:32.783 or nothing with off. 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, 00:19:41.606 --> 00:19:47.231 which means I only really need ⅓ of my current heating system's capacity. 00:19:47.231 --> 00:19:51.438 Since currently I have 60,000 BTU/hr at my disposal, 00:19:51.438 --> 00:19:57.083 my actual heating load appears to be 20,000 BTU/hr at most. 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. 00:20:04.601 --> 00:20:09.416 If I’ve done the math right and reality is as it appears to be, 00:20:09.416 --> 00:20:14.930 that’s the most heating power I should ever need to keep the house comfortably warm. 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, 00:20:21.624 --> 00:20:25.580 which is perfect because that’s what  my air conditioner happens to be. 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. 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 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. 00:20:44.891 --> 00:20:46.997 But have I done my math right? 00:20:46.997 --> 00:20:49.291 Are my assumptions here correct? 00:20:49.291 --> 00:20:51.900 There are some reasons to be cautious. 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. 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 00:21:06.951 --> 00:21:09.933 but I don’t know for a fact that that occurred. 00:21:09.933 --> 00:21:14.995 Even if it did, though, well there are still confounding factors to consider. 00:21:14.995 --> 00:21:19.943 For one, the 60,000 BTU rating on my furnace is its input. 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. 00:21:29.766 --> 00:21:34.740 If anything that makes my math seem conservative, but it’s important to keep in mind. 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. 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, 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) 00:21:58.638 --> 00:22:03.962 varies somewhat from day to day which your gas utility corrects for when billing you. 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. 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 00:22:21.909 --> 00:22:26.298 so the thermostat is slightly overreporting total energy output. 00:22:26.298 --> 00:22:31.602 Now, to be clear, all these little sources of error are unlikely to amount to much, 00:22:31.602 --> 00:22:34.401 and two of them work in my favor anyway. 00:22:34.401 --> 00:22:41.028 But it does mean that my 20,000 BTU/hr conclusion probably isn’t perfect. 00:22:41.028 --> 00:22:44.966 I still know my furnace is wildly oversized no matter what, 00:22:44.966 --> 00:22:49.602 but for now, let’s set the conclusions from the thermostat to the side. 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. 00:22:54.254 --> 00:22:58.230 How else could you determine your actual heating needs? 00:22:58.230 --> 00:23:00.764 Why, with science! 00:23:00.764 --> 00:23:06.528 It’s time I introduce you to a little thing called a block load calculation. 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 00:23:13.465 --> 00:23:18.498 we know the thermal properties of the construction materials we use to build homes. 00:23:18.498 --> 00:23:22.774 Insulation has an R-value which tells you its resistance to heat transfer. 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. 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. 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. 00:23:46.566 --> 00:23:50.520 If you actually take the time to assess these variables, 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. 00:24:00.274 --> 00:24:04.296 For grins and giggles, I went and did one of these for my home! 00:24:04.296 --> 00:24:07.124 I used an online Manual-J calculator 00:24:07.124 --> 00:24:12.395 (manual-J is essentially the industry standard  for how to do a block load calculation) 00:24:12.395 --> 00:24:16.598 and after inputting all my measurements, it told me that I’d need… 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. 00:24:24.461 --> 00:24:28.638 That’s awful-darn close to what my thermostat just told me, innit? 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). 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… 00:24:44.310 --> 00:24:47.242 I closed out the tab and don’t feel like doing it again. 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. 00:24:55.288 --> 00:24:57.685 It seemed… fragile. 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, 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. 00:25:11.540 --> 00:25:16.864 A more easy-to-use and guided manual-J calculator would be a very welcome thing, 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. 00:25:22.194 --> 00:25:24.429 I think, as the kids say, 00:25:24.429 --> 00:25:26.981 there should be an app for that. 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. 