[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) - Heat pump sold di...
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Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) - Heat pump sold directly to
homeowners
Hi HN! I'm Chris Mui, founder of Electric Air
(https://electricair.io). We're building a residential heat pump
system. This will be an all-electric replacement for your home's
furnace and air conditioner that enables more centrally ducted
installs, manages your indoor air quality, and saves you money on
monthly energy bills. We also streamline purchase, finance and
install by selling directly to homeowners. You can place a preorder
today at https://electricair.io. Heat pumps work by using
refrigerant and a compressor to move energy against a temperature
gradient. If you put 1 kWh of energy into a heat pump, you get 3-5
kWh of heating in your home. But this isn't breaking the laws of
physics because heat pumps don't make heat, they move it around.
The extra 2-4kWh gets absorbed from the outdoors, even when it is
cold outside. The low pressure refrigerant in the outdoor heat
exchanger is colder than the outdoor air, so it has to absorb
energy. After the compressor the refrigerant in the indoor heat
exchanger is hotter than the indoor air, and energy flows into your
home. This happens in a continuous cycle. A great feature in this
system is a reversing valve that allows the flow of refrigerant to
be flipped and your heat pump becomes an air conditioner. There's
a big push to end fossil fuel use in US homes by electrifying all
end-uses, and heat pumps are a critical part of this. Space heating
is 50% of the average homeowners energy consumption, and makes up
10% of overall US energy use. Recognizing the importance of heat
pump adoption, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains
$4.3B in heat pump rebates for low and middle income families, and
a $2000 tax credit that applies to everyone. Heat pumps can also
save homeowners on their monthly utility bills vs. heating with
natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and electric resistance. And thanks
to the popularity of vapor injection systems, heat pumps now work
well even in the cold climates of the Northeast. Quick technical
aside on vapor injection systems - this is an improvement to the
basic vapor compression cycle. Gas from the condenser outlet is
injected halfway into the compression process. This increases the
compressor efficiency, increases the mass flow rate of refrigerant
through the compressor, and also lowers the discharge temperature.
The result is higher system efficiency, higher heating capacity,
and the ability to operate across large temperature gradients (say
-15F outside temp to 72F in your home) without exceeding the
discharge temperature limit and damaging the compressor. I've
spent my career building and designing thermal systems--first in
aerospace, then at Tesla working on Model 3 and Semi Truck, and
most recently in vertical farming. I got really excited about
residential heat pumps when I realized that we're about to go
through a huge transition where the 80M single family homes in the
US replace their furnaces with heat pumps. But the products on the
market today have a number of shortcomings. The homeowner
experience sucks because the integration of thermostat, heat pump
equipment and air quality systems is terrible. Nothing works
together well, and the best thermostats are not fully compatible
with inverter driven heat pumps. In addition the process of getting
a heat pump is painful, including finding a trustworthy contractor,
sorting out financing, and wading through rebates. And finally
contractors struggle with installs because of the difficulty of
properly sizing the system, and understanding if your duct work is
compatible with a heat pump I wanted to approach home heating and
cooling from a product design approach, improve the end-to-end
experience for homeowners and make a product that was compelling
beyond its climate motivations. Electric Air is building a
thermostat as well as heat pump equipment (air handler and
condenser) and a contractor web-app. Better air quality is
achieved through a thermostat with PM2.5 and CO2 sensors, as well
as an air quality module on the air handler that controls HEPA
filtration, fresh air intake and modification of the home's
humidity. The thermostat algorithm combines demand-response with
weather and time-of-use rate plans to reduce monthly utility bills
through pre-cooling and pre-heating. Unlike a Nest or Ecobee, the
thermostat will be able to run the heat pump in variable speed
mode. A more powerful air handler blower and contractor software
enables more ducted installs - no wall units required. The most
common heating system in the US is a natural gas furnace connected
to ductwork, with the hot air ultimately coming out of vents in
each room. This heat pump is a great replacement for the furnace
and air conditioner in these ducted systems. The same software used
for ducts also helps contractors perform simple load disaggregation
(turn a utility bill into a thermal load calculation) to properly
size a heat pump system. In addition there's actually some
industrial design going into the outdoor condenser, meaning you
don't have to hide it in an alley. And finally homeowners can
purchase this system online. We help with financing and rebates,
and connect them with a contractor to do the actual install. How
come no one's doing this? Heat pump manufacturers are bad at making
consumer products like thermostats and the thermostat manufacturers
are IOT companies that don't have the know-how to wade into heat
pump equipment manufacture. For heat pump manufacturers, their end
customer is largely HVAC contractors, and not homeowners. Also
selling direct means disrupting their current distribution strategy
which normally involves selling to regional distributors, and
sometimes straight to contractors. Getting this right is a big
systems integration problem that the current players are ill
equipped to handle. While we don't have any physical prototypes at
the moment, we have the industrial design and also largely
understand how this will be built. The core technology risk is
quite low, it's really about executing the scope well and also
finding the right product that homeowners find compelling. I'm
working on building traction via preorders
(https://electricair.io), and will start building hardware once
fundraising is complete, likely in the next few weeks. What issues
have you had with your existing heat and cooling, and do you have
any interesting stories around a heat pump install or use? I would
love to hear your ideas, experiences, and feedback on any and all
of the above!
Author : cmui
Score : 492 points
Date : 2023-03-13 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
| ccamrobertson wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch!
|
| Would it be possible to combine both a ducted system with a mini-
| split style head unit? Our ducting is old, undersized and with
| poorly located returns.
| daviross wrote:
| This looks/sounds neat, I'll be happy to keep an ear out on how
| you're doing. The thing keeping me from anything more yet though:
| What's the ductless option like?
|
| I don't have any ducts, just hydronic+baseboard heating currently
| (and a dual-hose portable AC unit for cooling). I'm looking at a
| mini-split setup, but that's a fairly daunting prospect for the
| issues you note with the existing market.
| z3ugma wrote:
| Chris, one of my biggest worries is that your startup will get
| acquired or go out of business and then the firmware will leave
| me with a $14,000 brick.
|
| What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your
| servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something
| like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've
| exited?
|
| This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd
| want some guarantees that I can control it entirely myself.
| soheil wrote:
| It'd be super helpful to mention the total cost will be close
| to $14k on the $100 pre-order page or at least somewhere near
| the top of the homepage. Also probably one of the implicit
| reasons this comment got upvoted.
| cmui wrote:
| Yeah, not a bad idea to place pricing (or a link to it) on
| the preorder page, in addition to main page.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I have the same question, but on the hardware side. Since HVAC
| is critical infrastructure for a home, where will replacement
| parts be in a decade?
| pshirshov wrote:
| Just buy an LG heat pump. They have cloud capabilities, though
| you have to install a separate module for that.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'd want to see a guarantee of "We will either keep running the
| servers forever, maintaining all current features, or we will
| opensource all the server side code, so you or someone else can
| keep running it".
