[mithr]

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo.

Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my existing gas heating in place and automatically switching to it when it gets cold enough).

I was also told that the electrical grid in my area is having difficulty keeping up with the push towards heat pumps, which increase load exactly on the coldest nights of the year, when you need heating most.

[simmonmt]

Costs are a big thing, sure, but for me it's electrical reliability. For better or worse our heating oil and natural gas supply are both more reliable than our electricity supply. I don't need the heat going out in the dead of winter when some wind storm drops a bunch of branches on power lines.

I'm aware that both my boiler and a natural gas furnace have electric blower motors. It's a lot easier to power them from a generator than it is to have a generator than can power a house worth of heat pumps.

[ssl-3]

You can have both, though. A person doesn't have to make a binary decision of heatpump OR natural gas.

Please remember that traditional aircon is also literally a heat pump. It's perfectly acceptable to have a ducted heat pump and a ducted natural gas furnace both sharing the same ductwork.

In this use, the heat pump and the furnace are just installed series with eachother, with one singular blower motor that is used for both roles. This arrangement is very similar (identical, really) to the layout that combined (heat+aircon) systems have used for many decades.

Power out, or simply very cold outside? Your house still has a natural gas furnace (which can be made work with a fairly small generator), and your rig doesn't require expensive-to-use heat strips for the coldest days either.

[silisili]

My personal anecdote? Don't.

I have a house where the first floor is served by a gas/ac combo unit, and the second floor with a heat pump.

I literally see no advantage to the heat pump and wish I didn't have it. It takes forever to heat and cool, comparitively, and likes to ice over when it gets too cold in the winter while running 24/7 doing nothing. The emergency heat eventually kicks in and fixes it, so I'm considering just running emergency heat all winter.

[rainsford]

The fact that your heat pump setup is also taking longer to cool suggests there's something fundamentally different between the setup on your different floors, not that there is something bad with heat pumps in general.

A heat pump in cooling mode works exactly like an AC unit, because that's exactly what it is. So if your AC unit on the first floor cools more quickly than you AC unit (i.e. heat pump) on your second floor, it's because A) your floors are different sizes or insulated differently or something else is different about their construction, B) your units are sized differently, or C) your heat pump has some mechanical problem. But the fact that it's a heat pump should make no difference to its cooling performance.

[owenthejumper]

Sounds like you have one of two problems: 1) you are changing the temperature too often. Set it and forget it. 2) you have a refrigerant leak

[Loughla]

Our heat pump for HVAC is awesome.

Until it gets under 30. Then you can watch the power meter crank when auxiliary heat kicks on. And we only keep it 65 in the house in the winter.

Luckily I live in the upper Midwest, so it's only that cold for like 4 months. . . Pretty cool. P.r.e.t.t.y. cool

[notyourwork]

Some heat pumps are rated for much lower temps.

[potato3732842]

>Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year.

Don't forget that those costs are going up in large part because heat pump subsidies are being rolled into electricity prices.

Imagine being a ~$100k HHI household and paying $300+/mo for electricity so that $200+k HHI doctor/lawyer/HN households can have subsidized heat pumps and our sleazy contractors, and the dealers, and everyone else upstream) can over-charge us for the privilege (thereby getting their cut of the subsidy).

It's a miracle we haven't all caught hot lead yet.

[VWWHFSfQ]

A heat pump just makes no sense whatsoever for me in my northeast town. The electric bill alone would outpace the old propane bill, not to mention installation.

And it won't even work during some of the coldest winter weeks when you _really_ need it to work.

Maybe I would consider it if I was in, like, Nevada or somewhere.

[doctorhandshake]

The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.

[corbet]

My heat pump, in Colorado, kept the house warm at -18°F last winter. Without firing up the backup resistance heating strip. I think it works.

(It is more expensive to operate than the natural-gas furnace was, though).

[cycomanic]

I don't know what sort of heat pump systems are common in the US, but Sweden (and AFAIK Norway and Finland as well), are probably >%80 heat pump for single family homes (most apartments are community heating at least in the larger cities). So it's absolutely now problem to run a heat pump even if it is very cold outside, but if you want to improve efficiency in areas that are super cold you can drill into the ground for a heat sink (those are called Bergvärme in Sweden).

Regarding cost, in most of the countries I've lived in a large fraction of the cost in the gas bill was the distribution cost. So once you switch to a heat pump, you also switch to electric cooking and even if heating with electricity would be significantly more expensive you would still win. Is that different in the US?

[yxhuvud]

It works just fine during winters if you do it properly and couple them with ducts that are a couple of hundred meters deep.

[orev]

Heat pumps are just air conditioners in reverse. They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling. While many people have air conditioners, and grids seem to be able to handle them in the summer, an assertion that the grid can’t handle them in the winter is doubtful. Plus there are fewer people using them in the winter (just because fewer are installed). Most people in the NE heat with oil, gas, or wood, so that would reduce the electric load (compared to summer) even further.

There would be an increase only if people were supplementing the heat pump with electric heat, which to be fair is a possibility.

There’s a lot of misinformation about heat pumps, especially by HVAC people who don’t have a lot of experience with them, so they tend to recommend what they’re more familiar with.

But yes, understanding the electricity cost is essential when considering one.

[eldaisfish]

> They use the same amount of electricity whether heating or cooling

This is completely wrong. The amount of power depends on the temperature delta. When cooling, you are typically not cooling your home to 30 degrees Celsius below the outdoor temperature. However, when heating, you are typically heating your home to around 20 degrees above outdoor temperature. Heating consumes more power than cooling.

[goalieca]

I would be curious to know the difference. In summer you might find 30c outside and inside 20c so a difference of 10c. In winter it can reach -30c and inside is 20c. This is 5x more!

[gardenhedge]

I have a heat pump, along with hvac. It only produces heat. Is it possible to get it to produce cooling too or is that an entirely different system?