00:25:33.583 --> 00:25:36.412 It has to be easy or it just won’t happen. 00:25:36.412 --> 00:25:40.833 You may have noticed me use the term design temperature just a bit ago. 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. 00:25:46.853 --> 00:25:51.214 If it’s warmer inside than out, heat will seep out through walls and windows. 00:25:51.214 --> 00:25:53.679 Entropy’s just annoying like that. 00:25:53.679 --> 00:25:57.661 And to maintain a consistently warmer temperature inside than out, 00:25:57.661 --> 00:26:01.964 you have to match that heat loss with a source of replacement heat. 00:26:01.964 --> 00:26:07.086 How quickly your home loses heat depends on all those factors I was talking about earlier, 00:26:07.086 --> 00:26:11.078 so one size definitely does not fit all. 00:26:11.078 --> 00:26:14.720 If there’s one thing to take away from this video, it’s that. 00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:18.041 But there is one factor that is universal: 00:26:18.041 --> 00:26:23.308 the greater the temperature difference between inside  and outside, the faster heat will leave. 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. 00:26:29.552 --> 00:26:33.468 Ultimately, that boils down to a simple temperature differential. 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. 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, 00:26:49.472 --> 00:26:55.218 so for instance around here, -15 Fahrenheit is about the coldest we ever experience, 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, 00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:02.714 well those are my design temperatures. 00:27:02.714 --> 00:27:06.281 -15 outdoors and 70 indoors. 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. 00:27:13.395 --> 00:27:17.683 And here’s something I get the sense relatively few people know. 00:27:17.683 --> 00:27:23.793 When a heating system is properly sized to a given home and its chosen design temperatures, 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. 00:27:31.846 --> 00:27:34.535 It might sound weird. But think about it - 00:27:34.535 --> 00:27:40.179 the design temperatures are the absolute worst conditions a heating system should expect to fight, 00:27:40.179 --> 00:27:43.541 and they only show up once or twice a year - if that. 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 - 00:27:50.751 --> 00:27:55.137 especially when, even if the weather happens to dip below the design temp, 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. 00:28:01.991 --> 00:28:08.404 That means, though, that there is at least one true benefit to oversizing a heating system. 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, 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. 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. 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. 00:28:36.094 --> 00:28:41.634 This is undoubtedly another reason HVAC companies  are prone to going overboard, 00:28:41.634 --> 00:28:45.755 and some manner of customer education is probably warranted here. 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 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. 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. 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, 00:29:10.515 --> 00:29:15.771 and what the manual J calculation (which accounts for all those variables on paper) determined. 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. 00:29:22.771 --> 00:29:28.548 To completely verify them, I wanted a way to be exact. 00:29:28.548 --> 00:29:34.368 No fudge factor, no guesswork, no weird variables - exact. 00:29:34.368 --> 00:29:37.550 And I knew just the trick! 00:29:37.550 --> 00:29:39.770 Through the magic of buying... 00:29:39.770 --> 00:29:44.003 [sigh] seven space heaters, I could design a test 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. 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. 00:29:57.389 --> 00:29:59.890 So I got some digital thermostatic controls, 00:29:59.890 --> 00:30:01.217 a bunch of kill-a-watts, 00:30:01.217 --> 00:30:05.216 and eventually the ol’ Polar Vortex turned up in the forecast. 00:30:05.216 --> 00:30:09.804 On January 14th we were in for quite the arctic blast. 00:30:09.804 --> 00:30:14.940 And I do mean quite the - low temperatures of -15 were predicted 00:30:14.940 --> 00:30:17.169 (that’s -26 for the French) 00:30:17.169 --> 00:30:20.307 and that’s just about as cold as it ever gets here. 00:30:20.307 --> 00:30:22.313 So I set to work. 00:30:22.313 --> 00:30:26.019 And now - here comes an important disclaimer. 00:30:26.019 --> 00:30:30.728 I will not show you exactly how I set this test up. 00:30:30.728 --> 00:30:34.916 I’ll explain the gist and go over the many considerations I had to make, 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. 