|
| I'd want the code handed over to a third party to guarantee
| this (so the company can't walk back on their promise).
| pagutierrezn wrote:
| This went by the name: Source Code Scrow
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow
| mrits wrote:
| Statically there is a great chance the people that would
| guarantee will be replaced upon failure or success in an
| early state startup.
| mtrpcic wrote:
| If the server code is too complex, at least give me an
| OpenAPI spec (or equivalent) that the server must adhere to,
| so I can spin something simple up on a Raspberry PI to solve
| the problem myself.
| dawnerd wrote:
| My thoughts too. Local heating/cooling should not be tied to
| the cloud period. If it doesn't use the normal wiring people
| already have it's a hard pass from me.
| s_tec wrote:
| Normal wiring is terrible, though, since it only supports
| turning the equipment on & off. If you have a variable-speed
| fan and variable-speed pumps, it would be nice for the
| thermostat to throttle those based on the load, but it can't.
|
| If this company has a solution for variable-speed equipment,
| the best thing they can do is publish an open standard.
| Suppose the thermostat talks to the equipment over CAN bus,
| for instance, using a well-documented protocol. If they go
| out of business, anybody can hack together a compatible
| aftermarket thermostat.
|
| A lot of solar equipment is already going this way, with
| batteries talking to inverters over open CAN bus protocols.
| As one of the biggest energy loads, the HVAC equipment should
| get in the game too.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Huh? My Lennox basic middle America furnace already does
| this if I am understanding your comment correctly.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| What do you mean? There are variable speed furnaces that
| can be controlled via a normal thermostat and a 4-wire
| thermostat setup. Like you said, though, there's no open
| standard so that can be an issue, but it's standard wiring.
|
| https://www.pickhvac.com/thermostat/ (halfway down -
| "Communicating HVAC System")
|
| https://www.pickhvac.com/central-air-
| conditioner/extras/comm... (deeper dive into Communicating
| vs Non-Communicating HVAC systems)
| s_tec wrote:
| Well, that just makes it worse! OP strongly implies that
| there is no good variable-speed solution, but if the
| industry already has an assortment of products, what
| exactly are they even selling?!
| notJim wrote:
| I think you're misreading the OP slightly. There's no
| cross-compatible system for variable equipment, which is
| why the OP says you can't use variable speed equipment
| with Nest. Nest is basically a really fancy switch only.
| To use variable speed equipment, you have to use your
| manufacturer's proprietary system. I'm not positive this
| is right, but I'm pretty sure it's backed up by
| https://www.pickhvac.com/central-air-
| conditioner/extras/comm...
|
| So basically, the premise of this product is that the
| proprietary system they design will be nicer than the
| proprietary systems HVAC manufacturer's design. That's
| probably true, but as an owner of a Carrier proprietary
| system, it's totally fine.
| drusenko wrote:
| The issue isn't that an open standard for fully variable
| speed isn't possible, the issue is that nearly all of the
| manufacturers to date have considered this proprietary
| (as they want to own the entire ecosystem from controls >
| equipment) and a purposefully boxing Nest, Ecobee, etc,
| out of being able to control it in order to sell more
| thermostats and trying to capture more value.
|
| Only problem, their thermostats and apps really suck.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| I think you have to go thru a licensed HVAC installer to
| get an inverter system. These guys are DTC.
| SamBam wrote:
| Mitsubishi heat pumps, and most others I assume, have local
| thermostats that communicate by remote (I assume radio
| waves), but do not require the cloud. This is a fine
| solution, as stable as wires but not tied to the cloud.
| whafro wrote:
| Unfortunately, they (or at least mine) communicate by IR,
| which is not as stable as wires - two of my rooms have
| very intermittent response to my IR pucks.
| paxys wrote:
| Disagree. There are a lot of advantages in being able to
| coordinate heating/cooling and general home electricity use
| based on stuff like weather forecasts, your electric
| company's rate tiers (including working around peak hours),
| when you are home or about to come home etc. Of course there
| should be a fallback mode where the system can work 100%
| offline, but being connected is definitely worth it.
| soheil wrote:
| It's hard pass for you because you know what a cloud is. Many
| don't and you don't know what many know.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >If it doesn't use the normal wiring people already have it's
| a hard pass from me.
|
| Why? a real smart thermostat can just use the existing wiring
| for power and then use IP over Wifi or Matter/Thread to
| communicate. Way better than the crappy wiring in most
| people's houses for thermostat control.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Because HVAC in theory should outlive most other standards
| that have come and gone. Its totally fine to built on top
| of it, but using basic hard wiring to turn on/off is
| essential - even if just as a fallback. in 20 years the
| hvac should still be working, but will the wifi spec it
| shipped with? What about matter/thread?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Counterpoint -- I have an app for my Mitsubishi heat pump and
| use it all the time. It's way more convenient and lets me
| hyper optimize my house. I actually don't even use the
| physical ones at all anymore
| itake wrote:
| What is your plan if Mitsubishi cuts off access in 20 years
| or updates in a way that you're not comfortable with (like
| add advertisements to the panels)?
| surfmike wrote:
| You can replace the thermostats with dumb versions.
| epanchin wrote:
| Are you tied to the app?
| thehappypm wrote:
| No, my phone is wireless
| vosper wrote:
| Pretty sure they were asking if you could still access
| all the functionality currently provided by the app if it
| were to go away for some reason (who can see the future?
| It's not impossible Mitsubishi goes out of business or
| the app gets cancelled/pulled after some number of years)
| shagie wrote:
| If you lost your phone, would you still be able to manage
| the heat pump through other interfaces?
|
| If the app wasn't updated for ${latest phone OS}, would
| you be be unable to upgrade the phone OS?
| SamBam wrote:
| Mitsubishi heat pumps has a local thermostat that
| operates by remote, no cloud access needed, so if the
| app's servers go down it will still function.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| Yes s/he is. Mitsubishi force you to use their Kumo Cloud
| controls, which are 1) expensive (a few kk) and 2)
| require cloud. Supposedly Mitsubishi is replacing Kumo
| with something else, but that just makes the problem
| worse.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| you can get a converter to get Mitsu to work with any 24v
| AC controls PAC-US444CN-1, ive installed a few of them so
| the customer could use their existing Nest and Ecobee
| thermostats.
|
| I'm a former diamond certified Mitsubishi installer
| drusenko wrote:
| I've used the PAC-US444CN-1 (at our house) and fully
| native Mitsubishi thermostat/controls (at our in-laws).
| The converter is better than a simple 2-stage set up but
| is still not as good, in my experience, as the fully
| native one.
|
| It has to translate a 2-stage signal into a fully
| modulating output, and it still seems to do a lot more on
| & off with high fan speeds than I would like or would be
| most efficient (as an aside, yes I have verified that the
| dip switches are in the correct position on the
| converters).
|
| On the other hand, the unit at my in-laws tends to blow
| gently but consistently which is both more comfortable
| and more efficient.
