House with Heat Pump ?

I am mildly surprised to see this debate raging on. Here in central Virginia, "bad" heat pumps are ubiquitous, since they both heat and cool, and in this area, the cooling is nearly as important as the heating. I would estimate that 99% of new houses built since 1990 have heat pumps. With a heat pump, you have one system that works to provide you year-round comfort. A decent system will last 12 to 15 years.

If you live in the northland and don't care about cooling, then consider another type of system for heating. Otherwise, join the billions and billions of satisfied heat pump users and enjoy!

Here in South Cackalacke air exchange (as opposed to geothermal) heat pumps are the norm. My house was built in 2002 and is a 2100 SF 1 1/2 story with a 'zoned' system. The power bill is generally around $200 a month in what we call the dead of winter or, more importantly down here in full summer. I also have an electric water heater, etc.

It has electric heat strips as backup, they will come on once a year which is when I flip from A/C to heat. The weird part (even though I know how they work): on cold days the air coming out of the top of the outside unit is colder than the ambient temperature.

As noted, heat pumps do not feel 'warm' for the reasons foxtrapper gave. That doesn't mean the house is cold, though. If the system is set at, say, 72 degrees and it feels 'cool' in the house when it's 25 degrees outside, if I go outside and come back in it feels like a sauna for a few minutes.

I wouldn't want to depend on them in very cold areas, though. When it gets down below zero I'm not seeing a strong possibility of good heat exchange happening.

I am planning to build a new house sometime soon and I am looking very hard at geothermal. Sure it's more expensive at the outset, but the thought of $75 power bills is intriguing. If my average electric bill is, say, $175.00, I spend $10k on a geothermal system (about the norm in this area) and now my power bill is $75, well $10,000.00 / $100.00 =100 months payback time, or 8.3 years till I break even and then start making money. If I can cut that initial cost down, the payback time gets even shorter. Even better, the 'ground loop' is expected to last at least 75 years, where the average outside heat exchanger unit is considered ready for replacement at between 10 and 13 years.

EDIT: For those wondering where I came up with my $10k price figure, check this site out: http://www.geothermalheaters.com/ The DIY kit price of course does not include the ground work, duct work etc but it gives you an idea of how these are priced. They have been highly rated, also.

An actual DIY geo installation: http://ricksgeo.com/ He did his sort of piecemeal, didn't buy a kit.

Car Guy,

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Please know that I have tried to learn well from you. If you remember, we spoke on the phone about a year ago.
On the last Weds in April, the condo actually closed. Working directly with the buyer we managed to actually get his condo purchase financed through VA. Some people in the business tell me that this was pretty rare. Sure it took longer but hey, it is gone.

I sold the place for 22% less than what I paid for it 8 years ago. Yes, that sucks but from what I hear, about normal. I will agree that I bought at the local height of the market. On the positive side, I did not pay Realtor commissions (self sale) which would be another 6.5% or a total of 28.5%. I owned about 25% equity so about two challenge gift certificates worth came back to me! I happily would have written multiple challenge gift certificates to end the process but I am glad I did not.
With your advice (and my experience) there are no condos on my shopping list.

In addition, I have myself in a position of control.
I have been renting a small house from a friend for the past two years. I am renting his childhood home which he let sit empty for over 5 years (4 of which his mother was in a nursing home.) The "cheap" is in exchange for my work on house improvements. A win-win. My monthly is 15% of a challenge gift certificate for a 1950 three bed, 1.5 bath with detached 1car garage.
The control comes from the fact that I do not "have to" buy. I am not bound by a lease so no pressure to stay and no pressure to go. I am tired of being in this small 1200sq ft place for the past two years. It is also on a busy 4 lane road - poor location.

We have the credit rating and we have real down payment money.
My offers on any house will be low (looking to earn back my 22%) but they will be swift and close quickly. (no contingencies like waiting until I sell my house) (Or, open ended if the seller needs time to get out - for a price.)

I have one Realtor that I am working with but any Realtor that I encounter I have been quick to inform them, "Here I am, the real $200k buyer. Not $200k shopper, rather, buyer. Tell all your sellers because I feel there are not many of me out there. Someone is getting money from me soon, is it you?"

Hey, my turn to shout canoe! I feel privleged. Thank you Husky Heat Pumper

z31maniac wrote: Slight OT question, I see you guys farther north than me mention fuel oil/heating oil/all electric a lot. Is the Natural Gas infrastructure not as developed up there? Not popular for a different reason? Just curious, sorry for the OT.