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. 00:30:50.520 --> 00:30:53.987 But, do not try this yourself. 00:30:53.987 --> 00:30:57.240 It may not even be possible depending on your home’s wiring. 00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:01.177 So… why use space heaters? 00:31:01.177 --> 00:31:05.114 Well, electric resistive heat is as dumb as it gets. 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 00:31:12.795 --> 00:31:18.424 because the heater simply turns all of the electricity it consumes into heat. 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. 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 00:31:32.139 --> 00:31:35.159 even in the worst weather we ever experience. 00:31:35.159 --> 00:31:37.254 But there are a few problems: 00:31:37.254 --> 00:31:42.077 first, I have more than four locations I need heat to come from. 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, 00:31:47.017 --> 00:31:49.777 though a couple are technically redundant. 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. 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, 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. 00:32:11.454 --> 00:32:15.087 So only having four might not be enough. 00:32:15.087 --> 00:32:17.459 But most importantly to setting up the test, 00:32:17.459 --> 00:32:24.224 a space heater maxes out the safe continuous load capacity of an ordinary 15A electrical circuit, 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. 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. 00:32:39.040 --> 00:32:41.272 This was easy enough for me to figure out... 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, 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. 00:32:52.894 --> 00:32:56.481 But it still required the use of extension cords. 00:32:56.481 --> 00:32:58.606 ♫ DUN DUN DUNNNNNN ♫ 00:32:58.606 --> 00:33:02.126 Extension cords and space heaters‽ 00:33:02.126 --> 00:33:03.534 Oh even worse! 00:33:03.534 --> 00:33:06.272 Remember how I bought seven space heaters? 00:33:06.272 --> 00:33:08.142 That’s more than five. 00:33:08.142 --> 00:33:13.515 And actually I already had two and was using nine during the test! 00:33:13.515 --> 00:33:18.504 Which meant that splitters and power strips were involved, too! 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. 00:33:23.799 --> 00:33:25.518 So let me just say that again - 00:33:25.518 --> 00:33:28.237 do not do this yourself! 00:33:28.237 --> 00:33:31.983 But what sort of space heaters did you use, I hear you asking? 00:33:31.983 --> 00:33:35.111 Well - the cheapest kind you can buy! 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. 00:33:42.760 --> 00:33:45.417 The fan churns up the air to mix it around well 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. 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 00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:02.260 and helped reduce the risks of a fire from those extension cords. 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. 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) 00:34:17.432 --> 00:34:21.982 and high by using one, the other, or both elements together. 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 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. 00:34:33.827 --> 00:34:37.902 And since, in that case, the most one will draw is about 8 amps, 00:34:37.902 --> 00:34:41.195 using an extension cord isn’t quite so scary. 00:34:41.195 --> 00:34:44.814 But actually I used two more space heaters! 00:34:44.814 --> 00:34:46.174 Of a sort... 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: 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) 00:34:58.403 --> 00:35:02.541 and the insulated crawlspace where my water comes into the home. 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. 00:35:09.913 --> 00:35:13.276 So, I bought a couple of those little wireless weather stations 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, 00:35:18.444 --> 00:35:21.155 and to provide those areas with a bit of heat, 00:35:21.155 --> 00:35:23.949 I threw in some incandescent Christmas lights. 00:35:23.949 --> 00:35:28.118 Who says you can’t be risky and festive at the same time? 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, 00:35:34.513 --> 00:35:37.744 and the weather station thingies proved that was sufficient. 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: 00:35:45.206 --> 00:35:50.026 these digital temperature controllers  allowed me to control the temperature digitally. 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. 00:35:56.429 --> 00:36:00.761 You tell it a turn-on temperature and a turn-off temperature and boom! 00:36:00.761 --> 00:36:06.149 You’ve got yourself a proper thermostat which can ~supposedly~ handle 15A of load. 00:36:06.149 --> 00:36:08.207 But 16 in Europe! 