Why Heat Pumps are Essential for the Future - Explained

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One technology that's far too often overlooked when it comes improving heating and cooling performance - insulation. It's not a sexy new technology but it's far and away the best method to improve thermal performance of a building. You don't even have to tear open exterior walls and add batts of insulation, adding blown insulation to your attic and changing to double or triple pane windows are easy fixes. I wish more people would talk about these simple fixes and think about responsible uses of energy as much as the latest technology.

In europe, they're pushing for heat pump everywhere. You can't get classical AC anymore, you get heat pump. And they are not that expensive. And they work pretty well.

I live in the middle of Sweden, so pretty far north. We use a heat pump. It's hooked up to our standard water radiators, and it produces our hot water too. Very efficient thing compared to the old electric heater. We've used it in temperatures of -20℃ with no problem 👍

I have an older home in Eastern Washington. I finally decided to upgrade to a heat pump a few years ago. Prior to having a heat pump, with baseboard heat, it wasn't unusually to see $300 and $400 during cold snap bills. I would turn my heat down and had plenty of throw blankets. Since installing the heat pump, my bills have averaged under $225 with the loan payment and during a nasty cold snap, my bill increased to $260, while keeping my house at 70. I'm amazed on how much money I save.

I have a 220m deep hole in my garden here in Stockholm Sweden. The pump circulates the antifreeze mixture around as needed and normally draws out about 4-5 degrees celcius from the brine. Works great! COP of 4.8 producing up to 16kW. Running the system off solar panels would give you a double solar system as the heat from the ground (solar radiation) would be moved into the house by electricity generated from Solar panels :-)

I'd love to see a collaboration between you and Technology Connections, the more people who know the benefits of heat pumps the better. It took me over an hour to convince my father in law that they aren't a scam and that in fact he's been using one (the air conditioner) for decades without realizing it.

Great stuff Matt. I am helping friends restore their 115 year old home, and I recommended their heat pump/air handler for heating and A/C. Also opened up the second floor walls and foamed them. Can't wait to see how well it performs. Looking into heat pump fro hot water. Replaceing the dehumidifier is brilliant! Wish I had done that in my home. My dehumidifier uses about a third of all my electricity keeping my basement dry. Sandstone foundations are sponges for ground moisture. I was doing heat loss calculations by hand in the late 70's. No software existed, no computers, just grind it out. This tech now was unimaginable then. Thanks for helping educate us on what the future looks like.

Ten years ago I installed an open-loop(no digging, just uses well water) geothermal unit, plus all new ductwork. It paid for itself in just under four years, and I've been saving ever since. Plus with the desuperheater and a new super high efficiency water heater(used the old one for hot water storage from desuperheater) I get all-but-free hot water. No net carbon expect for power plant fuel costs(NG).

I just built a house over the last 2 years with the geothermal hvac, hybrid hot water tank and will be getting solar and batteries soon. Love the system and the cost to run was way lower than expected. The one thing I would recommend for your home is zone control for your hvac system. We did this and imo was the best spent money. By moving conditioned air to only the areas of the house that need it increases the overall efficiency. Cheers

You weren't lying when you were hyping up your animation team. Once again, whoever you hired to do these animations are so good at making incredible visuals that are easy to understand. I really do think they aid a lot in easily understanding these concepts for visual learners, massive kudos for this overall fine level of detail work you put into these. Also, your throughput is surprisingly fast for the quality of content. Great work.

I agree, a few years ago we added a 5 zone split system to the house as part of our solar install and due to the rebate. The ability to selectively cool or heat the rooms we are in versus the entire house was such a cost savings. It’s worked flawlessly and we love it.