| burntsushi wrote:
| Wat. First of all, I have Kumo Cloud and it did not cost
| thousands of dollars. It was a few hundred for the
| adapter, and then I paid an HVAC tech to install it.
| That's it.
|
| Second of all, you aren't forced to use Kumo Cloud. Even
| though I have it, I still have a remote that operates the
| Split. No network or cloud required.
| startupsfail wrote:
| Maybe Europe market is ready for this.
|
| Considering how unstable the residential electrical and
| internet grid is in the US (instead of being dug in, into the
| ground all the cables are hanging between the trees and there
| are constant failures), relying on that AND on the cloud for
| an essential service is a no-go.
| pridkett wrote:
| I live in a rural part of New England with an electricity
| company that everyone dislikes because it's super expensive
| and sometimes things go bad. Since 2010 we've had the
| following major outages:
|
| * October 2011 Snow Storm - Lost power for 4 days, didn't
| end up being that cold
|
| * October 2019 Thunderstorms - Lost power for 3 days,
| thankfully generator kept the house going
|
| * August 2020 Tropical Storm Isaias - Caused widespread
| grid damage, but only lost power for 18 hours. Internet was
| out for 36 hours.
|
| * August 2021 Hurricane Henri - Widespread grid damage,
| lost power for about 6 hours. By this point I had
| powerwalls. I didn't even turn down the air conditioner.
|
| That's it - every other outage has been a few hours. And
| that's living in a rural area that is heavily wooded with
| most of the power lines above ground and often long runs
| close to trees. If I lived in a suburb or city those times
| would be even less.
|
| The grid in the United States, despite some widespread and
| documented regional failures (2021 Texas, 2003 NE
| Blackout), is remarkably resilient.
| drusenko wrote:
| I would say it depends on where you live. The grid in CA
| has (in some parts) not been reliable for 5+ years. To
| Chris' point below though, it's not really relevant
| because gas furnaces need electricity to operate, too.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| the US power grid is not in any way unreliable. US
| residents enjoy some of the highest grid availability
| figures for anywhere in the world. Sure, sometimes things
| go horribly wrong but their system is not unreliable by
| design as this comment insinuates.
| cmui wrote:
| A common misconception is that you can use your forced air
| furnace when the power is out - you can't because the
| blower relies on electricity to move air around. Your point
| on the cloud service is a good one, which is why cloud
| services are value-add but unnecessary for core system
| functionality, ie your system works if there's no internet.
| startupsfail wrote:
| In California power outages are very frequent (PG&E is
| now cutting off the residential power upfront, to avoid
| fires and associated liability).
|
| I've experienced 4-5 outages last year, a couple were
| local, a couple were widespread. One lasted 2 days.
|
| Fortunately I do have a small 3.2kWh battery backup
| power, so I can keep the refrigerator from defrosting. I
| do think that this is sufficient to power the air furnace
| as well, but I haven't tried.
|
| The residential internet outages also are pretty
| frequent, but we don't notice these as much as power
| outages.
| vladgur wrote:
| I agree. Use standardized wiring and let me control it from a
| $100 smart thermostat that i can replace if it becomes
| obsolete.
|
| If i want HomeAssistant integration, ill buy an HA-compatible
| thermostat.
|
| I dont want an expensive HVAC system to be in a walled garden
| of its own.
| coryrc wrote:
| You lose about 30% efficiency using "standardized wiring"
| with an inverter heat pump instead of a communicating
| thermostat, because running a heat pump at 33% power
| continuously instead of 100% power 20 minutes of every hour
| results in a COP about 30% higher.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Why do inverter heat pump need proprietary wiring?
| Everything I've seen indicates inverter and dual stage
| heat pumps can use standard wiring.
| toss1 wrote:
| Exactly. I will not even buy a $100 remote-internet-
| controlled thermostat that relies on a cloud service [0], and
| I've looked for both my home and my shop.
|
| I would not even consider buying the hardware that keeps my
| pipes from freezing if it depends on an internet connection.
|
| I'm happy if there are non-critical _OPTIONS_ available that
| use the internet (e.g., as another poster mentioned,
| available optimizations based on real-time elec rates, etc.),
| but if there is _any_ key function that 'll fail without an
| internet connection, that's immediate disqualification, hard
| nope, not looking anymore. Period, full stop, even if it is
| "free" as in beer.
|
| OTOH, if OP can deliver a true stand-alone system and
| guarantees that it will _never_ require a connection for any
| core function (as above, optional ok), then he 'll have a
| large market.
|
| [0] any remote-via-internet control function should be able
| to directly access my IP, static or transient. Not only are
| non-static home IPs actually quite durable in my experience,
| there are a variety of easy solutions to keep track of the
| home IP. Yes, some of those are cloud services, but they are
| not tied to any hardware.
|
| Edit: That said, I'm ok with requiring wiring beyond the
| normal thermostat-HVAC wiring.
| jtagen wrote:
| Wait, is this not going to have the usual "pair of wires you
| short to turn it on" feature of every furnace made so far?
| That's the ultimate control for when all the cloud features
| disappear and would be a deal-breaker for me.
| masterj wrote:
| The software is certainly a concern, but I would also heavily
| emphasize the ability to get spare parts and service quickly.
| If your heat goes out in the middle of winter you don't want to
| wait weeks for spare parts, or be unable to get them at all if
| the company goes out of business.
| cmui wrote:
| Yes, making spare parts and service work is super important.
| We'll likely set up regional distribution points for spare
| parts so anything critical can be easily sent next day.
| hd95489 wrote:
| How would you ensure that spares are available in the event
| a model is discontinued or the company shuts down? It's
| likely there will be few parts or trained techs in that
| case.
| potatolicious wrote:
| What about labor? I'm pretty handy but there are definitely
| parts of my HVAC system where I'd be unable/unwilling to
| DIY it. I currently have a local HVAC contractor on-
| retainer for same-day emergency appointments - and honestly
| I don't think I'd be willing to consider anything less
| since my current heat pump is my exclusive source of
| heating in this house.
|
| I'm in a temperate climate so there's little actual danger,
| but the idea of freezing/roasting my butt off for multiple
| days to wait for parts/labor is deeply unattractive.
| cmui wrote:
| Yeah, good question. The system is not meant to be DIY.
| The same contractor that does install also offers
| service. Logistics for replacement parts is important we
| will have quick, easy access for contractors.
| bumby wrote:
| Have you worked on creating a network of qualified
| contractors? In my region, there are lots of contractors
| who are little more than unreliable DIYers, especially in
| the mechanical space.
|
| My hesitancy is in the ongoing service. I've looked into
| geo-coupled heat pumps but the lack of qualified
| contractors locally deterred me.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I will not buy this without a fully unlocked everything.
|
| This company is going to wait a few years and then charge you a
| shit ton for subscription to keep using your device.
|
| No thanks, and honestly whoever goes with this is going to
| regret it if they don't make changes to their software.
