Posted on 11/13/2023 12:27:00 PM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Dirty shame normal people still stuck in Jerk York have to suffer.
Thanks for the tutorial. I have to read up on heat pumps.
Whatever you do...never go full Retard.
Your logic applies to transportation, food, and housing. Centralize them all to the narrowest possible distribution channel and then restrict the channel.
But Freepers will argue how “electric” heat would blow the grid, it isn’t efficient,etc. and miss the point you make.
Still waiting, and waiting and waiting.
Idiots.
In our part of the country heat pumps make a lot of sense since we get few cold snaps below the teens. In the last two instances, when temps dropped to single digits and slightly below the heat pump efficiency was amazingly close to nameplate specifications. In '21 we shut off the old 90s vintage central system heat pump because it had gone negative. Not producing air as warm as the conditioned space. Amazingly, an 18 kbtu and 9 kbtu mini-split kept the whole house at 68 or above. They are located at the ends of opposite wings of the house. To be sure, distal places were cool but not cold and nothing froze.
The LG Red mini-splits are pretty efficient all the way down to about 10 degrees. The Mr. Cool unit in the shop sips juice keeping 900 sf at 62 in the winter and about 80 in the summer. I am not happy that 62 is the lowest setting. We have added the last 1000 sf to the house and it is a three zone LG Red mini-split system. Anxious to see how it works. I'm finishing up the install this week.
As I write it is around 40 and the only unit that is on is the little 9 kbtu unit blowing air down the hall and into the rest of the house. We just foamed the roof decking in the old portion of the house and one addition, a total of about 1800 sf with the total being about 2400 sf. I'm not declaring success yet and we still need to freshen the blown fiberglass but something has changed. I am anxious to have conclusive data.
I wanted earth source but the mini-splits come close most of the time. The earth source units last forever since the compressors just never work very hard. A neighbor had one of the originals installed in the early 70s and three owners later, believe it or not, it still works.
Ducting is what puts the earth source heat pump efficiency down in the mini-split range for normal conditions. If you put the ducting in the conditioned space I don't think you could beat it.
The wood stove back-up heat does not have an outside air source. That needs to be changed. It is so inefficient since it pulls air into the house to vent I only run it for ambience or just when necessary.
With the fools in DC getting their way we are all going to have to learn a lot about efficiency to manage to keep warm or cool for as long as we can.
All economic activity requires energy consumption. Wasting large amounts of limited energy resources on heat is both bad for the economy and the environment. Energy should instead be powering factories, with the workers using the waste heat that is otherwise no longer useful.
Re: foaming
I’ve owned a well-renovated house of about 2kSF for the last 2-1/2 years, done 7 years ago. They spray foamed the heck out of this thing. I have been *very* impressed with the energy performance. I am now a spray foam believer / advocate. They didn’t replace the HVAC when they did the studs up renovation, one of a few things I still find to be head shakers. The renovation was architecture-driven, infrastructure was not on the radar, other than the spray foam and cementitious siding. I’m planning on an HVAC upgrade to get zoning and efficiency, probably involving ducted mini-splits. Perhaps one unducted.
Anyway, I think the foam stopping air leaks plus getting all the duct into the insulated envelope are huge. Old house had ductwork in the attic above the fiberglass insulation and did poorly there. I predict you’re about to be very pleasantly surprised.
If we’d vote for this, why does Deep State need to steal our elections?
Thank you.
The other factor is to build for ease of replacement and most say that must be done in pairs of outside and inside units since so much time will have passed before failure that there will be incompatibility. I figure replacement time will come when I am so old and feeble someone else will have to do it.
Not a fan of the encapsulated attic owing to moisture and adding it to the building envelope goes against my sense, just more cubic feet to pay to climate control. Building Sciences Corporation has shied away from encapsulation for that reason and because it is a solution to a problem that should not exist, that being ducts in the attic.
There is a lot of opinioneering in dwelling insulation with very few instances of controlled testing. For all the DOE money spent since the 70s you would think there would be more or any.
They voted for it. Now give it to them good and hard.
L
I’ll challenge your cubic feet comment. Adding that attic volume really adds very little envelope load, the incremental roof area due to pitch and the gables. Windows are really your big envelope load. Getting that ductwork inside the insulated envelope is worth a LOT!
Some further comments -
I really like BSC. I came across that web site a year or so ago, when trying to figure out how to best insulate a basement. I’ve got enough of a technical background to generally follow along, find it worthwhile reading.
And ducts DO exist in attic spaces, it’s just the way things were done for many years, and insulating up at the roof joist level with foam is one of the ways to retrofit that existing condition for much improved energy efficiency.
Regarding DOE, Washington bureaucrats are horribly divorced from reality. You shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of research with practical results.
According to BSC something like 30% is lost to even decent duct work. Yeah, that is a lot and why the “direct exchange” of the mini-split makes them efficient.
—”Heat pump efficiency eventually plumments.”
Yes, it does!
The good news is that each year they gain efficiency at lower temperatures.
By design heat pumps and high-efficiency furnaces/boilers are the laziest equipment I have ever used.
Left to its own settings the compressor and fans will produce the minimum output to meet demand in NO hurry.
To keep an eye on it I have S/R and room temperature sensors also a watt meter on the power supply to the system.
Simple split coils on the mains, a ten-minute installation.
2 Phase 3 wires 110V+110V 100A Din Rail 18mm Tuya WIFI Smart Energy Meter Power Consumption Monitor kWh Meter Wattmeter
Even at minus 15F it is not at max power draw unless you select Turbo mode and it does not lock in that mode.
Being a cheap SOB, I approve.
I did want to watch the Coefficient of Performance in real-time to optimize changing over to the gas boiler floor heat system. It is usually done on a ground source system, air to air /not so much.
Have you seen a COP graph for your unit?
Some publish all of it Pioneer only shows a few key points.
There are third-party reports that usually show more...
https://ashp.neep.org/#!/
My unit has a vacation mode heating of 46F and you can hang the stat near the ceiling,stratifaction will drop it ~4F.
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