Three years ago, with the price of heating oil still surging, I nearly fell for the propaganda of the green lobby, thinking hard about taking out my oil-fired boiler to replace it with something called an air-source heat pump.
This is, in effect, a refrigerator or air-conditioning system in reverse. It would pump water through a circuit that included my radiators as well as a series of fan units in the garden.
By pressurising the water before it is pumped through the radiators, and depressurising it before the water gets outside, it is possible to pump heat from outdoors to indoors, even though the temperature is higher inside than out.
The heating system would have cost me £10,000 and sent my electricity bills soaring, but the company trying to sell it to me assured me that it would pay for itself in the longer run…
Having recently installed a heat pump (the old freon-based one died), your capital costs are at least triple what they are in the US. By the way, no heat pump uses water as a working fluid.*
The main defect of heat pumps is that they become inefficient at low temperatures (around freezing, depending on the design) and need supplementary heat. In our case that’s a propane furnace.
The beauty of the heat pump is that it works both ways, and provides air conditioning in the summer. Over the last 30 years, we have experienced temperatures ranging from a low of -25F to a high of 101F, and both heating and cooling are needed.
* Did someone quote you a geothermal system rather than a conventional heat pump?
So damned sick of listening to “air quality” this and that from the Green Monsters, especially in Ontario. Maybe it’s time we refer them to some older and wiser folk who grew up in the era of outhouses, the era they’re trying to take us back to. Never heard them mention “air quality” but they knew $hit when they smelled it.
LizJ, starting with forked tongue she-man.
I’m not sure what kind of system is being described in the article. It sounds as if it is some kind of heat pump but like nothing I’ve ever heard of. A properly designed heat pump system is pretty efficient for both heating and cooling but it also is expensive to install (the big cost) and generally requires a fair sized lot (not that the components themselves are so expensive but there is a lot of piping and excavating….the heat exchange is with the earth, not the air). Electricity is required as it is a pump system with a compressor. But then electricity is required for all modern heating and cooling systems, oil burning heating systems in particular.
In any case, the guy in the article made a wise choice. Venezuela has huge reserves and probably Brazil as well. This does not include oil sands reserves either. There is no shortage of oil for the forseeable future. For that matter, there is no shortage of coal or nuclear power …… but then this is not about energy production but about saving the planet from run away heat.
I am due for a new furnace(nat gas) next year. No way I ever touch a geothermal, I wont live long enough to get the value. I knew a guy who was put on a heat pump, but the installer ran it through his electric water heater and the element in his water heater was also being used to heat the water. Hydro bills went nuts, and he had to sue the installer for 30,000 bucks. They settled, he was still out of pocket. Green crap don’t work, the laws of thermodynamics say so. But it is these fools who stayed in school who now advise government to ignore these laws of physics and we have hippie ben Levin power policy.
May gas furnace needs electricity to run, but I rigged up a system where I can run it of electricity from my car in the event of a power outage. I can also run my gas stove and a few LED lights. Maybe not as good as a back up generator, but it works
At the height of the green stiff weiner shafting we are all taking a friend of mine decided to heat his new shop with geo-thermal heat transfer blah blah, bottom line all that crap is a reverse refridgerator basically, well his power bills are 15 to 1650 a month, well it will take a long time to get that back on vs natural gas. A lot of Manitoba hutterites dove into the scam and were out here in Alberta doing these installations, while I was hooking up his well and pressure system the drillers were to the southwest of me drilling for these heat sink/money sinks I sink, I asked the 2 month experienced fellow if he had to have a well drillers license to do this, no I don’t need no license, how deep are you going? 135 feet, well that is around the depth of landowners well, you will put that thing into the aquifer, “so”, so I told the land owner I will put the pipe from the pump up on the fence and watch the water and when that clown hits his TD you will see if he disturbs your aquifer 100 feet east of said clown. 2 hours later the stream coming out at 5 gal pr min turned dirty and long story short, every one of these unlicensed BS glowball warming scams have cost us billions. Thanks Maurice I hope its hot enough for you in hell.