|
| Pick one:
|
| - Sell the device
|
| - Sell the software
|
| If you do both, you're going to alienate your customers and get
| regulatory wrath on you. Don't emulate Apple. They're going to
| get their ass handed to them in the near future.
|
| Take it even a step further and make the code AGPL. That way
| you know you're protected if a company decides to steal from
| you.
| cmui wrote:
| I understand the concern around lock in. There is a technical
| hurdle to optimized thermostat <--> variable speed heat pump
| interop. You have to turn the temperature error between
| setpoint and actual temperature into a compressor speed
| command and also factor in behavior such as defrost,
| compressor cycling limits, etc. So you have to have a
| communicating thermostat to fully utilize the efficiency of
| these variable speed heat pump systems, not just a collection
| of analog on/off wires.
| amluto wrote:
| This doesn't seem at all worthy of anything proprietary,
| though -- a simple RS-485 or 10BASE-T1L protocol and a page
| of docs would do the trick.
|
| And if you build this, you can also sell the same hardware
| plus a BacNET or MODBUS gateway for a bunch of money to the
| commercial building management types :)
|
| Or you could support existing commercial 0-10V thermostats.
| phasetransition wrote:
| Upvoted,
|
| BACnet already exists as an ISO standard:
| https://www.iso.org/standard/37298.html
| https://bacnetinternational.org/
|
| The example application in the Ethernet Alliance one-
| pager on single pair Ethernet is HVAC:
| https://ethernetalliance.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/10/EA_T...
| amluto wrote:
| FWIW, if this were my startup, I would probably use
| 10BASE-T1L. The programming model is simple, and cloud or
| other "smart" integration is natural if the system
| already uses IP. For that matter, one ought to be able to
| support wired 10BASE-T1L and wireless Matter/Thread
| thermostats without much duplicate effort.
|
| This could be prototyped on a BeaglePlay :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's totally fair and reasonable. I still will demand
| that it be able to function in a bang-bang mode using dry
| contacts, especially from a new entrant to the market,
| because there's a fair risk that the unit will be in my
| house longer than your company is in business.
| cmui wrote:
| This behavior is how current variable speed heat pumps
| operate with Ecobee and Nest. You leave efficiency on the
| table, but I get it provides some future proofing
| assurance for homeowners. Definitely something we can
| integrate into the board.
| joelfried wrote:
| > I get it provides some future proofing assurance
|
| I don't think you're getting it, and a lot of us around
| here want you to. If I were actively researching heat
| pumps (a thing most homeowners do before dropping 4-5
| figures on ANY hardware), if you are locking me into your
| ecosystem -- or even have the appearance of locking me
| into your ecosystem -- your product is not getting onto
| any short list from me or likely anyone else around here.
|
| All of us -- every tech person who has ever gotten into
| home automation in a real way -- has thrown out some
| hardware rendered useless by a company. We've already
| seen this play out. You're an unknown and so are the
| riskiest kind of company to buy into.
|
| You need to get this -- deeply -- if you want to sell to
| this market. The pull quote above makes me want to run
| for the hills.
| alex_dev wrote:
| Agreed. As someone in the market for a good heat pump,
| I'm already turned off by this offering. I don't want
| more features (air quality module) that are more points
| of failure and complexity. I just want an efficient heat
| pump that'll work reliably for a long time, integrate
| well with HA, and won't cost a kidney to install.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| This is not strictly true.
|
| Mr. Cool has a 2-Ton heat pump (Designed to work with
| existing ducting) that can operate off of a normal non-
| communicating thermostat. It still hits 19 SEER and does a
| lot of that optimization on the controller side. And when
| it comes to mini splits there are lots of them that will
| work with a normal thermostat.
|
| I know this, well, because I've spent many countless hours
| trying to find something that will work with Z-Wave and not
| a proprietary communicating system. Granted it might be
| less efficient but efficiency is way less important than
| having the ability to do that. The only exception I would
| consider is if the communicating thermostat was fully open
| and had a decent API that worked without Internet access.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, that MAY be required for full optimization
|
| Wonderful option to have: "Subscribe, and we'll improve
| your efficiency by 10%++"
|
| OPTION
|
| Another option would be "we'll send you a download with the
| latest weightings for our optimizing AI firmware for
| $14.95, or every month for a subscription of $49/year"
| whatever.
|
| I, and most other sharp people will happily ignore you and
| buy a system that is 50% less efficient and twice the cost
| to avoid your lock-in.
|
| I'll also happily buy and subscribe to your _reasonably-
| priced_ optimization service as long as it is _OPTIONAL_.
|
| Just look at the nearly violent reaction that BMW got when
| they suggested that their heated seats would be a
| subscription option.
|
| If you want your company to die before it even gets
| started, keep making excuses for why you need to lock us
| in.
|
| If you want a growth giant, architect it from scratch so
| someone can happily use it where Starlink doesn't even
| service, and offer extra-efficiency OPTIONS that OPTIONALLY
| use internet service.
|
| And yes, open-sourcing the code would be a huge step in
| giving people confidence that you are serious, and that
| their investment has a future that is not a brick.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Yeah I wish these companies would "get it" but they never
| do.
|
| Provide an open API with the option to use a cloud
| service. Some cloud services are great, and have way
| better UIs than the self hosted stuff which I would
| gladly pay for. But take away the option to go self
| hosted and I lose all interest. If a device can't be
| controlled locally you don't really "own" it, you're just
| renting it from someone else.
| fourseventy wrote:
| 98% of consumers who would buy a heat pump have no idea
| what an API is.
| risyachka wrote:
| That's just not true.
|
| 1. 99.99999% will never care about code, open sourcing it
| etc. All consumers need is to have a guarantee it will work
| in case company is out of business or there is no internet.
| It doesn't matter how that guarantee will look like.
|
| 2. Sell device OR software is the exact reason most tech is
| so bad. Doing one of two is 10x easier than doing both, and
| results are 10x worse. If you do both you actually have a
| chance to do something nice.
| cmui wrote:
| I totally get this concern. Any good piece of critical home
| infrastructure should be able to operate without the cloud or
| an internet connection. Following this logic the thermostat +
| heat pump combination can operate fine without the cloud. You
| leave some optimized behavior on the table like demand response
| and weather response, but everything else will work (you'd have
| to manually enter your TOU rate plan to get that energy
| optimization).
| dawnerd wrote:
| that's good to hear, I'd make sure it's mentioned in the FAQ
| at the bottom.
| nickparker wrote:
| Please also be careful about selling to incumbents without a
| strong guarantee (ie contractual penalties) your product will
| stay in market for many years.
|
| I know smoke detectors and a couple other crappy home goods
| have been fixed by scrappy upstarts, sold to the losers for
| <100M, and then shuttered to avoid pivoting the existing
| business. Heartbreaking lost progress every time it happens.
| soheil wrote:
| I'd be careful catering to everyone asking for everything but
| the kitchen sink. Creating a non-cloud capable system is
| dumb.
|
| If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a
| clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial
| refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the
| warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.