00:36:08.207 --> 00:36:10.149 Yet only 10 in Australia. 00:36:10.149 --> 00:36:12.398 But 13 in the UK! 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 00:36:18.999 --> 00:36:21.876 and these allowed me to control the space heaters... 00:36:21.876 --> 00:36:24.603 and Christmas lights with precision! 00:36:24.603 --> 00:36:29.681 For the test, to hopefully mimic the heating characteristics of my central system, 00:36:29.681 --> 00:36:33.732 I put the actual space heaters near to where the heat registers in my home are 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!). 00:36:38.714 --> 00:36:43.451 Then I set the temperature controllers up in the five locations I was powering everything from 00:36:43.451 --> 00:36:49.139 and positioned their sensing probes in central areas of each room away from the heaters. 00:36:49.139 --> 00:36:51.762 And, of course (and of utmost importance), 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. 00:36:59.058 --> 00:37:04.697 Total them all up over 24 hours and I could get a near-perfect figure. 00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:08.370 In pursuit of that perfection, the night before the test began, 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 00:37:49.545 --> 00:37:53.873 Based both on my thermostat data and the manual J calculation, 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. 00:38:00.435 --> 00:38:05.061 All that was left now was to wake up the next day and start the test. 00:38:05.061 --> 00:38:08.775 At 8:00 AM, the observed temperature outside was -11, 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. 00:38:15.680 --> 00:38:19.857 Before long, the temperature controllers had all started turning on their heaters 00:38:19.857 --> 00:38:24.520 (and Christmas lights) and now, all that was left to do was watch. 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. 00:38:32.663 --> 00:38:38.895 Before long, the first temperature controller was satisfied and the heaters it controlled had shut off. 00:38:38.895 --> 00:38:40.557 Then the next one. 00:38:40.557 --> 00:38:42.112 And then the next one. 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 - 00:38:48.513 --> 00:38:52.138 even when the outside temp was 80 degrees colder than inside 00:38:52.138 --> 00:38:54.183 - was very good news. 00:38:54.183 --> 00:38:58.175 However, when I began this test, the sun was up. 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, 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! 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. 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, 00:39:21.985 --> 00:39:24.995 so I could remove the daytime period if desired. 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. 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. 00:39:40.407 --> 00:39:44.596 Eventually, with some adjustments to the set points, I got them to cooperate. 00:39:44.596 --> 00:39:47.613 But then, night fell. 00:39:47.613 --> 00:39:50.967 With no more sun coming through the windows, what would happen? 00:39:50.967 --> 00:39:53.132 Would the heaters be enough? 00:39:53.986 --> 00:39:55.298 Yes. They were. 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 - 00:40:02.531 --> 00:40:06.910 by my rough estimation they were only on about 60% of the time. 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! 00:40:11.451 --> 00:40:14.029 And the answer was - drumroll please 00:40:14.029 --> 00:40:14.854 [extremely brief drumroll] 00:40:14.854 --> 00:40:23.293 110.76 kWh, representing an average power draw of only 4.61 kW. 00:40:23.293 --> 00:40:25.260 Excluding the daytime hours, 00:40:25.260 --> 00:40:30.468 from 8PM to 8AM the heaters drew 61.38 kWh 00:40:30.468 --> 00:40:39.020 representing an average draw of 5.115 kW, or 17,452 BTU/hr. 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. 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. 00:40:54.340 --> 00:40:59.584 This means our Manual-J calculation was only 1,500 BTUs/hr off, 00:40:59.584 --> 00:41:04.730 but since the test occurred with outdoor temps just a little higher than my design temperatures, 00:41:04.730 --> 00:41:07.440 I mean I’m gonna call that spot-on. 00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:09.748 Whaddya know, science works! 00:41:09.748 --> 00:41:11.309 Spread the word! 00:41:11.309 --> 00:41:13.937 And here is what the indoor probes show us. 00:41:13.937 --> 00:41:17.093 This probe was placed next to my home’s thermostat. 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 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. 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. 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. 