Heatpumps are great! Having a coefficient of performance equal to 4 (1kW electricity to 4kW heat) is possible today!
Unfortunately it is not as easy as just switching your gas heating with a heatpump.
For one, heatpumps have a lower flow temperature, therefore a good insulation of the house is required. Also big radiators such as floor or wall are preferred.
Moving to heatpumps might start an entire house renovation which comes at a cost.
"One of the most common complaints about heat pumps, experts said, was that they would stop providing heat on very cold days. But advances to heat pump compressors have made them more efficient, cost effective and successful at providing heat in colder temperatures."
Yeah this is a key issue that shouldn't be glossed over like this. We need more data about how much they have improved.
My heat pump has what they call "Emergency Heat" which is basically just some heating coils they add in like a traditional electric furnace. So on days when the heat pump can't do it's thing, it works just like the old furnace that I replaced. Emergency heat also kicks on when the differential between the current temp and desired temp is large. 99% of the time, the heat pump seems to do just fine on it's own.
Newer heat pumps still have electric heat, but also can extract heat from ambient air down to -10F. Mr Cool for the DIYer, Mitsubishi for the workhorse. Reverser valves do the work of switching heat pumping direction.
I suspect that most of the reluctance comes from people using gas furnaces, not people using electrical resistance heating. Compared to electrical resistance heating, a heat pump has no downsides other than a higher initial cost which is very quickly paid back from energy savings, since electrical resistance heating is staggeringly expensive.
My parent tried heat pumps twice. They are incapable of even handling the usually not-very-severe winters of central Texas without resorting to turning on their pathetically weak resistance heaters, an those can cost nearly $100/day to run! Their second Gen system was much newer and more expensive, but not much better.
The definitely are not capable of handling any subfreezing temperatures. Natural gas is, overall, FAR more efficient for heating when the supposed efficiency of the heat pump gets slammed by the inefficiency of electric heat.
So that answers the OP's question of why we don't use them: They're fiddly, expensive to buy, and both don't work in, and are insanely expensive to operate in the cold.
For a video that glosses over the details but loudly proclaims this “ugly truth” there’s this one. I can’t tell if he is a paid shill for the gas industry or just obtuse, or maybe a voice of common sense in the wilderness….
I think the issue in the UK is that the majority of houses are simply not good isolated. A heat pump needs to pump into an isolated house or it will not be very efficient.
Speaking from the UK. We had 2 days of hot weather. A reasonably insulated house or one with decent thermal mass is fine.
Heat pumps are more use here for the heat, we don't have extreme winters, so the basic premise of the article from a UK perspective is wrong. Plus the name 'heat pump' doesn't indicate a direction anyway.
In New Zealand heatpumps are the norm, and have been for 20+ years. But culturally wood burning is another norm. So we have this werid combination of wood burners in the same room as high powered heatpumps because people want the feel of radiated heating.
Most cities here require low or ultra low emission burners, which burn at high temperature, so often the temperature is kept low.
And you are absolutely correct about venting heat. I have not to my knowledge seen a home here with an externally ducted air source. So the room is heated, and heat (warm air) is sucked out of the rest of the house.
Wood is cheap here, and so people often believe it is more efficient jot counting the inefficiencies of wood.
I wonder when the heat pump technology will be so widespread/standardized that I can for example buy a refrigerator and connect a couple pipes so that instead of releasing heat into the kitchen I can transfer that heat to warm water for a shower.
Also, using washing machines flushing water to fill a bigger tanks later accessed by the house's toilet tanks should be standard procedure.
> the British government has provided grant money to a little-known solution: heat pumps.
What the hell? Heat pumps are not little known. An air conditioner is a heat pump. It's hard to take the article seriously when they gloss over this basic fundamental point.
I can tell they're trying to advocate for something, perhaps using the heat wave as a push to install larger bidirectional heat pumps that will make Europe less dependent on natural gas come winter? Still the whole framing just comes across as odd... like "Local area man stays cool with this one simple trick" [install an air conditioner]
Readit News
Unfortunately it is not as easy as just switching your gas heating with a heatpump. For one, heatpumps have a lower flow temperature, therefore a good insulation of the house is required. Also big radiators such as floor or wall are preferred.
Moving to heatpumps might start an entire house renovation which comes at a cost.
https://youtu.be/7J52mDjZzto
One of the best things is that is an air conditioner you run in reverse to get some heating.
Yeah this is a key issue that shouldn't be glossed over like this. We need more data about how much they have improved.
Heat pumps have "emergency" electrical resistance heaters for this. Source: owned homes with heat pumps for the past 20 years.
The definitely are not capable of handling any subfreezing temperatures. Natural gas is, overall, FAR more efficient for heating when the supposed efficiency of the heat pump gets slammed by the inefficiency of electric heat.
So that answers the OP's question of why we don't use them: They're fiddly, expensive to buy, and both don't work in, and are insanely expensive to operate in the cold.
https://youtu.be/GhAKMAcmJFg
The problem with wood fires is they require a ducted external air source, or the chimney will exhaust your expensive heated air.
And you are absolutely correct about venting heat. I have not to my knowledge seen a home here with an externally ducted air source. So the room is heated, and heat (warm air) is sucked out of the rest of the house.
Wood is cheap here, and so people often believe it is more efficient jot counting the inefficiencies of wood.
What the hell? Heat pumps are not little known. An air conditioner is a heat pump. It's hard to take the article seriously when they gloss over this basic fundamental point.
I can tell they're trying to advocate for something, perhaps using the heat wave as a push to install larger bidirectional heat pumps that will make Europe less dependent on natural gas come winter? Still the whole framing just comes across as odd... like "Local area man stays cool with this one simple trick" [install an air conditioner]