| [deleted]
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I mean, aside from the fact that you misunderstood the
| whole point, nobody ever paid 20% extra for a heating
| system which didn't have cloud connectivity. In fact, the
| whole idea that there's something wrong with a heating
| system which doesn't require an internet connection is so
| incredibly bizarre that I can only wonder if you're someone
| who came out of a time machine.
|
| Lastly, a partial refund does fuck all to compensate for
| the fact that you have a multi-tonne brick in your house
| that has perfectly functioning hardware but broken software
| (because the server it used to talk to is gone). It also
| doesn't compensate for the wasted resources.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb.
|
| For a system that absolutely doesn't need a "cloud" to
| operate?
|
| But this is my second concern.
|
| First is availability of replacement parts after the get
| bought out and they shut off the servers.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb
|
| No, you haven't understood. It will be cloud-capable.
| They're asking that it's not cloud-only.
| soheil wrote:
| No, you don't understand. Making it non-cloud-capable
| incurs a cost.
|
| And there is no they, the commenter is a single
| individual.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| "As someone about to be in the market for something like
| this, propriety lockout is a complete deal breaker for
| me." - StrangeATractor
|
| "Would your company be willing to provide an open-source
| local-first websocket-based integration with
| https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter +
| Thread standard to provide it for everyone?" - daredoes
|
| "Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost
| no openness, about these aspects. I think this could
| become a really important part of your go-to market, but
| also a differentiator vs other products." -
| simonebrunozzi
|
| "I would like to be able to add it to HomeKit without it
| ever phoning home once. Matter + Thread help make that a
| possibility." - X-Istence
|
| They.
| soheil wrote:
| Yes this is HN what do you expect, of course everyone and
| their grandma here is gonna want a fully unlocked, open
| source and free as in freedom fries product.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I expect to be able to refer to those people as "they".
| itake wrote:
| I also would appreciate a local-only user experience.
|
| I'd also be concerned about dealing with "cannot find server"
| alerts popping up every time I use it.
| leonewton253 wrote:
| I agree with this. I would rather have it automated without
| cloud functionality. I think people on HN just like hacking
| lol. But when it comes to appliances and cars I would rather
| not mess with their code and break them.
| mlfreeman wrote:
| 1. There's a plugin for WeeWX that will happily fling
| readings from a weather station to my RainMachine sprinkler
| timer, so perhaps you could still support weather response as
| long as the user ran their own weather station.
|
| 2. The thermostat should support at least as much local
| control as the REST-ish API on the Venstar ColorTouch series.
| samstave wrote:
| Crazy idea:
|
| Pressure plates in the streets which are pressed when cars
| drive over them - pushing fluids through your coils, but
| connected to multiple units on either side.
|
| Harvest the kinetic energy of cars passing through the
| streets to apply pressure to pumps that feed fluids through
| the system, capturing that energy in a dynamo way?
|
| Put these plates in every high trafficked area. Piping the
| pumping action from parking garages to freeway exits and
| shipping ports which roll off weight from water to street and
| pump a f-ton of fluid based on vehicle traffick and weight.
|
| Make smaller installations... make an adapter interface to
| railway. heavy as cars on trains constantly hitting the pump
| valves. (yes we still need to deal with the bureau assholes
| in that industry... Im talking engineering)
| cmui wrote:
| I like the out of the box thinking! Unfortunately I think
| this one doesn't quite pass first principles. Any pumping
| action from the vehicles would be extra work they have to
| perform, so you just shuffle the energy expenditure from
| your local heat pumps, to a fleet of vehicles.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Aren't the cars already performing that work, just
| letting the energy dissipate into the road surface
| instead of going somewhere?
| Arch-TK wrote:
| For a similar reason why riding a bike through sand is more
| difficult than on flat tarmac, this will require additional
| energy and you will pay for it in locally burned petrol.
| Moreover, it will be less efficient than if you just burned
| that fuel in a power station.
| daredoes wrote:
| Would your company be willing to provide an open-source
| local-first websocket-based integration with
| https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread
| standard to provide it for everyone?
|
| If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm
| actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps
| jacquesm wrote:
| Seconded.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| Or the company could at least leave it easy to hack :)
| walterbell wrote:
| Implement with a swappable compute module?
| samstave wrote:
| We need an entire industry of 'appliance based Rpi's to
| be able to act as modules in a standardly compute plug-
| in-form factor (just like blades) with a unit preloaded
| with a config and just swap out inter connects - ich that
| we have an appliance hub, the solar/whatever input pushes
| power and the distributor determines where to push or
| halt the power - with a selector that tells me the input
| costs, and output draws, such that it can have a system
| to auto switch to best performance.
|
| Honywell missed the mark on the importance of thermostats
| on the economy.
| cmui wrote:
| It's something we'd definitely consider. Is the desire to
| have thermostat control via any third party?
|
| edit - The current plan has been Matter/thread Homekit +
| Google Home integration. We can expose at least temperature
| control via this to everyone.
| JshWright wrote:
| I think the desire would be a locally accessible API so
| that anyone could build an integration to it.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Chris, I think there's a lot more here to uncover. Most
| of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no
| openness, about these aspects. I think this could become
| a really important part of your go-to market, but also a
| differentiator vs other products.
|
| I'm a VC since recently, but have been a tech guy for a
| long time. Feel free to ping me if you'd like to discuss
| it further. $HN_username at gmail.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I consider Matter support to be vital for any product
| that's "connected". You can keep all the specialised
| features limited to your app but basic controls should be
| exposed via a standard protocol like Matter so I can use
| any Matter controller to set the temperatures and such.
| X-Istence wrote:
| I would like to be able to add it to HomeKit without it
| ever phoning home once. Matter + Thread help make that a
| possibility.
| pkulak wrote:
| For me, it's just peace of mind. I need to know that if
| cloud servers go down, or even my internet goes down, my
| house still works. My Nest thermostats are currently
| cloud-only (the only parts of my house left that are),
| and I had to write a script to never update them exactly
| on the hour. That's when their API is very likely to 500;
| I'm guessing because most people have automations trigger
| on the hour.
|
| I guess I can sum it up like this: I only want to deal
| with my own problems in my free time in my own home.
| mabbo wrote:
| Consider it is as a competitive advantage.
|
| An API that is public, well-documented, and easy for
| other systems to securely integrate with would mean that
| customers get the integration they want. If someone
| builds a better way to utilize your system, then you just
| got value-add on your product at basically zero cost.
|
| Amazon can hook Alexa into it. Google can hook their Home
| thing into it. And whatever comes next, whatever doesn't
| even exist today, should have an easy time integrating,
| continuing to add value.
| RicDan wrote:
| Completely agree on this point. I've worked over half a
| decade with smart home systems, and it's just so much
| easier (and cheaper!) to integrate well documented, open
| APIs (and please make them secure, I have nightmares of
| all the open, unencrypted UDP based alarm systems) that
| is purely local. This means we would highly recommend
| these products even tho we made zero money off them, and
| customers would actually prefer them as well - it's well
| beyond the time of people naively buying this stuff, and
| they know that clouds can just "go offline".