00:41:42.175 --> 00:41:47.396 So - given that a real-world, actual test with actual data just occurred, 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 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. 00:42:06.339 --> 00:42:12.213 So sure enough, my furnace is more than three times larger than it needs to be. 00:42:12.675 --> 00:42:16.536 That is objectively silly, but it’s excellent news. 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, 00:42:22.910 --> 00:42:25.969 I only have 100A electrical service. 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). 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, 00:42:39.910 --> 00:42:46.266 and for backup resistive heat, I only really need 5 kW available. 00:42:46.266 --> 00:42:50.975 That by itself would be sufficient to at least maintain a reasonable set point, 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, 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. 00:43:02.570 --> 00:43:06.569 To be clear, it’s not like ditching gas will be painless for me. 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. 00:43:17.434 --> 00:43:20.795 "mmmbut what about the ductwork?" I hear some of you asking. 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! 00:43:28.980 --> 00:43:32.093 Ah, that's very good point, except 00:43:32.093 --> 00:43:33.187 no it isn't. 00:43:33.187 --> 00:43:36.154 I don’t have any losses to account for. 00:43:36.154 --> 00:43:38.016 Why, you ask? 00:43:38.016 --> 00:43:41.097 Fair warning, I’m about to get snarky! 00:43:41.463 --> 00:43:43.954 See, I am a Midwesterner 00:43:43.954 --> 00:43:48.206 and I live in a home that was built by my fellow value-obsessed Midwesterners. 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? 00:43:56.262 --> 00:44:00.414 Running its ductwork through an attic or a crawlspace. 00:44:00.414 --> 00:44:02.546 And ya know why we wouldn't do that? 00:44:02.546 --> 00:44:04.782 Because that makes no effin’ sense! 00:44:05.107 --> 00:44:10.500 OK sure, you’ll find that occasionally around here -  sometimes compromises have to be made 00:44:10.500 --> 00:44:13.415 particularly when, like, doing additions or remodeling. 00:44:13.415 --> 00:44:16.214 But ya know where my ducts are? 00:44:16.214 --> 00:44:19.197 They’re inside the conditioned envelope! 00:44:19.197 --> 00:44:23.338 They go through wall and floor cavities all in the center of the structure, 00:44:23.338 --> 00:44:26.575 not once ever going above the ceiling into the attic, 00:44:26.575 --> 00:44:28.720 below the floor into a crawlspace 00:44:28.720 --> 00:44:30.576 or through outside walls. 00:44:30.576 --> 00:44:35.527 So, any heat that might leak out of them ends up where I want it anyway! 00:44:35.527 --> 00:44:38.143 It’s wild! Did you know you could do that? 00:44:38.143 --> 00:44:40.597 I know that some builders sure don’t. 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, 00:44:48.835 --> 00:44:52.630 you get ALL of your money’s worth and not just most of it. 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” - 00:44:56.110 --> 00:44:59.372 get a load of this - I don’t have a basement! 00:44:59.372 --> 00:45:02.967 My home is slab-on-grade, so my furnace is just in this room! 00:45:02.967 --> 00:45:04.797 It’s in this closet! 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. 00:45:08.629 --> 00:45:10.415 It never has to go there! 00:45:10.415 --> 00:45:14.574 It could just be here, inside your home, in a closet in a room 00:45:14.574 --> 00:45:17.862 and all the ducts it feeds can stay inside your home, too! 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. 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. 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 - 00:45:37.372 --> 00:45:39.739 it could be just… right here! 00:45:39.739 --> 00:45:44.853 Easily accessible in a utility closet that's barely any bigger than your average bedroom closet. 00:45:44.853 --> 00:45:47.157 My water heater’s even in here! 00:45:47.157 --> 00:45:52.008 And guess what? If my AC drain clogs, it ain’t gonna ruin the ceiling. 00:45:52.008 --> 00:45:54.264 It’ll just puddle its way to the floor drain. 00:45:54.264 --> 00:45:56.022 Imagine that! 00:45:56.022 --> 00:45:57.739 And ya know what really gets me? 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! 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.” - 00:46:08.611 --> 00:46:11.252 pfft, recent years‽ 00:46:11.252 --> 00:46:14.254 Listen, we figured that one out like… 00:46:14.254 --> 00:46:15.442 forever ago. 00:46:15.442 --> 00:46:17.679 How has it taken the rest of you so long? 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? 00:46:23.993 --> 00:46:25.934 THE ATTIC. 00:46:25.934 --> 00:46:29.461 Because the people who built it used their brains! 