It is rare up here to have natural gas in anywhere but urban areas. I get the feeling many of our northern states members don't live in urban areas.

My house is LP heat and electric a/c on a central air setup, not bad IMHO. Always warm, always cool.....not really horrifying on the wallet either. The other two houses on the homestead used to be fuel oil(now LP) boilers for the cast iron radiator network throughout the houses, ungodly hot in the winter, and they both only have window a/c units which end up only slightly cooling you down in the summer. My house costs the most in winter, but the least in summer to keep temperate, For comparison sake, mine is 2900ish sq ft(built in the 1930's), mom & dads is 3200ish(built in 1897), and grandma's is close to 3700 sq ft(built in 1881).

Edit: berkeleying Canoes

Are we reviving this one?

It didn't do so well the first time. We've had threads with much better information.

We had a 2,000 sq ft raised ranch and live in CT. We had electric baseboard heat throughout the house when we moved in, and switched over to a heat pump (the "bad kind") for the last two years (we kept the electric baseboards as a backup). We heated the top level of the house and really only heated the finished basement downstairs when we were down there (rarely).

The heat pump was a great deal, with all the incentives that were available when we did it, we got it for about 1/2 the normal price, and it gave us central air, as well. The heat pump was only plumbed for heating the top floor, and it worked really well for that. We had ours installed with an electric backup heating source, but we never even wired it in because we used the baseboard heat as our backup heating source.

The heat pumped kept the house warm through most of the winter. When the temp went into the 20s overnight, it would struggle to keep the house heated. When we had days of sustained temps in the 20s (or less), we would turn off the heat pump and run the electric baseboards. The heat pump (and A/C) resulted in lower overall energy costs. The A/C was cheaper to run than the one in-wall and one in window A/C units in the summer. The best part was from September - December and mid-February to May when we could use the heat pump exclusively for heating. We saved a ton of money by not needing to run the baseboards during those months.

We really loved our heat pump, and will strongly consider one at our new house (oil heat) whenever the A/C unit needs to be replaced. For a climate that never sees sub-30 temperatures, I think it's an ideal heating/cooling source.

For the record, I did not read most of this thread. LOL I will give you my take on a heat pump system as we have had both types of systems in my new house. With the regular AC system, we had a $400 electric bill. With the Heat pump system, it is consistantly $175. Heat pump works great and we have not had a problem with it at all. Of course we've only been with it for about a year. It's very quiet and keeps the house very comfortable.

The new chez Curmudgeon is ~1850 sq ft, when I bought it the original heat pump had been ripped open for the copper. Nice, huh? Anyway it's a 'package' unit, evaporator and condenser in one, IIRC it's a 14 SEER. I keep the A/C at 75 during the summer and 70 during the winter, my bills average $150 or so. Heat pumps don't give the feeling of 'warmth' at the vent the way gas etc heat does but it does keep the house comfy.

I learned the hard way some years ago to not screw with those programmable thermostats which change the temperature on a daily cycle if a heat pump is being used. Here's why: everything in the house will be at the same ambient temperature as the air, give or take. If the temp is allowed to drop to, say, 60 degrees during the day then go up to 70 at night now the heat pump has to run like a maniac to warm up everything in the house. If it's left at one setting and it's cold outside, the system will cycle about twice an hour for maybe 5 minutes at a time, the system kicks on when the temp drops about 2 degrees. This works the same way during the summer, just with cooling. The best is when the temps hang in the 60-75 degree range, the darn thing just kicks on enough to dehumidify the air. My lowest bill was ~$85 when doing it this way.

You guys talk about $200 heating bills like that's cheap.

I'm in the (semi) frozen north and pay $70 for natural gas heat in the dead of winter. That's heat and hot water.

I'd love to have gas heat, but it's not available in my 'hood. Keep in mind also that my $155 electric bill includes: HVAC, hot water, refrigerator, washing machine, electric dryer, dishwasher, a gazillion electronic doodads, 5 TV's, a 240V 6 HP air compressor and all the various lights.

No gas available here unless I am going to install a big tank. We went all electric. The specs on my unit are 19 sear variable speed compressor and variable speed indoor motor. It's a 4 ton system. My house is 1904 sq ft and I live in hot as hell middle of nowhere Texas.