I live in southern New Jersey and have an old natural gas/forced hot air system supplied via the local utility. I pay $83 per month for gas and electric. Sweaters and long johns in the winter, a fan in the bedroom in the summer, as I’m puttting off fixing the central air system which broke 3 years ago. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And a little richer.
…..the fan in the summer is getting old. Oof.
This is my business and I tell my customers to stay away from heat pumps if you have access to fossil fuels. Do all your calculations on a ten year equipment life cycle.
That being said, it depends on the weather where you are. Meaning that if you have access to a moderate temperature source then it makes some sense. A water well or lake water source works well. Retrofits are tricky; an existing hydronic system needing 140f minimum won’t be economical. Essentially the energy to raise the temperature past say 95f is pure electric heat, in this case provided by an expensive and finicky refrigerant pump motor.
What works is localized warm spots to cover the shoulder seasons. Something in the kitchen or bedroom to warm up the space when the weather isn’t extreme and you don’t want to fire up the boiler or wood heat. The asian ductless splits, not chinese work really well, are quiet and reliable.
Don’t count on warranties. Is the guy who put it in going to be around in 9 years, or is the manufacturer? Not if you chose the lowest price. It is getting hard to find parts for things older than 5 years, and that will get worse.
The geothermal industry died when an $8000 subsidy on the installation disappeared. Something to remember when in the presence of a moral preener going on about their green system.
The writer of that article was damned lucky to avoid the sales pitch, he obviously did not understand how the system worked at all.
The basic problem with heat pumps, (and solar systems) is that they work extremely well in hot climates, ie heat pumps cool the house well for long periods of the year, but in the winter in the “reverse cycle” when you are attempting to heat the house you would be lucky to achieve a temperature of 55 degF, to get to a comfortable 70 degF you need additional (secondary) heat. That is OK in Arizona and South California because the hours per year you are using that heat is tolerable, try to translate it to anywhere in Canada or the US northern states and you have a big problem. The sales people putting these systems in have already sold you on operating cost savings to justify the large installation cost so the typical low cost selection of cheap electric baseboards or an electric hot water heater for the secondary heaters totally ignores what it costs to run this secondary heat. Buyer beware! Plainly stated, stick with a reliable natural gas furnace with a cooling coil (only if you need it).
As it happens I have been looking at houses in BC’s Okanagon Valley this year, lots of nice homes with these systems and geothermal heating (basically a larger heat pump system distributed to a sub-division) that people are bailing out from, some pretty good buys, but realtors are very reluctant to reveal the utility costs.
The system that’s being inaccurately described is a hydronic heating system, in which hot water is circulated to radiators in the home (including in-floor heating coils in some cases). These are very common systems in Europe and Asia.
Traditionally, hydronic systems have used a fired heater to warm the circulating water, but there is no reason why you could not use a heat pump to warm that water. New air-source heat pumps are remarkably efficient, and depending on the price of electricity vs gas or fuel oil really can heat less expensively than an old fired system if properly designed.
Yes, the electricity consumption would go up a lot, but that should be offset by eliminating the cost of fuel oil. Of course, if the utilities have jacked up the electricity cost, and the price of fuel has dropped precipitously, the savings can easily disappear.
The other problem with an air-source heat pump system is that when the outdoor temperature gets down below about 40F it loses its effectiveness and must use use inefficient electric coils to heat the circulating water.
Ever notice that any green scam never mentions the fact that electricity is in the mix and every time I look the power rates, especially here in Ontscario, are being jacked up?
Ge ma, no gasoline bill on my electric car. I just plug it into my house and fill it up with unicorn farts.
I have had an air-source heat pump, propane, electric forced air and now geothermal (open well system). The person writing the article in the link is a bit of a dolt (as are most journalists these days). He mentions only that he saved money on an oil fill-up and that he was quoted 10,000 pounds for an air source installation. Where does one begin? He shouldn’t be switching until his oil furnace needs replacing. Then he’ll need to compare the cost of a new oil furnace with that of an open-source heat pump. When he does this it is unlikely that oil will be $30/bbl. Switching from one system to another should be made on the basis of a 6-10 year pay back AND costing is done on the differential cost between replacing your current system with the same technology versus a newer technology.
