Why Heat Pumps are now leaving people COLD

Let me know if you have other ideas or tips you do with your heat pump to make life more comfortable - Products I showe Mr Cool: amzn.to/48DTF4p Senville: amzn.to/48IPNPS

I opted for a dual fuel system. In the winter my heat pump operates based on an outside temperature sensor. Once it drops below 30 degrees I have a gas furnace that automatically kicks on. Best of both worlds. You get the efficiency of the gas when the heat pump become less efficient.

My experience is that our heat pump is extremely efficient most of the year when it's just a bit cool outside. There's typically only a couple days a year we really need to fire up the old wood stove to stay comfortable. It's also pretty cheap to keep a bunch of firewood in the basement in case of an extended power outage. Though what made a really big difference was renovating the living room and discovering that a large section of the outer wall was basically uninsulated. Simply fixing that and installing better windows cut our heating costs in half.

I'm in a very old house and we got a ground source heat pump - we love that it doesn't suffer from these problems you describe where an air source heat pump has.

You make a very good point. A fireplace insert in the den used to get the room so warm we’d open the door to the patio to cool off. The heat was stuck in that room. We tried fans and a vent from the den’s cathedral ceiling through the attic to the living room. Nothing worked well. Then I had a ducted heat pump system installed. It distributed that heat through the house wonderfully! As long as I kept a fire going the heat strip didn’t come on. It was there if needed, but it was expensive. That was 2007 or so. Probably not as efficient as new ones. It was surprising to me how that insert could heat a 2000sf home. I expected it to help, but didn’t dream it would work as well as it did. With temps below zero I’ve been cringing for folks relying solely on heat pumps. My friend with a geothermal heat pump sees incredible savings. Here in the Ozarks we have lots of rocks too. Burying a line isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly efficient! If I had it to do over, I’d go that route. I’d still enjoy the wood stove though. Wood heat is just so soothing, especially with arthritis. The combination is perfect! Edit-many electric and gas companies offer free inspection of homes and if needed you can get free attic insulation and they caulked any places where heat/air was escaping. It’s worth a call to see if your utility companies offer this free service! Did I mention FREE?!?

We are in Chicago, we just experienced wind chills of negative 44. I have a mitsubishi 4 ton hyperheat condense and 2x two ton air handlers. The system worked extremely well and never kicked in the emergency heaters. even on the coldest days. The house never dropped below sixty nine degrees. My electric bill is set at $550 a month. And it sounds outrageous until you consider that we have two electric cars. And the entire house runs off electric, including 2 fridges, 2 freezers, and 2x washer dryers.

If you are having troubles with a heat pump system keeping your house warm, and you have confirmed the heat pump is working as intended, you need to look at your attic. The number one way to lose heat or cooling in a house is by having a leaky house. The most cost effective way to improve your heating or cooling situation is to identify those leaks and seal them. Typically, the biggest culprit for air leakiness is the attic. So sealing that will likely significantly improve the performance of your heat pump in cold climates. The other potential issue in the attic is not enough insulation, this is mostly a potential problem with homes 25+ years old where the blown-in insulation has settled over time resulting in a reduction in performance. Small animals getting in your attic can also cause issues. Fix your attic situation, and you will likely greatly improve your heating situation, and this advice works no matter what kind of heating system you use.

I have a 90’s brick home in South Georgia. I had to add double r30 (on top of 10” blown ) above the master bath and single R30 above the master bedroom because they install the heat pump handler in one corner of the house and our bedroom/bath was in the opposite corner and the temp was 85 degrees in the rooms in summer. Adding insulation was financially are only option. Technician said the heat pump was running perfect but had a bad set up in the attic with the old boxes. We use a space heater in the winter like you suggested until we can remodel the bath and fix the problem. Thanks for all you do.

Had an air-source heat pump growing up. This was installed back in the mid-70s. We didn't get a lot of super-cold days but with a field in front of the house (facing north), it could get rough. The supplemental coils would kick in and the electric bill would jump. We had a fireplace insert and got a small kerosene heater to help. I'm sure the modern ground-source systems are much better. However, if I ever build and put in a heat pump, I'll investigate options for supplemental heat.

As an HVAC contractor in the Denver Metro area, we install many variations and brands of systems. If you have access to natural gas as most homes do in Colorado, then we always opt for the dual-fuel option. This allows the customer to have a heat pump and a natural gas furnace as the backup heating. We try to figure out what the best COP temperatures will be at when we set the setpoint for switch over to the furnace. You can use 80% two-stage furnaces, 95-98% two-stage or modulating. Many of our clients will push back against an electric option because of the cost per kWh and it's return. We don't really sell AHU's here as the furnace is what people are used to and most comfortable with. We sell 6 major brands and specifically tailor to each homeowner. Some systems are still furnaces with straight cool, but now some of the models we sell the HP is the same price and we use that and give the customer the option to use that HP feature later if NG prices go up considerably. People love the fact the furnace can heat the space while the HP is defrosting or when the HP hits the set temperature to turn off, they have instant heat from the furnace with variable speed blower and multi-stage gas settings which will run in low nearly 90% of the coldest days. You can run on comfort or efficiency settings. Technology keeps getting better. Now we just need to keep the government out of our business and forcing people to spend crazy money to meet unneeded requirements. Geothermal system are amazing and most likely the future, but the ROI is not even close to pay for itself in a families lifetime in a home. But some have opted for it, but I don't believe it has hit the price and efficiency it needs to be at before it becomes mainstream.

