Thanks, hectic skeptic.
I read the Rah-Rah heat pump site from an earlier poster (Brian Griffin), and it had both useful information, and some caveats.
The useful information is that compared to earlier-generation heat pumps, a log of modifications have been performed to the tubing which performs the heat exchange; IIRC (I was up too late last night) these involved scoring and/or changes to surface area;; and improvements to the fans and motors.
The compressors have been changed to be variable speed (this follows similar innovations in furnaces and air condtioners, the latter of which are also heat pumps).
Thd caveats were that they recommended you both seal and insulate your home...which sounds suspiciously like the heat-pump company writing themselves a large check while allowing themselves plausibile deniabililty.
I’ll tty to get time to read through your sources (maybe next three weeks) but for the moment I remain skeptical.
I have had experience with “older” heat pumps maybe 30 years ago, where during single-digit weather, maybe up to the mid-teens, the heat pump pushed out “luke-cool” air...
Thd caveats were that they recommended you both seal and insulate your home...which sounds suspiciously like the heat-pump company writing themselves a large check while allowing themselves plausibile deniabililty.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, it’s always a good idea to ‘seal and insulate’ a home as this drops the demands on the equipment and reduces your energy bills. Being able to do air change is important but it obviously more efficient to do that in a controlled way with an air-to-air heat exchanger than to have gaping holes in the house. However, that really has nothing to do with whether the heat pump company provides equipment that actually works... maybe they are just give you some tips that will drop your energy bill while at the same time, offloading their equipment if they are concerned it isn’t up for the task if it has to run continuously.