In my old house (1800 sq ft) I had an air-source heat pump. It was great because for most of the year temperatures were above -10 deg C and the unit did not switch on the electric coil back-up until then. The summer was the best. We put the thermostat to +22 deg C and it was cool 24/7 until the fall. The unit was installed for less than $10,000 CAD, about 20% more than a nat-gas furnace with central air. The additional electricity use was minor – a few hundred dollars per year. But it couldn’t compete with natural gas, which was eventually brought to our neighborhood and we switched because an air-source heat pump is located outdoors and only lasts about 15 years.
Then I moved to a much larger house with electric forced air. After electricity bills averaging $1,200 per month (over $2,000 in January alone) I switched to propane. My electric bills dropped to $300 per month and I spent about $4,500 per year on propane. But then I learned a cruel lesson. In Ontario, January and February are the coldest months. They are the months when you use the most propane and they are the months with the highest propane prices. I went through about 6,000 litres of propane in these 2 months alone and another 3,000 litres for the remainder of the year.
The winter spot price of propane over the past few years has been steadily climbing and reached $1.15 per litre in 2013 (from an average of $0.60). That year I spent over $8,000 in propane. I decided to install open loop geothermal (water well pumps to condenser / evaporator and returns to water well). My electricity prices went up about 20% and propane dropped to under $1,000 per year (2 stoves, 2 BBQs). I’ll save about $5,000 per year which gives a payback of 7 years.
Deciding on what type of heating system you need is based on availability (go with nat-gas if you can) and how well you can cope with up front costs (geo-thermal systems cost up to $40,000). But for quality of heating and cooling you can’t beat geo-thermal. The unit is almost always running (with a variable speed fan) and maintains temperature to within +/- 0.5 deg C throughout the entire year. This beats forced air nat-gas or propane which blasts on, over-heats and stays off until it gets cold.
Also, geothermal systems are located indoors and wear longer than air-source heat pump and central air. Because everything is made in China these days don’t expect anything located outdoors to last more than 10 years.
Finally, why are we even listening to the English when it comes to home heating? Having been a guest in many of the older English homes, owners seem proud to have stuck an electric heater inside a drafty old coal stove opening with the offer to guests to “sleep by the fire”. If you want to have a bath you have to boil the kettle and pour the boiling water around the tub because by the time the hot water gets to the second floor it isn’t hot enough to bathe in let along break the ice cap on the rim of the tub.
Getting so fed up with this eco-poppycocx bull poo tired of this Global Warming hogwash and this idiotic Go Green stuff all this Go Vegan,Ride your Bicycle to Work and this Save the rainforets bunk I’m fed up wit this eco-freak movment
DaveK. Your information is false. I had 2 geothermal units installed in late 2013, so I have about 2 full years experience with these units. Before that I had forced-air propane in the same home.
2014 was a very cold year. My electricity bills went up about 20%. The main geothermal unit has an electric heating coil installed. It comes on when the outdoor temperature dips below -5 to -8. For the past three days the temperature has been about -3 to -5 (30 F) and no external heat (electric coil) was needed. When you order a geothermal unit you select the size of the unit for the space. This size assumes you will need added electric heat about 10% of the time (primarily in January and February). This allows you to select a smaller unit and reduce your installation costs. You could also elect to purchase a much larger unit and not need an electric coil, with increased upfront costs. These are variables for you to decide based on your needs.
When people decide to change their heating technology they should use a simple spreadsheet that includes both installation costs and yearly costs. If the new technology does not pay for itself within 6-10 years then you shouldn’t switch.
For most people they should not consider geothermal unless, like me, they live in the country and have large heating / electric bills already. We run 2 houses and 1 shop off the same electricity meter. Our monthly costs are very high (over $1,000 per month in the winter). It makes sense to consider both installation costs and annual running costs, especially if you plan on staying in the same home for some time.