Interesting Zombie Thread.
I started this in the summer of '11 when I was shopping a new house.
To update that story, I bought the house, heat pumps and all.
At closing, many documents are put in front of you. One I did not expect was, "here is the documentation for the Home Buyer Warranty" the sellers have paid for. I did not ask for it, I did not realize I was getting it so sure, I'll take it.
We spent the first 30 days of ownership prepping the house like a lot of painting, etc. All fine. On the first night of sleeping in the house, Aug 1st, one of the two heat pumps quit giving AC. I pulled out the paperwork for the Buyers Warranty, called, etc. Long story short, 15 days later I had $1800 of brand new heat pump, exterior unit installed. My cost: $60 deductible. Come the first need for heat - failure; the other was replaced by warranty with a matching unit. Also $1800 for $60. Over that year, I got a new garage door opener, kitchen faucet and new high efficiency washing machine. I would have figured the warranty was not worth the paper it was printed on but I got over $4k out of it.
I certainly love First American Home Buyers Protection!

We love the house as well.

Nice man. Need to look into that warranty for our house. We are just out of the 1 year "Bumper to bumper" warranty on ours. Your house has an awesome back yard. LOL

glad to hear you got the seller's moneys worth out of the warranty. we got that year 1 with our house too, paid for the 2nd year ourselves, and just dropped it because we really didn't use it.

In the first year, the heat pump a/c went out, cheap repair, maybe only double the deductible (ours was $100), a small part on the exterior unit. Heat went out last year, turned out to only be a popped fuse. tech did a thorough inspection and could not find the cause.

all our appliances are really young though (even the heat pump) and have been told a few times that the heat pump system could handle a house double the size of ours with ease. so we will roll the dice and not have the warranty this year.

My house was built as a summer home in 1973 then switched owners sometime in the 80's to someone else who used it as a summer home. That second owner ultimately had only this house when he passed away.
In short, the house is 40 yrs old but does not have 40 years of wear.
The heat pumps were from 1994. The whole fix or replace debate did not take long. I thought for sure they would just band-aid them.
The garage open guys came out when it would only go up but not down. One look and they said, "that Genie unit is from late 80's or early '90's. Solid state and they do not make parts, we'll put in a new lift-master tomorrow.
The washing machine was only getting loud (like gear noise) on final spin. The guy came out and his first words were, "motor or trans, they will replace it not repair." A spanking brand new LG highly rated model arrive with a $725 pricetag. Our previous model from the sellers was high end for 2002 but just a traditional agitator. We also got to keep the old unit.
We renewed for $400. I expect a bad year for our 1994 refridge, the matching dryer and the other garage opener. I spoke with the repairmen who did the earlier work and they agree, just not too soon.

The best part of the "backyard" is that I only have to deal with 35ft of it. The trees are mine and on the property line.

JohnRW1621 wrote: At closing, many documents are put in front of you. One I did not expect was, "here is the documentation for the Home Buyer Warranty" the sellers have paid for. I did not ask for it, I did not realize I was getting it so sure, I'll take it.

When we sold our previous house, we bought a HBW for the buyer. The way the realtor put it, it was cheap insurance (cost about $300, IIRC) to prevent the buyer from calling us up and complaining about broken stuff in the house she just bought from us.

Yeah, self pay on the heat pumps would have sucked but I knew that they had a typical 15-20 year life and they were at 17 years so it would be soon. Everything else was acceptable for a house of this age and the killer buy that I got on it.
That killer buy is a whole 'nother story.
After being on the market for 3 years and really overpriced for the time (though it was once worth that.) My realtor "overheard" a super-low price that was being thrown around by another buyer. If the price was really going there, this was within my budget. We "found out" what that offer was. With that offer in, we put in a back-up offer of the same but close in 20 days. Guy #1 could not transact that quickly and the house when to us!

I should mention, I am not from this small town and do not really run in it's social circles. My wife did middle school and high school here. Away for college then Houston and moved back a couple years ago.

Turns out that guy #1 was President of the Country Club (the ritziest in our county.) Needless to say, I was not surprised when I never did receive a welcoming postcard from the Club.
My neighbors have said, "do you know who else tried to buy that house?" My answer has always been, "No, I am not from here" and or "who is that." It's my way of saying, you're all small town.
On the other hand, the guy who built this house (as a summer home) was big time here and in San Diego
His Obituary

The second owner was the former local Cadillac dealer.