|
| What also can't be underestimated is the tinker
| community. Many people in the smart home business are
| tinkerers themselfs; create a great product for them and
| they will inevitably try to use it at their job. But this
| really isn't only applicable to integrators, really.
| daredoes wrote:
| The desire is to have any control/knowledge you'd want to
| have as the creator/developer. I want to be my own
| mechanic, and if I'm not that mechanic I want to be able
| to have anyone be that mechanic.
|
| Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I
| want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want
| to know power consumption? I want to know power
| consumption. Do you have a way to write unique
| schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I
| want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get
| executed on the heat pump.
|
| Context: Full-Stack Software Engineer (worked at a few
| start ups including Bird Rides). Active Home Assistant
| user and community-run integration creator (Linked
| Lovelace)
|
| The incredible part about a company like yours is the
| ability to do hardware at scale. There's no reality in
| which I'm safely and cost-effectively building my own
| Electric Heat Pump, or television, or [cool product
| here].
|
| Companies that make it easier for me to do my own things
| stand out.
|
| If you don't want that for the standard customer, fine.
| Provide some way to open up the device and trigger dev
| mode, or manually upload firmware, or OTA update
| firmware.
|
| Side notes:
|
| - a failed kickstarter I joined shipped out their
| original product with bad firmware and no way to do a
| physical firmware update without destroying the product,
| so they tanked instantly despite having a great hardware
| setup. Despite their failure, I and a few others opened
| up our products and manually flashed custom firmware onto
| it to make use of the product we bought
|
| - I exclusively buy LG Televisions now due to their usage
| of Web OS (has a local-first [HA
| Integration](https://www.home-
| assistant.io/integrations/webostv/)) which used to be
| hackable with https://rootmy.tv. With that, my TV runs
| custom Linux software that controls lights just like
| [Phillips Hue Sync](https://www.philips-hue.com/en-
| us/explore-hue/propositions/e...) but free/open-source
| and no additional hardware. Compare that to Samsung which
| is like 40% ads now?
|
| - I don't mind using a voice assistant, steal my ideas
| Tim Apple. I hate the part where the request goes (phone
| -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server ->
| light bulb) instead of (phone -> router -> local server
| -> light bulb) or worse (phone -> router -> local server
| -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server ->
| light bulb).
|
| EDIT: my markdown is showing, I should stick to lurking
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Speaking of heat pumps and granular control, I recently
| figured out that some Midea heat pumps (usually sold
| rebranded to various brands) contain two interfaces to
| get and set detailed information:
|
| 1) Detailed diagnostics i.e. RPMs, feeds, speeds,
| currents, temps etc can be read from the high voltage
| signal line between the indoor and outdoor unit - there
| is an official tool (search "Dr. Smart Midea" that does
| this)
|
| 2) The outdoor unit can be driven manually using the same
| tool using an i2c port that is on the PCB on the outdoor
| unit
|
| I have the new generation of their Dr. Smart tool, which
| I haven't had the time to thoroughly test or document. If
| there is interest I will likely try to reverse engineer
| and document these protocols properly.
|
| > "I want to be my own mechanic, and if I'm not that
| mechanic I want to be able to have anyone be that
| mechanic."
|
| > "Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I
| want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want
| to know power consumption? I want to know power
| consumption. Do you have a way to write unique
| schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I
| want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get
| executed on the heat pump."
|
| There's one feature of this diagnostic interface that I
| really really like. It allows you to "drive" the hardware
| of the unit manually, like Program Auto mode on a camera.
| You can manually set the frequency of the compressor and
| fan, and the control board will continue to enforce
| safeties.
|
| I haven't tried yet, but something I really want to try
| to implement myself is "frequency lockout". This is a
| common feature on commercial variable frequency drives. I
| noticed that under some operating conditions, the unit
| vibrations resonate with the building and create
| unpleasant sounds - I'd like to program it to never dwell
| on that frequency and skip over it.
|
| > The desire is to have any control/knowledge you'd want
| to have as the creator/developer.
|
| While I was exploring this, I had this in mind
| constantly. I definitely had this diag interface in mind
| when I was selecting a unit.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I think going with Matter would give you the best bang
| for your buck as you would get virtually every major
| smart home hub system.
|
| You would still be able to do more with your own app as
| matter will probably mainly support the lowest common
| denominator across your category.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| The point is to not have your company as a single point
| of failure for the thermostat. So yes, integrate into a
| wider (open) ecosystem, and that problem is addressed.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Yes, and particularly in a local/LAN/no internet manner.
| Local push or local pull.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| For me the goal is 100% local control. I found out the
| other day that I couldn't turn my 8sleep mattress on
| because a guy down the street struck a fiber line. My bed
| was basically a $4k brick as soon as the internet went
| down.
|
| Look at it this way, it saves you money in server costs
| and performs much better.
| keithah wrote:
| Hey, that happened to me too this weekend! Do you also
| live in Ingleside in SF?
| voidee wrote:
| WOW.
| ukd1 wrote:
| HA user here as well, having a non-locked down API at
| minimum (i.e. not actively trying to stop folks using
| it), through to an open and documented api (would be
| great), through to open firmware (would be best) and or
| releasing your own integration for HA would likely get
| you those kinda customers.
| cmui wrote:
| If people have a preferred way of integrating their
| devices, like home assistant, I'd want to make that
| possible for people to do with Electric Air.
|
| Re the sizing question - this is a part of the site that
| needs improvement. 12kbtu is 1 ton. The 48kbtu system is
| a 4ton system, but rated at 5F, if you're in a more
| temperate climate, two of these will likely have plenty
| of capacity for you. It's also likely that your current
| system is oversized.
| pkulak wrote:
| The good news, at least, is that almost anything will
| work. You don't need full Matter support for Home
| Assistant folks to be happy. The bare-minimum, local REST
| api built on a Monday by an intern will do it. Someone
| will write the Python code to fully integrate it. I get
| that there would be some security concerns there, but you
| get my drift.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| As someone about to be in the market for something like
| this, propriety lockout is a complete deal breaker for
| me.
|
| /2C/
| ukd1 wrote:
| Also, I'm in the market for a new AC/heater - so have
| been looking.
|
| Your specs are in kbtu, but at least for cooling I'm used
| to tons; I have 2x4.5ton units, and I think that's
| ~120kbtu, so I wouldn't be able to get just two of your
| biggest units?
| xxpor wrote:
| (not OP, but I also use HA)
|
| The important bit is to have an open API that can be
| connected to from the local network (or via Matter +
| Thread, etc), and via a cloud. Then anyone can develop a
| client. This also has benefits in UX: the latency to
| update is much lower than cloud based polling, since
| that's almost always rate limited.
|
| The closer anything is to the bottom of the chart here,
| the better. When buying something as expensive as a heat
| pump, I wouldn't even consider something that isn't at
| least local polling:
|
| https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...
