Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

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This hasn't been my experience at all. I'm doing a pretty comprehensive remodel and swapping out 3 furnaces and I've done my own manual J/D/S calculations.. I've compared my cost of electricity & gas and while natural gas may be marginally cheaper if I were to upgrade to high-efficiency units, I've decided to install HPs anyways since our electric costs are much more stable here and our electricity is lower carbon. I literally can't find a company to install them. It has nothing to do with callbacks or expense, it's just that most of these companies are staffed/run by older guys who want to install the same massively oversized low efficiency furnaces and SEER 15 AC units they've been installing for the past 30 years.

The only people willing to install heatpumps are from an hour away and who spend their time building luxury homes. It's crazy to me that the rest of these guys aren't out there working with those Federal IRA funds and installing heat pumps left and right. We're climate zone 4 with a design temp of 6ºF, just about every modern HP will spend 99.9% of its time working at full BTU here.

I ran into the same thing when I built my house, where I couldn't find anyone local to take care of installing my split mini units without a wait of six weeks or more. I ultimately ended up purchasing a 25lb refrigerant tank, guage set, and vacuum pump to commission the units. I wasn't trying to DIY or save money per se, but this seemed to be the path of least resistance. Five years later all five heat pumps are going strong, this market dynamic doesn't seem to have changed much (here in Virginia USA) as I helped my neighbor bring her two heat pump units online in October 2022 after she couldn't get any of the local installers to schedule her either. I'm still puzzled why heat pumps are not dominant in the US market and why natural gas furnaces of any efficiency are still being installed, given that you can't power them from rooftop PV which is everywhere these days.

Yeah I've considered this route... Mr Cool makes some precharged linesets for their heat pumps that are a still lower resistance path, but I'm at a bit of a loss how to take care of the refrigerant in the existing AC if I do end up DIYing it and swapping that unit out for a HP.

If the unit is still operational, it can usually be 'pumped down', which essentially means closing the 'out' valve and force-running the compressor to pull all the refrigerant back into the main compressor unit. You then might be able to take it to the waste facility, where they have people licensed to recover the refrigerant (for a fee).

I have my EPA cert, and I'd still probably go that route. The recovery pumps are expensive ($500+) and you need a recovery tank ($100), and then you still need to find somewhere that will take it from you. For a single job, it might be better to pay a HVAC company/moonlighting tech to do that part and do all the manual labor yourself.

Oh nice, that pump down process is something I hadn't heard of. I do have a good plumber and electrician, and our County has really good waste disposal options so that may work for me. Appreciate the heads up there.

Watch the "Home Performance" channel on YouTube (see https://youtu.be/1Iiho2cm2LY) and note that there is a community of builders and installers who follow these practices and are likewise supporters of this channel.

I inquired about a higher seer unit when I had my system refreshed recently (I'm not in TX). The company I went with had the opinion that the higher SEER units are harder to diagnose and fix if you end up having a problem.

With the way supply chains are right now, getting a less common unit means if you have a problem, and you will because half the components are imported now, you're going to be sweating it out while you wait 3-6 months for a part, and that's if you can find a tech to come out and diagnose it properly.

If I lived in the deep south, I'd get whatever the standard equipment is and spend the difference on extra solar panels.

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