I installed DIYMr Cool Heat pumps up here in NH last year and they have been great but I honestly didnt realize just how efficient they were. I keep finding myself on this channel during random searches. Great videos! Keep it going

I wanted to get a heater for my pool. The up front cost to install a typical gas heater was too expensive because of the distance I would have had to run the gas lines so in exploring my options, I came across the idea of a heat pump. All of local the pool companies here in Texas said they won’t work well but the reality is that none of them had any experience with heat pumps. I found a company to install it and it’s been great. Not only does it keep the pool warm in the spring and fall, but it also can cool off the pool in the worst heat of Texas summer. No gas heater can do that.

The only drawback with heat pump dryers is the difficulty level to clean the evaporator coil once is clogged up with lint. No matter how many filters they have to prevent them from getting any lint it always happens. You will notice the drying time increasing overtime. I love the idea but it still needs improvement. My A/C on the other hand is also a heat pump. Running for 16 years and not a single problem so far. Great video. Thanks for your dedication.

I’m glad you mentioned tumble dryers. I was wondering if the waste heat from a traditional dryer could be channeled towards a heat pump system, or efficiently stored rather than simply vented into the atmosphere. In the future I believe that most homes will have any many ‘closed loop’ systems as possible for heat, energy and water. These advances will likely be useful for environments where water and electricity are scarce - like in low earth orbit, the moon and Mars. This will be yet another arena where space tech helps us on earth and our improvements feed back to space tech. It’s not just about Velcro and Tang 🙂

Thanks Matt, pretty good. Heat pumps, including water heaters & dryers, are very interesting, but a couple clarifications! - First, outdoor heat pump compressor COP drops with outside temp. The Mitsubishi “Hyperheat”, what I own, has a COP of 4 @ 48 deg F but drops to 2 @ 5 deg F. I also have a condensing gas furnace (95% efficient) using traditional radiators. The cost cross-over point for me, for what I pay for gas & electricity is ~35 deg F (close to 0 deg C) meaning that based solely on cost considerations, I should turn on my condensing gas boiler when the outside air is below 35 deg F. If your heat pump takes its heat out of/ puts heat into buried underground pipes, this does not apply since ground temp, at a sufficient depth, is ~55 deg F in my area. Heat pump water heaters - Matt and/or the company he got his information from, makes a mistake here. The savings you get goes down in the winter. For example, in the winter, the water heater heat pump extracts the heat from your house, not from the outdoor air, so it adds to your heating bill. This is true even if the device is in the basement since a cold basement chills the floor of the upstairs. In the summer, you will get a little free cooling and also some free de-humidification, but not enough to replace your main A/C unit or even your basement dehumidifier (depends on how moist your basement is). This is like how in the summer your refrigerator, also a heat pump, blows hot air into your kitchen which then must be cooled by your home’s A/C (old cats like sitting at the base of refrigerators because of the heat). In short, it is best to have a ground water based hot water heat pump, or heat pump of any kind, but, as Matt said, it is going to cost more $. So who is going to invent a ground water based refrigerator, refrigerators run 24/7! Heat pump dryers with no vent to the outside - OK, I never heard of these until this video. My first thought was lint. Outside my house, by the dryer duct, there is always extra lint even though my dryer has a lint filter. Lint buildup can cause fires, which is why I have a metal foil dryer duct which I vacuum out every couple of years. Also, the savings are not that dramatic since dryers are only run once in a while. Using Matt’s numbers, an old-fashioned electric dryer costs a max of $0.55 per a single run and an electric heat pump dryer costs a max of $0.33 per run. I do 3 loads a week, 156 per year. That’s $85.80 for the old-fashioned dryer and $51.48 for the fancy dryer, a difference of only $34.32 per year (NBD). I am also dubious about the claim that the heat pump dryer lasts twice as long since it is arguably a much more complex machine. Complexity inevitably leads to a higher risk of breakdown and washer/dryer engineers, long ago, were instructed by their management teams to design washers & dryers to fail sooner than previous designs forcing consumers to by these gadgets more often. Final comment - I want to echo Matt’s statements about how weird heat pumps seem, where they can seemingly create, for example, 4 units of heat energy using only 1 unit of electrical energy. Matt gave an OK explanation, but not the best. It all makes sense if you draw an imaginary “control volume” around the entire heat pump system (including both the inside air handler and the outside compressor/heat exchanger) and then draw arrows representing energy into and out of the control volume. For example, during the summer, go outside when the outside compressor fan is on, and put your hand in front of it - the outside unit's fan sucks warm outside air into the outside unit and expels air much warmer than the ambient outside air, this represents a net energy flow exiting the control volume. Inside the house, the air handler sucks in your somewhat cool, but hotter than desired, inside air and expels into your house much colder air which represents a net energy flow entering the control volume. Lastly, electrical energy is being added to make the system go. Compare the difference in energy per unit time between the inside & outside air flows, which is the amount (rate) of energy being "pumped", with the rate of electrical energy used to get the coefficient of performance, COP (COP = (pumped thermal energy converted to Joules) divided by (electricity converted to Joules) for a chosen span of time, note: 1 Joule per second = 1 watt). Conversely, during the winter, the air coming off of the outside compressor will be colder than the ambient air around you and the inside air handler expels heat warmer than the inside ambient air (pumping direction reversed). The big clue is the word “pump” in the term “heat pump”. Stunningly, air-conditioners, since their invention, were capable of generating both heat as well as cooling. All that had to be added to the design of the old-school A/C unit, to enable both cooling and heating and which was mentioned by Matt, is an electrically controlled valve that flips the coolant lines. When petroleum was dirt cheap, back in the good old days, it was economically viable to ignore the energy savings inherent in a bi-directional heat pump. This is not the case anymore. BTW, this energy pumping business is philosophically the same as what you do when you carry a propane tank for your gas grill from your truck/car to your gas grill. Clearly the energy in the propane tank is much higher than the energy you expended moving the tank from your vehicle to your grill, therefore generating a huge COP. Hopefully this comparison did not confuse your further.

