Changing heating for my house
- Thread starter malibuguy79
- Start date
In determining efficiency of old heating equipment down time losses need to be considered. Steady state efficiency might be close to 80 percent but the cool down between firing is a big loss. With steam each time the burner cycles off the next firing will require bringing the water back to boil.
As to the political problems with using gas or oil we are suffering needlessly INMO.
Sorry.
As to the political problems with using gas or oil we are suffering needlessly INMO.
Sorry.
Your assumption is incorrect. I’ve owned 7 homes over 42 years and of the 7 there were 4 that had heat pumps. They suck. Yes I’m sure you really like them because you own a company that keeps them running for the unfortunate folks that own them. They are designed to fail. Cheap capacitors that are a $45 part but HVAC repair companies charge $400 for them. Defrost boards that fail because they burn up from switching the compressor back and forth during any temperatures lower than 35 degrees. Outdoor fan motors that are extremely cheap that are less that $200 from Grainger that are marked up 5 times that amount. Maybe my rant is about the HVAC repair industry and their exorbitant charges also. Heat pumps have their place, Florida where it rarely gets below 40 degrees in the winter. It’s 14 degrees right now at my house. Both my heat pumps sound like I’m living in a railway freight yard rumbling, hissing, and both running nonstop for the last 26 hours. Nope. I don’t like. I’m budgeting to switch these 5 year old heat pumps for traditional natural gas air handler-furnaces with Trane outdoor air conditioning units. By the way, my house is 5 years old with top tier insulation and windows.
What brand and model are they? There are massive differences in capability across individual brand models, let alone across all brands. Sounds like yours are the el cheapo Goodmans (Goodman’s upper tier stuff is actually pretty good) that have a time defrost rather than demand defrost.
It’s single digits right now where I am and my American Standard (Trane) units are running without a hitch. I can’t hear them inside and can’t even tell when they go into defrost, if they even have yet. I can tell when I put my foot over a floor vent if the aux heat is being called, via felt temp, but I don’t think it’s even bothered to defrost yet. The outdoor coil has some frost buildup on it, but it’s not terrible and I see no ice pool under it either, which tells me it hasn’t called for defrost yet. My neighbor’s has a veritable ice rink around it. My house is 40 years old and in need of a lot of air sealing, insulation and new doors. I even have to stuff hoodies/towels against the front door to mitigate some of the cold air intrusion.
Heat pumps are like cars. A Corolla does the job and costs less, but it isn’t quiet or particularly comfortable. A 3 Series BMW does the same job with more comfort and performance. Heat pumps are no different.
I had a home in Paducah,KY until divorced but I used wood heat for 7 years with a King wood stove with a thermostat. The chimney was 27 feet tall and started in the basement level. I removed a propane floor furnace and put the wood stove directly under the hole in the floor from the floor furnace. Boxed in the hole so air was directed upstairs. The home had 1800 square feet and two bedrooms and a family room and bath downstairs and two bedrooms and a living room and bath and kitchen upstairs. Each year it took 7 ricks of wood through the winter. It would heat that house completely and required a filling in the morning and a filling before bed. If the power went out the top lifted up and you could cook on it. I eventually replaced it with a propane furnace and a 2.5 ton AC unit when propane got reasonable price wise. It was really not a lot of problem with the wood stove. Emptied the ash pan once a week. That was really well designed wood stove.
While not a whole home woodstove like yours was, I absolutely love my woodstove. It will heat the whole house (2800sq ft) on its own if I do 3 loads per day which is about 10 splits per load, with the end of each split being the size of the front of my fist or smaller. It’s like 79% thermally efficient with secondaries and a catalyst.
I wish I had the home design for a whole home woodstove like a Fire Chief. The warmth just can’t be beat.
Here is a pic of mine
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I have a Bosch Heat pump but also have hot water baseboard oil fired. The heat pump replaced my old York setup. My electric bill dropped a lot, my oil use dropped because I use the heat pump in heat mode for all the way down to even 15F. Mine is supposed to be good to 4F IIRC. I use my baseboard when it gets below about 25F as primary so water stays flowing in pipes. Not best insulation and I've seen and helped with too many frozen pipes. The heat pump is set 1 degree off from baseboard so also kicks in and circulates better throughout the house.
When I got it it was cheaper than a plain AC system and 5 year 0% financing through local electric company. It's a bit louder in winter, I only hear it in my bedroom with crappy window right above condenser. In cooling mode I would consider almost silent. I have videos of the birds chirping with me standing next to it. In the same video you can hear the neighbors 2-3 houses away and they have newer AC systems.
Love my heat pump.
When I got it it was cheaper than a plain AC system and 5 year 0% financing through local electric company. It's a bit louder in winter, I only hear it in my bedroom with crappy window right above condenser. In cooling mode I would consider almost silent. I have videos of the birds chirping with me standing next to it. In the same video you can hear the neighbors 2-3 houses away and they have newer AC systems.
Love my heat pump.
Yes, these are Goodman units.