A family friend runs a hog operation. They recently switched from propane to geothermal and are saving tens of thousands of dollars per year. The cost of propane goes up dramatically in the winter, especially in cold winters when you need it most.
I will agree, however, that an air-sourced heat pump is not practical for large homes in cold climates. This may be especially true in Ontario where the government is preparing to sell off its electricity interests to the private sector, a move that will lead to higher electricity prices.
My gawd Steve, those costs are extraordinary, but, we have to assume you dont have access to oil or nat gas. Living in the rural areas hasits challenges and limitations, as well as the part uof tbe country one is in.
I had my heat pump installed for $5800 in 2009 and havent looked back. It was almost as cheap as you get. Gas bills dropped a lot, electric rose a little, overall comfort level improved 200%, due to a constant temperature, summer and winter.
With the collapse if the dollar, the pumps are likely much more expensive now. Fyi, heat pumps work best in climates like SW BC. For the rest of the country, I feel your pain. Wood, if available is great. Propane should be your last choice, but likely your only choice, that sucks.
Keith, I’m sitting in an 8,000 sq ft home heated by 2 geothermal units. It is a comfortable 21 deg C (70 F) all day and all night, without the need for an electric heating coil. I can monitor both my thermostats from my computer and I can tell if the auxiliary heat (electric) is on or not. I usually leave the electric coil breaker switch OFF until after Christmas. By mid-March the temperatures are high enough to turn it off again. On really cold days (it was -20 deg C a few weeks back) the geothermal unit can’t keep the house warmer than +17.5 deg C. I can fire up the wood stove or turn the AUX heat on. I usually do both just to keep the over 75 crowd happy.
A disadvantage of the open loop geothermal system (a well to well system, which I have) is that you need a lot of water (which I have) and 2 separate wells – one to draw from and one to return to. They need to be 100 ft apart as well. It’s cheaper to excavate and place coils about 8-10 feet below surface but I live in a rocky area and excavation wouldn’t work. Instead I have 2 wells about 120 ft deep, one 50 ft from the house and the other 150 ft from the house. An open well system requires 2 wells, which cost about $5,000 each to drill. Plus a large geothermal unit is about $12,000 and a small one $8,000. Then come installation costs. Total installation is about $35,000. Over 10 years ago I had a propane system installed. Two furnaces and two central air conditioners (Lenox, signature series). Total installation cost was about $29,000, $6,000 less than the geothermal system. But over time my propane costs went up faster than electricity costs. In 2013 I paid $8,000 for a year of propane. To save that $6,000 differential I only needed to run my geothermal system for 1 year.
Do not replace your existing heating system until it needs replacing. At that time do not fool yourself into thinking that geothermal or any other technology is just unicorn farts. You could be making a poor decision. Talk to people who have geothermal installations and listen to their experience.
My only complaint is because the units are on so much, there is a constant low frequency vibration that I can hear, coming from the larger unit. I should have installed sound installation in the furnace room and built a false wall where the pipes meet the geothermal units. This would have kept the vibration away from the walls. Had the same problem with the propane furnace fan but it didn’t come on as much.
DanBC. What really hurts is when you look at your electricity bill in Ontario. It’s not the total, it’s the breakdown. November 2015 was the mildest November since I moved here over a decade ago. My electric bill was $618.74.
$618.74 total
$77.11 HST
$27.12 debt retirement charge
$23.13 regulatory charges (whatever that is)
$144.05 delivery
$271.41 of the $618.74 (or 44%) is for charges other than electricity. Total is 16.5 cents/kWh for those of us who are Wynneing.
My power bill has gone up 56 percent, in Nova Scotia, oil is a fraction of the cost of electricity why in gawd’s name would I replace oil fired hot water heating with electric heat pumps that won’t function after minus 18? The entire neighborhood converted to the electric heat pumps, in 11 years those pumps will cost twice as much and triple the cost of oil. They nag me daily, but I’ll keep my oil fired furnace and watch them sell their organs to pay their electric bill.