As an HVAC Contractor... I can not thank you enough for creating this video for me to share with my customers. THANK YOU!!!

I am an engineer and I love your videos. I disagree with you that the life span of a heat pump dryer is double of a traditional electric dryer. Traditional electric dryers are very simple. No matter where I have moved, I have always bought an old used dryer (with moisture sensor... important) and just repaired it if need be, at a very low cost. A new belt for my $150 used dryer, for example, was recently $14 and I installed it in 15 minutes. A heat pump dryer is much more complicated and I would argue practically not repairable by a homeowner. In contrast, an electric dryer, especially one with an easily-replaced mechanical timer, could easily last 20 years, or even infinitely if you know how to replace the drum bearings. The heating element is cheap and easy to replace. The motor can be serviced at a motor shop. They are about as simple as an appliance as you can imagine. My point in all this is that if you can hang dry your clothes, or at least 'some' of your clothes, and use a classic electric dryer 'only' for select items (towels, sheets, or things needed right away), you can reduce your total clothes drying costs to a very minimal amount without spending $2k on a complicated appliance with a lot of moving parts, refrigerant that can leak out, computer boards that can fail, refrigerant disposal issues, specialist repair technicians, etc. I just use a fold out rack in my laundry room and every item I hang on it costs exactly $0 to dry. I have my dryer when I need it. I've even taken 90% dry items off the rack and finished them in the dryer very quickly. If you are in the habit of taking your own bags into a grocery store, hanging a few items to dry on a rack is about that hard of a habit to form. Plus your clothes last longer. When you empty the lint filter, that lint you are throwing out is your clothes! There are some situations where my argument has less merit, of course. I admit that. A busy mom with kids in humid rainy Houston is not going to want to hang dry clothes. But I would still maintain that a simple old-school dryer with a moisture sensor and a mechanical timer can last decades.

Wish we had known about this when we replaced our oil furnace, blower and water heater about 5 years ago. Definitely will go this route next time we have to.