00:46:29.461 --> 00:46:32.268 And don’t give me any crap about ceiling vs. floor vents, 00:46:32.268 --> 00:46:34.182 "oh it’s better to have ceiling vents in warmer climates" - 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. 00:46:39.842 --> 00:46:41.791 It’s forced air, y’know. 00:46:41.791 --> 00:46:44.282 Plus, ever heard of a ceiling fan? 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 00:46:53.461 --> 00:46:57.517 and if you’re so vain that you’d rather it be pretty than efficient, 00:46:57.517 --> 00:46:59.645 you probably think this video is about you 00:46:59.645 --> 00:47:03.034 and also - look up what a plenum truss is. 00:47:03.034 --> 00:47:04.982 You can have both. 00:47:04.982 --> 00:47:07.807 There are so many better options than 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.” 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 00:47:19.891 --> 00:47:22.946 is the kinda thing that keeps me up at night. 00:47:22.946 --> 00:47:25.622 Maybe you think that’s strange but I think I'm strange, too. 00:47:26.195 --> 00:47:28.756 I’m also a liar! 00:47:28.756 --> 00:47:33.876 I actually do have two runs of insulated ducting going through soffits in the garage 00:47:33.876 --> 00:47:39.007 which is an insulated space but not technically a conditioned space. 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, 00:47:45.862 --> 00:47:48.580 well that should ideally be accounted for. 00:47:48.580 --> 00:47:51.540 Now, good news, I did. 00:47:51.540 --> 00:47:56.133 I will also fight you on whether that run of ducting should count as a loss - 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 00:48:01.750 --> 00:48:05.305 and is a useful loss even a loss at all? 00:48:05.305 --> 00:48:07.647 Yeah - chew on that one, philosophers. 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, 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 00:48:24.473 --> 00:48:27.229 and it does indeed need to run from time to time. 00:48:27.229 --> 00:48:31.864 The furnace alone will not keep the garage at 47 when it gets extremely cold. 00:48:31.864 --> 00:48:34.474 With another energy monitor monitoring energy, 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 00:48:40.446 --> 00:48:42.973 (and I had my car unplugged, for the record) 00:48:42.973 --> 00:48:49.835 took 9.76 kilowatt-hours, representing a continuous draw of about 800 watts. 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. 00:48:55.302 --> 00:48:57.051 Maybe not even that. 00:48:57.051 --> 00:48:58.090 So. 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? 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, 00:49:12.106 --> 00:49:15.925 maybe considered that it was a townhome but could very well not have, 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. 00:49:23.943 --> 00:49:26.182 That’s actually another problem here - 00:49:26.182 --> 00:49:29.739 because oversizing a gas heating system doesn’t matter that much, 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 00:49:37.532 --> 00:49:41.702 and that means they buy a lot of those machines, economies of scale kick in, 00:49:41.702 --> 00:49:43.739 and everything is self-reinforcing. 00:49:43.739 --> 00:49:45.167 It's not great. 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. 00:49:51.680 --> 00:49:55.283 But last Spring, I saw this very thing - 00:49:55.283 --> 00:50:00.407 HVAC folks shooting from the hip without any sort of thought - in action. 00:50:00.407 --> 00:50:05.797 My parents decided to join the revolution and got themselves a cold-climate heat pump. 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, 00:50:15.336 --> 00:50:16.968 they never had a heat pump. 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, 00:50:23.834 --> 00:50:27.448 and a 3-ton air conditioner provided cooling in the summer. 00:50:27.448 --> 00:50:29.335 When they inquired about a heat pump, 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, 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. 00:50:43.235 --> 00:50:48.582 But see, they, too, had a smart thermostat in control of their heating system. 00:50:48.582 --> 00:50:51.812 And by looking at historical data and system performance, 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. 00:50:59.498 --> 00:51:02.871 In tonnage, that’s just shy of 3 tons. 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, 00:51:09.753 --> 00:51:15.157 and in those temperatures their home probably only needs about 8 kW of heat. 00:51:15.157 --> 00:51:18.517 Since three-tons was sufficient for cooling in the summer, 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, 00:51:26.561 --> 00:51:30.700 jumping up to a 5 ton would have just be overkill. 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. 