Hacker News Reader

Comment by deedubaya | Hacker News Reader

I was just last month quoted 15-23k for an install in the mountains of Idaho. I got a competitive quote and the price was similar.

If it cut my electricity bill in half it would take 10-20 years to break even.

View on HN

For a mini-split system, or central heat pump? Do you have existing ducts? What's the square footage?

We recently upgraded our central heat pump as the old one died after 15 years or so. IIRC the total was $13k CAD, so around 9-10k USD, which included indoor and outdoor units for a roughly 3000sqft house, with installation. But all the ducting was there already, so it was just a matter of swapping out old unit for new. (Got some nice government grants too, so it was only a few k out of pocket.)

Central, augmenting existing electric forced air with existing ducts. Similar sized home.

Wow, surprisingly expensive then. It might be worth getting more quotes if you're still interested. I found the ones we got here varied pretty widely, so you may have just gotten a couple of high ones.

> If it cut my electricity bill in half it would take 10-20 years to break even.

Presumably there is a useful life on your existing heating system. At some point it would need replacing?

Assuming electricity is already used for heating, baseboards heaters are just big resistors and have basically unlimited life.

.. but are way less efficient than heat pumps. It's all about cost of installation vs cost of use.

But that just takes you back to the 10-20 years. The point here was that the math changes if you need to replace your existing system anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com