Yeah that doesn’t make any sense. You want more humidity so you can reduce the temperature and stay comfortable, not less. Without an added humidifier I don’t see how it could have any effect on winter humidity versus a regular system. Also, in a lot of jurisdictions they’ve gotten pretty strict about duct leakage, requiring mastic to seal joints rather than tape, and also mandating leak testing new systems. So comparing an old conventional system with a new high velocity system is apples and oranges.
I’ve only ever seen high-velocity systems (also known as SpacePak) used for air conditioning retrofits. There’s nothing that says they can’t be used for heat too, but they can be a bit noisy and drafty. Draftiness is ok for a/c but you don’t want that for heat. I suspect like regular furnaces they wouldn’t run the blower at such a high speed for heating, which would help some, but it could still be an issue.
I wanted to do a ground-source heat pump for our new house, but the numbers were nuts–like $30k more than a propane boiler and AC, and we have easy digging. Our rental before we moved in had a GSHP with a couple of wells, and our landlord said his electric bills were very high–the resistance coil kicked on often in the winter. The boiler is the only gas appliance in the house. We go through about a thousand gallons a year for an eight-month heating season.
Within limits, of course. A damp day outside feels colder than a dry one. But house humidity levels in winter tend to get too dry for comfort in other ways – cracking dry skin, static electricity.
I don’t want noisy, either!
Thanks for reminding me that I’ll need to ask about that.
ETA: The current setup makes some noise, of course. But I don’t want it more noisy; or at frequencies that bother me (and unfortunately I can’t define which frequencies those are, only ‘I know them when I hear them.’
I’m not sure what incentive they are running now, but when I got my system, you could get a rebate if you kept an oil or gas furnace/boiler for backup. But it was much smaller - maybe a couple thousand dollars. By permanently disconnecting my old boiler, I basically paid nothing for a ductless mini-split air conditioning and heating system - and the invoice was something like $35K. All I paid was $1500 or so for the electrician to do the wiring. I live in NYC and no one I know who switched to heat pumps has had any problems. But it’s obviously very different where you live, because I am really not worried at at all about a power outage during the winter. Except for extremely local outages (like a couple of blocks) the closest I’ve seen to an outage in the winter was Hurricane Sandy - that was October 29, not really winter and certainly not cold.
Oh, and part of the reason I switched was because I was going to have to replace my boiler anyway. This way, I got to control the temperature better than I could with the hot water heat - only one floor could be comfortable at a time. If the first floor was comfortable, second floor was a sauna , second floor comfortable, first floor freezing. Another reason is that I could ditch the window air conditioners. So far, this is costing less than electricity for the window A/Cs and oil and service on the furnace.
I’m already well supplied with both. Plus the wood stove.
If it’s going to be seriously ineffective – I’d be waking up after the woodstove dies down to find the house at 37º or something like that – that’s another matter. But if when it’s 5 below with a howling wind it can only manage 60º if the stove’s not going to assist it, I can live with that. [ETA: all temps in Fahrenheit, in case it wasn’t obvious.]
The current oilburner won’t work with the power out, either. Almost no modern central heating system will work with the power out; if they don’t need electricity for the ignition, they need it for the safeties, and the default if the safeties don’t have power is Off. But my wood stove works just fine with the power out.
It won’t heat the whole house if it’s 5 below with wind, either; but the thing about wood stoves (at least the kind that are in the living space) is that, if I want to be warmer, all I need to do is to move closer to the stove.
But if I want to sleep through the night without having to get up to stoke it, or to be able to go somewhere all day, and not have the house possibly down in the 50’s or even colder when I get up or come home; let alone if I want to be able to go somewhere for a couple of days in winter and not need a catsitter who can also keep the stove going: it’s extremely useful to have automatic central heat. And when the weather’s in the 50’s to low 60’s, I do want some heat, but the wood stove is too much heat.
I am going to talk to the contractors about their experience with heat pumps in this area; and ask whether there are any local people who have one of their systems who I can talk to about it. And I thank everybody for the warnings and the info.
My parents had a heat pump in a house in Florida for a little while, and they thought it was useless and, IIRC, had it replaced with an oil fueled system, or maybe with electric baseboard, I can’t remember. But that was back in the 1970’s and I expect the technology has improved since then.
I replaced my ancient heat pump with a modern SEER 16 one. The old one didn’t work worth a damn if the temperature got to the 40s. The new one will keep the house as hot as I want it when the outside temp is below 20, and it doesn’t even have to run that often.
Out of curiousity, did you look into a mini-split AC/heating system?
The ones I’ve seen take several AC/heating units, mount them on exterior walls with a pipe through, and then connect them all to the heat transfer unit on the outside of the house. We’re sort of wondering if we might want to go that direction on our next AC upgrade (probably a decade from now, but never hurts to keep track of what’s out there).
I know people who have installed mini-split systems here, and they work. They are ugly on the outside of the house, and they require more open wall space for the air handling unit than would be easy to spare in my house. But they are an option. It’s because of the wall-space that i went with high-velocity ducts instead of a mini-split system when i installed central air.
They do have the nice feature that every room is effectively its own heating zone.
Yes, my point in the OP however was not that oil/gas can be used without power (very few can), but heat pumps will require more power, thus straining the grid and making blackouts worse. In very cold weather heat pumps are less efficient yet need to work more/harder, thus requiring more power exactly at the time when it may be scarce because other heat pump owners need lots of power then too. Being able to switch to fossil fuel at these extremes may avoid blackouts by reducing the power load on the grid.
Or being able to draw on various sorts of energy storage; which a lot of people are working hard on from various directions and using various techniques.
Yes, the “weather event” that causes must of our blackouts is “tree branch fell on power line”. That’s not going to be affected by how hard the heat pumps are working.
I understand what you are saying, but I am questioning if this will start being a problem as more heat pumps are being used. In other words is the reason that there are very few winter blackouts partly because people use fossil fuels to heat instead of electricity? What happens when people start switching en-mass to heat pumps? Are we still in the clear, or will we have a new cold weather peak demand to strain the grid?
I think you might be overestimating how common / extensive blackouts are . The last time I endured a widespread blackout that was more than a few hours long was the Northeast blackout in 2003. Everything since then has either been very local ( tree branches, etc) or only a few hours. And my house will stay relatively warm for more than a few hours without heat. I know that because there has been more than one time when my oil heat went out and I couldn’t get service for a day or two - it wasn’t comfortable but it was nowhere near as cold as outside.
I have listed my personal experience with blackouts in my OP in NY:
So while not that often, it does happen more than your post seems to indicate in my experience. Will this happen more often if more people are dependent on electric heat?
