Heat pump vs AC and gas heater question

[kenempireex]

My house's central heater is broken and I am thinking to add a ac unit as well. I look online and heat pump seems to do both of the work. Is it efficient to use something like that at home? Reliability? I live in california so, it always cool at night. We mostly likely will use the heating more than cooling.

[jake_91306]

Do you have you gas with PG&E?

We offer rebates for furnaces.

http://www.pge.com/myhome/saveenergy...ce/index.shtml

They have some pretty efficient furnaces out there.

[OBG3506]

I got this off some site!

How Much Can It Cost
To Heat My Home With A Gas Furnace Vs. A Heat Pump?*

House Built To State Energy Code

Efficiency Level
Gas Furnace
Cost/Year
$1033
Heat Pump
Cost/Year
$666
Heat Pump Cost
Savings/Year
$367

[Deezflip]

If you don't have a gas line and your stove, water heater, etc. are all electric....then you have no choice but to get a heat pump. I think heat pumps starts to struggle at really cold temperatures though where it's constantly running to heat up your home. You probably get mild winters anyway in Oakland so the heat pump should be good.

[Grace]

Originally Posted by kenempireex

My house's central heater is broken and I am thinking to add a ac unit as well. I look online and heat pump seems to do both of the work. Is it efficient to use something like that at home? Reliability? I live in california so, it always cool at night. We mostly likely will use the heating more than cooling.

One of our locals does that for a living. Post in NorCal!

[SpudRacer]

Heat pumps can be great in the right application.

We've built 4 homes in the last 25 years. I've had three types of heating systems......

• Oil / Forced Hot Water
• Oil / Forced Air
• Electric - Ground Source Heat Pump - Forced Hot Air

Pro's for heat pump.....

• They can be very efficient since you're not creating energy but rather "pumping" it from one place to another
• You've got no fuel stored in your home. No gas to explode. No oil to leak.
• Cheaper since the same unit is used to pump heat into the house in summer and out of the house in summer. No separate furnace.
• Space efficiency, no furnace in the basement. The heat pump can sit outside the foundation.
• No combustion, so no need for a CO2 monitor (for the furnace).
• Since they sit outside the foundation, they are spooky quiet.

Con's for heat pump.....

• They are only efficient from about 30 deg F to 90 deg F. In cold climates, they will cut over to electrical resistance (heating coils) when the air to air exchanger can no longer keep up. They also use resistance coils to defrost the heat exchanger in cold weather. At this point they are the most expensive method of heating.
• They are slooooow. An air sourced heat pump basically needs to run almost all the time in cold weather. Whereas you can flick on an oil fired hot air furnace and feel hot air in a few minutes that's maybe a 20 deg F differential with the air in the house, a heat pump will only produce a 5 to 10 deg F differential. You'll feel slightly warmer air, not hot air. For this reason, it takes a lot longer to raise the house temp 1 deg.
• If you live where the electric rates are low, say 5 cents per KWH, heat pumps make sense. If you're in an area where electric costs are 15+ cents per KWH they suck. If you're in a cold climate with high electric costs, fugedddaboutit.
• When the power goes out, so does your heat. But that's true for most other systems too.

With those cons in mind, I'll mention that most of those negatives can be overcome in a big way by moving from an air sourced heat pump to a ground sourced heat pump.....geothermal.

That's what we had in our PA house. It's quite a bit more expensive up front because you'll be drilling vertical wells and sinking casing or laying in a field of horizontal pipe sort of like a leaching field. Ours was a vertical system. However, after the system is purchased and installed the efficiency is such that you can basically set the temp anywhere you want summer or winter for little cost. You are pulling heat from the earth which is at a stable 50 - 60 deg or so. That's right in the sweet spot for a heat pump's heat exchanger. I love ground sourced heat pumps.