I am a HVAC contractor in Canada and provide both heat pump and gas furnace installations and always tell my clients the truth , If your going to remove your high efficiency gas furnace and replace it with a heat pump you will jeopardize your comfort and the cost of heating your home will double . Also in a power outage you can run a gas furnace on a very small 2000watt generator .

Heat pump and fireplace insert is best combination in my opinion. Have the fireplace insert going only when outside temps are around 25F or below and have just the fan running by itself in the HVAC ductwork to help circulating the heat from the fireplace insert. Heat pump I’m using is a 4-ton 5 stage inverter type (made by Carrier / Bryant / Heil… all identical).

When we added mini-splits, we sized them for air conditioning, not heating, because we already had a wood stove. Depending on firewood prices, electricity prices, and temperature, we'll use whichever heating method is cheapest. The stove is great to have for winter power outages.

I have a heat pump in a townhouse that is about 50 years old in Pennsylvania. It is great in the non-Winter months, but in Winter, yes it seems to be on so much and has difficulty keeping the house warm. My house is not well insulated which is one of the main issues. Chris, great job standing outside with that snow whipping around! ❄😆

Some interesting word choices you’ve made here. First, the heat pumps aren’t “failing.” They are becoming less efficient and less comfortable, due to having to run their defrost cycle. Second, they don’t become “ineffective” below freezing. Modern heat pumps maintain a standard level of efficiency down to 17 F (AHRI conventional measurement). Properly sized units will be able to hold a set point of 67 F at 20 F outside temperature for about 80% of their runtime, with the other 20% being backed up by the auxiliary heat. In my leaky 1890 home it’s probably a bit more aux in that mix. It would’ve been nice if you explained why they become less efficient and less comfortable (the defrost cycle). Unfortunately your description or perhaps understanding of heat pump efficiency curves is lacking; granted there’s a bit of calculus involved there. Bottom line is heat pumps will effectively outperform fossil fuels and strips in energy efficiency no matter what the outside temperature is, simply by matter of moving heat instead of creating it.

Something to keep in mind is that the efficiency of a heat pump is almost always going to be over 100% since the waste heat from the compressor ends up in the house via the condenser, so with very few exceptions, it will always be more efficient to run the heat pump than electric heaters, which are only ~100% efficient. If your supplemental heat is electric, even if you need to use it, you may as well keep the heat pump running anyways and let it do what it can because it will still be more efficient than resistance heaters. Gas supplemental heat is a different story because gas is normally around 1/3-1/4 the cost of electricity per unit of heat. If you have gas supplemental heat, using it instead of the heat pump on cold days often ends up being cheapest even if the heat pump is keeping up fine, but the exact temperature it makes sense to switch to gas depends on your energy costs and the efficiency of your heat pump vs your gas boiler or furnace.

Good distinction on heat pump effectiveness and aux heat needs in NC vs New Hampshire. Here in NC as temps got down to 17F yesterday, 3 degrees below the 99% heat design temp for the area, my basic single stage 3 ton ducted heat pump ran continuously but the aux heat strips were never needed. My whole house energy use stayed below 4kw per hour except when my water heater came on in the afternoon. In the past I found via my emporia vue monitor that heat strips were activating with each defrost cycle to the tune of 10kw for 2-5 minutes at increasing intervals as it got cooler. Once I realized the heat strips weren't necessary as part of the defrost cycle I disabled them on the defrost control board while leaving them able to come on if needed for aux heat. I never felt a blast of cold air during defrost, and per my heat pump's manual even down to 10F it would be twice as efficient as resistance heat though it's operating at half capacity. Natural gas would be nice if available at that point. If it got much cooler I'd likely be pulling out a space heater or two.  One thing I like about small space heaters vs a 10kw heat strip is that it would be much easier to run the 1500 watt space heater on my generator along with my heat pump which has a soft start kit, while 10kw heat strips would likely overwhelm my generator in the event of a power outage.

Love your videos. Appreciate your research and insight!

my last house had supplemental heating coils on the central furnace. Entire house was electric. It's convenient, but running the heating coils when it gets super cold costs a ton. Last year when we had a week of sub-zero temps, that week cost more than an entire month of heating with the regular heat pump

When we lived in Beltsville, MD we had oil heat and it was alwaus plenty warm and not too expensive. We lived there for three years and only went through on tank of oil. When that heater came on it warmed the whole house to a comfortable temperature in 30 minutes or less.