00:51:38.210 --> 00:51:40.091 And that’s what they installed. 00:51:40.091 --> 00:51:46.284 And I’m very happy (and, to be honest, relieved)  to report that I was correct. 00:51:46.284 --> 00:51:48.576 They had no issues in the summer staying cool, 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) 00:51:54.194 --> 00:51:57.005 and in that cold snap I ran my test? 00:51:57.005 --> 00:52:00.857 Well, here’s what that looked like for them according to their thermostat. 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. 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. 00:52:16.618 --> 00:52:22.646 But the thermostat didn’t call for backup heat until the outdoor temp had hit -12. 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. 00:52:30.733 --> 00:52:34.409 And even then, it only tickled them a few times in the dead of night. 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 00:52:41.606 --> 00:52:44.985 and despite only having a 3-ton heat pump. 00:52:44.985 --> 00:52:49.087 A 5-ton unit would definitely have been overkill. 00:52:49.087 --> 00:52:54.003 So why did the sales rep think a 5-ton unit would be required? 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, 00:53:00.363 --> 00:53:04.681 it makes sense to assume you’re going to need more heating output than cooling, 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. 00:53:11.370 --> 00:53:16.552 And remember, there is at least some benefit to oversizing the heat source - 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, 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. 00:54:16.851 --> 00:54:19.507 Which, to be honest, is completely understandable. 00:54:19.507 --> 00:54:21.876 I get why that’s common practice. 00:54:21.876 --> 00:54:23.353 But here’s the rub: 00:54:23.353 --> 00:54:25.826 everything is changing. 00:54:25.826 --> 00:54:30.714 For a start, we have been building homes in a more energy-efficient fashion lately. 00:54:30.714 --> 00:54:32.365 At least around here. 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 00:54:38.540 --> 00:54:41.426 as it does cooling demand in the height of summer. 00:54:41.426 --> 00:54:46.153 I’ll bet very few HVAC people would believe that to be true but… it is! 00:54:46.153 --> 00:54:48.223 I have the data to prove it. 00:54:48.223 --> 00:54:51.638 And sure enough, my new home is in the same situation. 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! 00:55:02.541 --> 00:55:08.305 Remember, that’s especially good to know because  I only have 100A electrical service. 00:55:08.305 --> 00:55:10.530 So where does this leave us? 00:55:10.530 --> 00:55:14.821 Well first, let me say this to the HVAC contractors of the world: 00:55:14.821 --> 00:55:18.707 You have got to stop using simple rules of thumb! 00:55:18.707 --> 00:55:22.492 The world is changing so your habits need to, as well. 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. 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. 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! 00:55:43.182 --> 00:55:46.722 But just asking “does it heat well?” isn’t enough. 00:55:46.722 --> 00:55:50.972 At least around here, most people have heating systems that are oversized up the wazoo. 00:55:50.972 --> 00:55:55.000 Which is making heat pumps seem a lot harder than they actually are. 00:55:55.760 --> 00:55:57.610 As I hope to have shown in this video, 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. 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. 00:56:08.292 --> 00:56:12.127 You could also do an actual load calculation to work this out on paper. 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, 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 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.   00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:35.252 That worked perfectly for my mom and dad and for me, too. 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,   00:56:41.600 --> 00:56:46.119 HVAC people, if you’re working with a homeowner  who has a smart thermostat, 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! 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. 00:56:57.594 --> 00:57:01.446 Now, I get it - change is scary, and hard! 00:57:01.446 --> 00:57:04.926 It’s much easier to just do things as you’ve always done them, 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. 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. 00:57:19.204 --> 00:57:22.498 In my heart of hearts, I know this is what’s happening. 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. 00:57:30.085 --> 00:57:34.885 That customer will simply never find a properly-sized  heating system to be acceptable 00:57:34.885 --> 00:57:37.224 no matter how hard you try to explain to them that 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! 