|
| That being said, I'm not opposed to _value add_ things
| via cloud services. Want to get the weather via a cloud
| service, even if that changes the schedule? Totally fine!
| But ultimate _control_ must be local.
| snuxoll wrote:
| Agreed, this isn't a $100 thermostat that I can just pull
| off the wall and replace - we're talking an expensive
| investment with a 10+ year lifespan. That said, even for
| my thermostat not being bound to the cloud was an
| important reason I went with Emerson/Sensi (the only
| value-add I lose if their cloud goes down is usage
| reporting, everything else I can do with the native
| Homekit support).
| ultrarunner wrote:
| My desire would be to have the possibility of thermostat
| control (entirely) via first party, me. Odds are I would
| never even touch it, but the fact that I _couldn 't_
| would be a dealbreaker for something like this.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| My company took GP's suggested strategy and got an
| incredible community response. Really resonates with the
| high-end residential market, both DIY and DIFM (pros /
| CEDIA).
| seiferteric wrote:
| IMO I would prefer a Bluetooth thermostat that once paired,
| you don't have to login again. One thing that really annoys
| me about home "smart" devices is arbitrarily being logged
| out and having to remember passwords etc. and I don't see a
| reason I need to be "logged in" to control my thermostat.
| Also I don't want it to stop working when your servers are
| down... (had this happen the other day with my garage door
| opener sigh...) If you want internet connectivity, it
| should connect to some hub to bridge the Bluetooth to the
| web account.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If I'm gonna invest in a heat pump for the long term, I
| don't want it committed to any software technology that may
| be obsolete in 10 years. I want it to use something so dead
| stupid simple that anything in 50 years can still operate
| it without a lot of work.
|
| The simplest example I can think of is MIME
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME). It can be embedded in
| basically any transport type. It can encode anything you
| want (binary, UTF8, etc). It is very old, stable and well-
| tested. It is fairly trivial to implement a limited
| instruction set of.
|
| Transport security, authentication, authorization, etc, are
| nice, but not nearly as important to me as a future-proof
| interface to my heat pump. Give me the option to enable an
| admin port and just run a single unsecured connection with
| a basic dumb text protocol, and I can hack together a
| client in 30 minutes in any programming language. It's not
| fancy but it will work forever.
| dminor wrote:
| I agree on the point of not wanting to end up with a
| brick due to obsolete software. Note though that heat
| pumps typically last 10-20 years.
| benben613 wrote:
| Any idea what the pricing will be like?
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| There is a pricing section on the website.
| grift_economy wrote:
| [dead]
| abakker wrote:
| Also - is this going to be R410a, or R32?
| cmui wrote:
| Great question - this will be R454B (GWP 467) vs R410A (GWP
| 2000) and R32 (GWP 675). GWP is global warming potential, the
| relative emission factor of a substance relative to CO2.
| time4tea wrote:
| Seems expensive. I just got a ~13kW / ~45kbtu Mitsubishi Ecodan
| air/water plus new hot water tank etc for PS10k (plus PS5k
| government grant)
|
| No details on refrigerant and therefore GWP / F-gas that I could
| find.
|
| On the plus side (for you!), mitsubishi data/api/app sucks so
| bad, I can only imagine it is powered by EJB - there is so much
| potential upside there.
| antisthenes wrote:
| When you advertise as something being sold direct, it usually
| implies some kind of cost savings due to cutting out the
| middleman.
|
| Instead, what we're seeing here is about a 2x cost of what an
| HVAC company would charge you for installing the heat pump.
|
| So you've cut out the middleman, but inserted your startup here
| and decided to upcharge the end user double. Justify the cost to
| me, as a homeowner. Why should I not opt for an HVAC-company
| installed heat pump from a known-brand like Mitsubishi or
| Hitachi?
|
| What do I get for the extra $6-7k you seem to be upcharging? Is
| it efficiency? PM 2.5 sensors? Longer expected system lifetime?
| zhyder wrote:
| You mentioned CO2 so I hope you're integrating active ventilation
| through an HRV or ERV. Integrated energy-efficient
| heating+cooling+filtration+ventilation is the holy grail for me.
| hectormalot wrote:
| This is a really important consumer problem to solve. We
| retrofitted a heatpump into our home about a 18 months ago and it
| wasn't a great experience. Ranging from contractors not even
| replying (retrofit being harder than new homes), wildly different
| quotes and setups, lack of (API) integration, uncharitable on
| planning and timelines, Etc. Note: This was before the energy
| prices spike because of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, it's
| gotten worse since then.
|
| We've seen two similar start-ups (direct to consumer heat pumps)
| in the Dutch market. Might be interesting to have a look:
|
| - https://www.quatt.io/ (4 or 8kW at $5500- and $6500. After
| which you get about $3000 subsidy.)
|
| - https://www.dewarmte.nl/product-pompao (2-8kW modulating at
| $6500, or $3500 with the subsidy)
|
| Both marketed as hybrid pumps because they don't provide hot tap
| water and that's typically still done with gas. Electric boilers
| being uncommon here.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I'll take a look at those two
| products.
| owlbite wrote:
| I'd love to upgrade to an electric heat pump, however being out
| in the urban-wild land interface of California, we're subject to
| occasionally multi-day power outages, for which having propane-
| based heating is a god-send in a winter storm. Offer an option to
| have propane-based backup heating element for such times would be
| a killer feature for us, as running electric-based heating
| probably kills our Tesla power walls in short order.
| swayvil wrote:
| My first thought is, "how often will it break"? I don't even care
| if there's a warranty. I just want it to do its job for 10 years
| straight without a blip.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Permits.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Existing established companies offer centrally ducted heat pumps.
| You can purchase them direct, and are even sold by your big box
| home improvement stores. (search for "ducted heat pump)
|
| They are generally contractor only as homeowners generally can't
| DIY the 240v electrical and lineset hookup. What exactly is being
| improved upon by your startup?
| potatolicious wrote:
| In addition to the _software_ concerns above, I would have
| severe reservations about the ongoing maintenance of the
| system.
|
| How would maintenance be handled? There are a large number of
| contractors in my area that can service the major brands. Would
| maintenance come from the company itself, or via third party
| partners? If third parties, what if they prove unreliable? Will
| there be enough diversity in providers to give me choice?
|
| More importantly, what happens if the startup is acquired or
| shuts down? This is an expensive kit that, depending on system
| sizing, costs as much as a car. I need this type of system to
| work for years, with high availability of parts and labor, and
| replacement as-required.
|
| Going with a new company in this space seems _deeply_ risky.
| And yeah, the existing manufacturers don 't play super nicely
| with smarthomes and cloud-based control and whatnot, but it's
| far from enough of a pain to offset the risk IMO.
| mjhay wrote:
| Those established companies don't have units with smart
| thermostats that get bricked if the company goes out of
| business.