BrendanC
$100 site donor 2024
had to explain this to my parents aswell. goodman is the cheapest of the cheap and likewise operates like so. they had a two stage goodman installed and wondered why they had so many issues. Trane, carrier or ACIQ/MRCOOL are the only brands i trust. Haven’t had any interaction with the Bosh units but i know people like them minus parts network.
I used to have a Goodman bargain unit at my last house. It was right outside my bedroom window, ugh…
The air handler was in a closet next to the living room and we had to crank the TV to hear it when the air handler kicked on. Whoever installed it didn’t do a nice reducing trunk and branch setup. Instead, they just built a box plenum and ran individual flex duct to each supply register, aka a “Ductopus”. So many things done wrong with that install.
The units I had installed in my current home cost me around $9k installed, each. They are 1.5t American Standard heat pumps done by a company that is a member of ACCA and about a year or two after installing mine, no longer does residential work because the customers became so difficult to deal with and it was eating their bottom line. They even jettisoned their current difficult resi customers and kept the ones that were valuable to them and didn’t cause problems for them or harass their employees (I fall in the latter category, thank goodness).
To say that their guys do quality work would be the understatement of the century. I was quoted a firm price and any incidentals that were added to the project were not charged to me. The work was nothing short of impeccable and meticulous. You can tell the employees are paid well, trained and actually care about the work they do.
I’d venture to say that the installer company quality matters more than the brand of heat pump. Folks need to use ACCA contractors and the ACCA website even has a lookup feature. It’s how I found these guys.
I like our woodstove in the living area, as it needs 1 or 2 adjustments for every load of wood we put in, and on a -10F day we need 3 loads to keep the house nice. Needs draft to be WO for 1 to 15 minutes to get the new load burning well, then set of the long burn. Forgetting about it in the basement, and leaving it WO will over heat the stove, which if done repeatedly shortens its life. Also a proper chimney is expensive to buy and install, especially coming up from the basement.
I would get a quote for a cold weather rated heat pump dual head mini split for your main floor and upstairs hallway, and see how you like that. Get a price for a woodstove chimney to your basement or main floor, and odds are a woodstove install is going to be the same price as a propane insert into your fireplace on the main floor. Propane is cheap enough for a few super cold nights, or power failures.
A good woodstove with hardwood, will keep the coals going for 10-12+ hrs. So if its cold enough to need it, we do a burn in the morning at 7am, then when someone gets home at 5pm, then a load at 10pm. We just rake the coals to the front and reload, and the fire doesn't go out for weeks sometimes.
Our house is decently insulated so if we go away for a week, 10-15k btu of baseboards keeps it well above 50f.
If you have free/cheap wood available, its a nice hobby that saves a lot of money, and it is nice to sit in front of!
Thank you for stating exactly what I’ve believed all along. Goodman heat pumps installed by an installation team that deficated in our master bathroom shower during our house build. It must have been their first installation as well as their first few days out of their third world country. Needless to say that both the quality of the installation and these bottom shelf heat pumps makes for nail biting anxiety during the worst of the winter-summer. This is a Covid era house build where the building inspections were done virtually by text and photos. Everything passed inspection. They probably had photos of mechanical systems provided by the HVAC company to send rather than the actual mess they were making of the installation. While I’m ranting, the electrical contractor couldn’t read! I had to wire all the dimmer switches as well as photo cell outdoor lamp. He mislabeled the breakers in the breaker box. I’m lucky I wasn’t electrocuted while wiring a dimmer switch. The circuit was supposedly on the living room circuit but it is actually on the upstairs-hall circuit. Done.
A heat pump in addition to a pellet stove is what I was going to suggest.
Is a geothermal heat pump an option?
They would want you to pay for that, and it won't be cheap.
Is moving out of Maryland an option? I mean they things are here now I don't want to be here anymore. I'd go now, but I'm too close to retirement.
CleanSump
Site Donor 2026
Yep. Many retire and go to the Carolinas or West Virginia from here. I just retired and we are going to Thailand.
My parents have a wood stove insert for for their fireplace, I believe an old GoldMark. It has a channel around it and a mounted squirrel cage blower. This thing is from the late 70's. I don't know if it has an outside air source but rest of house didn't get that cold draft like when you use a regular fireplace. Heated their 3 bedroom Cape forever. They also have an oil fed, hot air furnace but they used to use less than 150 gallons per year. The stove has sealed doors on it but if you want nice sitting by fire has a mesh screen if you leave doors open. Like others it got stoked and loaded early AM, late afternoon and before bed. Dad was friends with the Asplundh Tree guys through his job. They would show up and drop a load randomly. Family activity in fall was splitting all of it with a gas splitter. Stack 3-4 deep rotating the piles. Each winter was at least 2 year old seasoned hardwood.
My friend put a Woodstock Soap Stone free standing in his living room. That thing left almost no ash to clean out and 2-3 logs kept his house at 70 even when they lost power for a week. We drove to Vermont to pick it up.
My friend put a Woodstock Soap Stone free standing in his living room. That thing left almost no ash to clean out and 2-3 logs kept his house at 70 even when they lost power for a week. We drove to Vermont to pick it up.
That’s what my woodstove is, a Woodstock. It’s their “Survival Hybrid”. Amazing stove! I want their Progress Hybrid for my main living area!
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