00:57:42.817 --> 00:57:47.122 If you need more heat, plug in a heater or maybe just bundle up." 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. 00:57:54.571 --> 00:57:55.739 Trust me. 00:57:55.739 --> 00:57:57.126 I get it. 00:57:57.126 --> 00:57:59.213 But we have to push through this. 00:57:59.213 --> 00:58:00.791 We all do. 00:58:00.791 --> 00:58:05.542 Proper load calculations should be way more common than they are these days. 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. 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. 00:58:18.658 --> 00:58:24.720 Somebody could build that for HVAC folks  and your sales calls would probably impress. 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! 00:58:31.915 --> 00:58:35.091 Yes, there’s government money on the table to help people get them 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. 00:58:41.810 --> 00:58:44.047 Help people out. 00:58:44.047 --> 00:58:48.801 For reference, this is essentially the same equipment that my parent’s just had installed. 00:58:48.801 --> 00:58:53.063 Yeah, it’s a different brand, but the OEM is almost certainly the same. 00:58:53.063 --> 00:58:55.039 Ever see that Tyler Perry movie? 00:58:55.039 --> 00:58:56.896 Midea Builds a Heat Pump? 00:58:56.896 --> 00:59:00.328 Anyway, this website will ship everything to you, 00:59:00.328 --> 00:59:05.036 including a lineset, a thermostat, and the heat strips, for about $4,000. 00:59:05.036 --> 00:59:08.798 They even sell Mitsubishi equipment for not much more. 00:59:08.798 --> 00:59:12.666 To be clear, I am not endorsing this product line or website… 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… 00:59:20.754 --> 00:59:22.809 well maybe show them this? 00:59:22.809 --> 00:59:24.812 Let them know you know what’s up. 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. 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. 00:59:37.380 --> 00:59:42.100 With the development of cold-climate heat pumps, in many places they just aren’t. 00:59:42.100 --> 00:59:46.710 Heck, they’re barely required here in the frozen tundra of Illinois. 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, 00:59:51.940 --> 00:59:56.178 but remember that I kept my house warm with a few space heaters. 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, 01:00:01.619 --> 01:00:05.040 I mean that would work well enough in an emergency! 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, 01:00:11.053 --> 01:00:15.214 just get yourself a Little Buddy heater and a grill bottle of propane. 01:00:15.214 --> 01:00:18.035 Then crack a window open ‘cause that’s nasty. 01:00:18.035 --> 01:00:22.169 I don’t really have a clean conclusion here, but thanks for watching anyway. 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! 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. 01:00:35.385 --> 01:00:37.780 And I didn’t even touch on insulation! 01:00:37.780 --> 01:00:41.069 Add more of that to your home and all this gets easier! 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 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. 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. 01:00:58.612 --> 01:01:04.562 Professionals could - and I’d argue should - do that for you as a matter of course. 01:01:04.562 --> 01:01:08.826 But hopefully this video gives you some ideas on how to help yourself. 01:01:08.826 --> 01:01:11.599 And with that… the end. 01:01:12.656 --> 01:01:15.145 ♫ appropriately smooth jazz ♫ 01:01:16.101 --> 01:01:17.953 If my android phone, 01:01:17.953 --> 01:01:20.884 a Pixel with your own dang SOC, 01:01:20.884 --> 01:01:25.602 on which I have given the Google Home app full, unrestricted location permission 01:01:25.602 --> 01:01:29.161 with precise location and wifi scanning turned on, 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… 01:01:36.389 --> 01:01:38.365 ahhh!!! 01:01:38.365 --> 01:01:43.573 …kilowatt-hours, representing and average draw of 5.115 kW, 01:01:43.573 --> 01:01:47.569 or seventeen thousand four hundred fifty [ ] two BTU fuff 01:01:47.569 --> 01:01:50.111 They’ll be better for our wallet tt too. 01:01:50.111 --> 01:01:51.499 What happened there? 01:01:51.499 --> 01:01:54.448 …and I know for a fact that the winter. 01:01:54.448 --> 01:01:55.661 Fark! 01:01:55.661 --> 01:01:57.712 Are simply looking at the equipment that 01:01:57.712 --> 01:02:00.692 ke fphsasf asf fha! 01:02:02.685 --> 01:02:05.671 Get a load of this guy, talking about heating loads. 01:02:05.671 --> 01:02:09.232 He should really try a new heat pump on for size! 01:02:09.232 --> 01:02:13.291 OK, gonna level with you, running out of puns for this one. 01:02:13.291 --> 01:02:16.510 GOOD THING I'VE GOT AUXILIARY PUNS! 01:02:16.510 --> 01:02:19.633 I'm prepared for any condition.