Hah, I turned my heating bills to zero. I now rent and am happy I do:-)))
I had a “properly” designed geothermal system when I purchased my 5 year old house. It was terribly expensive, unreliable and did not save me a cent. In fact when it got cold we had to supplement with expensive electric heat. When Natural gas was going by I tossed the geothermal and installed a NG furnace.
Less expensive to operate and more comfortable heat. Geothermal is at best iffy for most. When you do have problems few plumbers know how to fix them.
I think the system the article is talking about is an air to hydronic heat pump. I have inside information that many large companies, Viessmann included, after preliminary investigations have all given up due to design liimitations. Most common refrigerants have condensing temperatures below 110F. Designing to a 10F temperature difference the highest hydronic water temperature one could expect is 100F. This is even low for in floor applications. Cast iron rads operate at about 140F with copper fin tube rads requiring up to 190F. Simply put just like facts to a Liberal, physics gets in the way of air to hydronic heat pump feasibility.
ASHRAE is another impediment as they don’t have a classification for air to hydronic heat pumps. CSA is another story!
Nobody in a position to do anything about it ever worried about peak oil. Keeping oil demand and supply balanced is why there’s a free market in oil. The PTB just couldn’t be bothered paying Christians a living wage to get ethical oil out of the ground.
A fair price for oil also made it more expensive to import organic strawberries in January for the elites, and to outsource manufacturing jobs to China (cheap made-in-China crap doesn’t transport itself, and it costs money and fuel to keep ship engines running).
Well, the eco-kooks got their wish—cheap energy. Now Ottawa is bleeding red ink now Alberta can’t be used as an ATM, and regular cauliflower is eight dollars a head. I shudder to think what organic costs.
They should really have been more careful what they wished for, eh?
Here in N.CA, PG&E has been steadily raising both gas and electric rates in an effort to PUNISH energy use. The Greens have completely taken-over both PG&E … and … the CAPUC (California Public Utilities Commission). Our rates are paid in “tiers” wherein you are PUNISHED for higher energy use with higher (and higher) rates. This has created a massive windfall of $$ for PG&E who is spending (read: wasting) all these rate dollars on a massive “green” advertising campaign … and spending the largess on ridiculously inefficient solar and wind installations. Make no mistake … this is a “user-tax” that is underpinning all this Green bullshit ! I am fed-up being taxed for a costly inefficient system that is anything BUT renewable as all the component parts have very short life-cycles and require costly replacement. The PUC was formed to PROTECT the Consumer … not to punish and brainwash them ! We need to, not only, clean house in our government, but also clean house in ALL the bureaucratic agencies that are overrun with LEFTISTS who HATE the “Common People” and are determined to FORCE the behavior they deem to be correct. Time to clean-out. all the State bureaucrats ! … and new management at PG&E
Very interesting comments, all. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a Professional Engineer (Mechanical) and, when I lived in the Yukon, installed two air source heat pump systems in my houses and consulted on about another dozen or so. In my two cases, the heat pumps were installed as a retrofit to fuel-fired forced air systems, one propane, one fuel oil. Please note that natural gas is not available in the Yukon. Pity. The first install paid out in 3 years, the second in 5 years. The secondary heat setpoint was -16 Celsius in both houses; the heat pump would keep the place at a steady 20 Celsius by itself above that outside temperature. Believe it or not, it was also very nice to have air conditioning during the hotter summers.
For the benefit of all, especially the not-particularly-well-informed author, there are basically two kinds of commercially available heat pumps for residential/commercial use: air source and ground source. The former extracts heat from outside air, the latter from either the ground and/or ground water. There are other more esoteric heat pump technologies, e.g. propane-fired refrigerators, but these currently aren’t being built for space heating applications. In both the air and ground source applications, you have an electrically-driven motor/compressor unit circulating a chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant between two heat exchangers, exactly like the other heat pump everybody already owns – your fridge. Air source is cheaper but the efficiency drops with the outside air temperature; ground source is much less seasonally dependent but the ground “loop” can add tens of thousands to the initial capital cost.
