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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

"With help from her son, Johnson just paid more than $1,000 to fill part of her oil tank, which she hopes will last her most of the winter."

... I see your problem right there.

I see a common pattern where I live where senior neighbours refuse to buy heat pumps even though the payback is measured in years.

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Common issues you face when getting a heat pump:

* Few suitable places to install it

* Lack of qualified workers to install it

* Limited availiability of heatpumps

* Conventional heaters do not work well with heat pumps. Floor heating is preferred and also not easy or cheap to do

* Not enouch capital to finance it, despite it making economic sense.

I got one, it's great and they should replace oil and gas heating for sure. But these problems can keep people away from them.

Often, the maximum temperature a heat pump supplies is a lot lower than conventional heating (think 55 C versus 80+ C). This means heating up a house happens slowly and steadily, instead of the "turn a knob and your radiator is now scorching hot" paradigm.

Before installing a heat pump, your house should be insulated pretty well. Otherwise you'll never heat it up properly.

Surely it depends on location.

Aircon is a thing in the us, a heat pump is basically the same.

I can see this being more of an issue in Europe where Aircon wasn't already a thing.

It gets really cold in Canada. How efficient is the backup electric heating at -20 c? How much money will it cost to expand the power grid for all those new units and EV? Governments that invest too much in the future don’t get re-elected. Lots and lots of cans get kicked down the road.

To be fair, most people I know who installed air-source heat pumps are not actually paying significantly less than before. Currently the high electricity prices pretty much negate all the efficiency gains. I'd say insulate first, a very well insulated home barely needs heating. Eg. the passivhaus standard in Germany. Edit: typo

I beg to disagree. I have a new, custom built, triple-glassed, very well insulated home. We moved in Feb before we got our heating pump installed. The house was at 15 degrees, with portable heaters often on. Sun shining thru, oven usage and said heaters couldn't keep it warm.

Some heat pumps seem to be a similar size and shape to a conventional gas boiler. They don't all need to be a big box outside.

My experience with heat pumps has been that I've had to replace them much more often, they didn't offer a significant cost savings and frankly didn't provide the same level of comfort compared to a gas furnace for the trouble. That was in a relatively mild climate, I couldn't imagine using one where it gets properly cold.

>> refuse to buy heat pumps even though the payback is measured in years.

Someone who has to scrape together $1000 NOW to heat their home this winter isn't "refusing to buy a heat pump".

We're back to "it's expensive to be poor". I have friends in the same situation, except they rent their home, so they couldn't even invest in a heat pump if they had the money. Overall they could have a rather significant amount of money each year, if they bought a home. That would require being able to afford the down payment... Which they could, if they had access to the potential savings from owning their own home.

It's a vicious circle, trapping the poorest in a circle of poverty from which there is little escape, even in social welfare states.

Ya, that's not whybthey can't scrape together the down payment and it isn't a viscious cycle. At best its a catch 22, not a cycle.

“I don’t understand why poor people don’t just fix their problems by spending money” is your comment.

They live in a houses (I guess? Since they buy oil). They are not poor. Maybe bad "liquidity" and penny wise.

Many seniors seem to thing living in their house is cheap since they pay so little per month compared to renting. But in my experience that is usually because they cut down on repair and upkeep. They should just be renting flats, and if they can't due to shortages or insane rent, that is the problem not the heating bills.

Living in a house becomes way more expensive then you are too sick or weak to do the base upkeep yourself.

If they struggle to find $1000 dollars to buy oil, how are they going to afford to install a heat pump?

I see the problem with my father. It's is not like saying: ok I buy a heat pump instead of buying more oil. The disruption caused by having to hire someone to install a new heating combined with the feeling that the write-off period does not match their life expectancy leads to those decisions. In Germany we have a great lack of well trained heating technicians and consultants that have the time to handle this inheritantly conservative target group. It used to be different for a while, when companies were still looking for customers and not the other way around.

Heat pumps are sold out for obvious reasons. They are expensive and you depend on yet another expensive maintenance firm if (planned obsolescence?) they break.

Perhaps older oil-fueled steam or hot water boiler systems cannot be easily retrofitted to use a heat pump? Just a thought.

Generally I think with the cheaper ones, you just use the heatpump instead. Without the old pipes.

A house built in 1987 in Massachusetts didn’t have air ducts as oil heating didn’t require it. Messy as all get out trying to get a heat pump installed. All of those kinds of places (“where a/c wasn’t needed”) suggest the need for replacement housing which is blindingly expensive.

I think we will probably see a lot of minisplit type heat pumps being installed in the coming years. In addition to being easy to retrofit, they have really high efficiency ratings (20+ seer).

You get a better heat pump setup with old water pipe radiators really than electric radiators. A water-water heat pump with a drilled hole. But it is more expansive than air to air heat pumps.

Classic HN answer

Why don't people just spend $10k and have their problems vanish? (and don't quote me the cost of a heat pump, you have to also pay to rip out your old stuff)

They don't have $10k

You hit the nail on the head.

Like a mini-split is 3k (without labor), for an average house you'll need two or three of them to fully heat/cool the house.

I hope that the inflation reduction act will help with lower income families in this regard. Up to $8000 back on a heat pump install at the point of sale. This could make the install only a couple thousand.

You think that heat pump installers won’t increase their prices by a few thousand when those come into effect? Based on tracking prices across the start and stop of utility rebates, I seriously doubt that whole $8K will land in consumer wallets and would even be surprised if half of it ended up there in the end.

I think you misunderstand who the inflation reduction act is supposed to help...

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