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Comment by yellow_postit | Hacker News Reader

moved from oil furnace to heat pump in Seattle (with electric strip backup)

Seems like a perfect fit for our weather patterns but was definitely not the most economical option as it kicked off a domino effect of upgrades I wasn't missing before.

Its no where near as "cozy" as the oil heat was, and the temperature of airing coming from the vents is significantly lower than the oil system. So the domino of upgrades is now looking at insulation, windows, etc. Which likely all needed upgrades in our old home anyway, but it's been a journey.

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I did the same in Vancouver, BC. We took advantage of incentives to improve our insulation and to make the switch. E.g. we just fixed our crawl space.

The heat pump did struggle a little during the more extreme cold weather we saw a few weeks back (going down to -15C) but we've kept our natural gas fireplace as backup and "assist".

I'm pretty sure it's a little more expensive to run with a heat pump, so you need to be willing to pay more for reducing your carbon footprint. The incentives do help though. Similar to switching to an EV which we also did for similar reasons. I think if you're purely looking at $$$ then it's not necessarily the optimal decision.

I'm going through this process currently (getting estimates from local HVAC contractors, SF Bay Area), and their general guidance so far is to get a Hybrid electric + gas heat pump config.

The electric heat pump alone isn't sufficient compared with gas, and the "add-on" you get to add more heat to the heating output is like a space heater, thus very expensive month to month.

In Seattle as well. I kept my oil furnace and added mini splits to each room.

What helped the most for my old house was attic insulation. I spent around $700 to buy blown-in packs (and got free machine rental) and got my attic to around R-40. I'm able to set my thermostat 5 degrees higher without any change to my energy bill.

I did the same this past thing, the best part about it is the reduction in cost for heating from 300+/mo to ~25/mo, The downside is that it was terribly expensive to install, it ran me 40k to install the new heat pump and air handler.

That's why I stuck with a gas furnace and traditional AC when I was looking a few years ago. My heating and cooling costs are only about $800-1000 a year. Spending an extra $8-10k up front in hopes of reducing that figure simply doesn't pencil out. Maybe by the time I'm in the market for a new system it will.

How is it not cozy?

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