Another point not made clear in the article and not illuminated in the Comments is that the hydronic system referred to, i.e. radiators with circulated water, imposes an additional limitation on a heat pump of either kind. To heat with water requires refrigerant circulating temperatures of 45 – 50 Celsius as a minimum for the condensing exchanger whereas forced air requires only 25 – 30 Celsius. That extra 20 Celsius (minimum) really hammers the efficiency. The second point is that ground source systems are not terribly predictable re. heat exchange capacity. If you have abundant groundwater or live beside a lake you may be fine but somebody with a house high on a hill of sand and gravel won’t be.
Steve, Dan, Keith and Derek all make valid points and the essence is this: you MUST cost out your alternatives, including full capital and operating costs and projected for the life of the system. In my case (Yukon) despite the abominable climate, the heat pumps worked great – reduced my fuel bills by about 70% with perhaps half of that saving going to the extra electricity required. With only propane and diesel available at roughly $45 and $35 per million BTU (2013 prices) and electricity at about $45, it made an air source heat pump averaging a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of between 2.0 and 3.5 an entirely viable alternative. But, as they say, your numbers may vary, especially with the oil and gas prices down the toilet. At current prices of $4 per million BTU, natural gas is unbeatable.
Sadly, while all of us can likely run the numbers and plot our course with some degree of understanding, we will still wind up on the rocks of government regulation and policy directives made largely without much understanding of the consequences and without our consent. Case in point: on heat pump install #2, the vent pipe for the furnace was required to be replaced with vent pipe carrying a label in blue ink stating it conformed to the same code as the original vent pipe. That cost $1800. Being the cheap type, I offered to write it on myself in pen but that wasn’t apparently OK. Who knew that 25 microns of blue ink was all that was standing between me and a fiery death?
Lastly, all those line items on your utility bill – debt retirement charge, regulatory charges and delivery charges (and whatever else your jurisdiction has mandated) – that’s for those windmills you didn’t want but get to pay for, the compliance costs in keeping onside with whatever idiot government department has come up with a new set of rules and the utility’s costs of building and operating the infrastructure to get the energy to you. Since most utility rates are set according to some sort of return-on-investment formula, that means they have an incentive to keep those costs as high as possible, don’t you know?
And please don’t get me started on BC’s lovely carbon tax.
The carbon “tax” is a “levy”, not a tax, on BCHydro bills, lol. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
Its a crock, any way one calls it.
We get to pay the rentseekers on every bill. Even on nat gas.
The collapse in prices on all hydrocarbons is a boon for all homeowners, and consternation to the econutter set. Its the opposite of what they want to see, extreme cost of hc heat, which would force gubmints, in their mind, to go heavy and hard into alt energy.
Sorry, but I don’t understand what’s false about what I said. I’m happy to be enlightened! If your comment is about the switchover point for supplemental heating coils, I could easily be wrong about that, but it does greatly depend on the size of the units and how well insulated a house is.
I, too, have gone through the geothermal heating upgrade, and I’ll agree it was a tough decision. I compared some of the best air-source units to geothermal, and the capitalized cost favorability was almost always on the side of the air-source units. That was until you considered that even for excellent air-source units their life expectancy was only around 12-15 years. Good geothermal units are around double that. In the end, my own costs did go down, but not a lot… because I can now more easily afford to keep the house a little warmer in the winter and a little cooler in the summer.
Yes, it’s a large, old house, and natural gas is not an option (last quote was around $25k to extend the NG line some 1000 ft to my home).
My point, however, about the original article was based on the apparent facts that the writer doesn’t understand what a heat pump does, doesn’t understand it’s limits, and didn’t consider electricity costs when evaluating the upgrade. I’d also guess that the vendor didn’t really talk about how well (or poorly) an air-source heat pump performs at low outdoor temperatures. This can be a critical factor where electrical rates can vary greatly depending on time of day and total usage (they do that a lot in Europe). Most vendor calculations of operation costs use a simple heating-degree-day calculation that presumes a linear relationship between heating requirements and electrical cost, and this just doesn’t work when the non-linear rate schedules are in force.