| cmui wrote:
| A few major improvements - (1) Purchasing experience, we'll
| connect you with a local contractor, arrange financing and help
| with rebates. (2) HEPA filtration, fresh air intake and
| humidity control fully integrated into the system, actuated off
| PM2.5 and CO2 sensors in the thermostat. (3) A smart thermostat
| that is optimized for operation with a variable speed heat
| pump, and reduces your monthly bills. (4) Help for the
| contractors in the form of a web app to do load disaggregation
| for heat pump sizing and figure out if the existing ducts can
| be used for the install. This is something a lot of contractors
| need an effective tool for.
| portpecos wrote:
| Are you considering following in the footsteps of Project
| Solar? I've received 20 quotes from other solar companies
| like Solar Run as well as local solar companies, and they're
| quoting me around $3-$6/watt. This price includes their sales
| commission. Project Solar, on the other hand, eliminates the
| middleman, allowing us to purchase their system for just
| $2.2/watt. Those $3-$6/watt quotes didn't make long-term
| sense to us. Project Solar made financial sense to us.
|
| As a VC-backed startup, it's worth checking out their
| business model.
|
| This is a big deal because if you can beat the rates of your
| competitors and guarantee a quality workmanship, then that
| takes away the 100+ hours we spend on sourcing quotes and
| negotiating better prices.
|
| Here's a story about what happens when you DON'T spend 100+
| hours sourcing multiple quotes. You end up with a $36,000
| heater + air conditioning unit where the installer caused a
| leak to occur on on the second floor. We were so desperate
| for cold air that we didn't have time to get 20 quotes, but
| the 5 other quotes we did get ranged from $48k to $64k.
|
| If you can save us that 100+ hours of time and give us a
| cheaper deal while guaranteeing workmanship, then I'm sold.
|
| We're getting really really really tired of overly inflated
| prices and the negotiation process.
| runako wrote:
| First -- good luck with this!
|
| > Purchasing experience, we'll connect you with a local
| contractor, arrange financing and help with rebates.
|
| Hopefully constructive feedback: I replaced 2 of our
| residential furnaces within the last few years, in two
| separate transactions with two different vendors. I can say
| that this pitch doesn't resonate as an improvement because
| vendors already make this turnkey.
|
| You call a furnace/air conditioning company, they come out
| and recommend a unit. You sign their financing thing, they
| come out the next day and install. I interacted with a single
| primary person (on-site) at each company. Cost aside, it's
| actually one of the more pleasant buying experiences of any
| major home improvement.
|
| Finally, I can tell you who installed the ($$$$$) units but I
| definitely could not tell you who made them. Branding might
| be tough unless you do the installs yourself.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. If you feel comfortable saying,
| what region are you in? I think where you might start
| running into friction is if you want a heat pump vs a
| furnace. There's a lot of variation between local markets
| in terms of heat pump install competence.
| runako wrote:
| I'm in the southeastern US, USDA Zone 8.
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm really not sure how any of this is worth the extra ~$8k
| in price difference. Not saying there aren't people out there
| willing to buy but it's not for me.
|
| 1 - I already have a local contractor and financing shouldn't
| be a reason it costs more. 2 - This is ~$500 and I already
| own a air purifier. 3 - This is ~$200 and I already own a
| thermostat. 4 - I can't speak to the value in this but in my
| case I don't have central ducts.
| debacle wrote:
| I saw a comment about demand response below.
|
| You don't opt your residential hvac into demand response unless
| you want to freeze. Juice is not worth the squeeze.
| tguvot wrote:
| Putting aside fact that homeowners can buy HVACs online and get
| it shipped, how it differs from mrcool ducted heatpump that, for
| example can be bought for under 4k for 3ton model and have DIY
| install (no vacuuming needed), besides nicer of external unit and
| prettier app ? as opposed to 12k for yours + 8k install ?
| schiffern wrote:
| Based on the location of the filter, it looks like the air return
| is supposed to come in... from the _bottom_?
|
| In most home unit I've seen, the return air duct connects on the
| _side_. Do you plan to offer anything in that configuration?
| Thanks!
| notwhatyouthink wrote:
| Who are you partnering with to design/manufacture your air
| handler and condenser units?
| stevelacy wrote:
| Is this designed for new home builds or remodel/retrofits? There
| would be a major cost difference between demo/prepping a retrofit
| over a new build.
| cmui wrote:
| We're primarily targeting remodel/retrofits as a market, but
| you could certainly use this in a new build.
| efields wrote:
| All-electric house owner here. 2x Carrier heat pumps, ducted air
| handlers. One of the carrier units is 13 years old and going
| great. Electrostatic filters on the air handlers. The house was
| built in the 50s and renovated in 2010, doubling the square
| footage. That's when they put in the oldest unit.
|
| Idk if it has to do with the mid-Atlantic temperature swings on
| the marginal seasons, but this time of year the house will get
| weirdly cold around 6/7pm, so we bump up the heat a couple
| degrees. It resets to schedule after two hours. The system has a
| hard time keeping up if it stays below 20 for an extended period
| of time, but that just means it holds somewhere around 65oF
| instead of 68oF.
|
| We're not near seasonal wildfires so air quality is never an
| issue for us. In fact I notice when we leave the house for the
| day and come back several hours later, the air in the house has a
| reassuring "neutral" smell (sealed house cycling old air
| uninterrupted).
|
| We also have a whole-house fan, a relic from the original build,
| which is incredible when you want to cycle in fresh air
| periodically. More homes should have these.
|
| Anyway, high seer home-scale heat pumps are just pricy things,
| but they do work well and efficiently in their existing form. The
| thermostat we use is also by carrier and is _fine_. I don't see
| anything here that's a significant improvement from our own
| setup, but they do look nice.
|
| We have a big house. If we wanted to be more energy efficient at
| this point, we'd need similar setup in a smaller house. I don't
| think nice looking residential mechanicals are going to help the
| transition to cleaner energy sources any faster. Sorry.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! What was install like for you, any
| issues there? Do you have any comfort issues that you'd like to
| address, say a room to hot or cold?
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I had a recent experience with replacing the main blower motor on
| my American Standard gas furnace: the variable speed motor has
| firmware, so can you guess what they did? The motor has to be
| programmed by the distributor or it will not work in your
| furnace. You have to provide the furnace's serial number for the
| programming. Worse, the local distributor would not sell it to
| me! They will only sell it to an installer. "Qualification" for
| an installer is load of nonsense- they just want your EPA
| refrigerant certification- which is nothing compared to a real
| license, like plumbers or electricians.
|
| So please:
|
| No serialized parts.
|
| I should be able to buy replacement parts from you or common
| online suppliers without hassle- like amazon.com or
| supplyhouse.com.
|
| I should be able to install it myself, at least in theory: so
| unit comes pre-charged, and various lengths of linesets are
| available so I don't have to do any brazing.
|
| There is a company making a window unit heat pump: this one
| https://www.gradientcomfort.com/
|
| You should make something like this.. basically a zero-
| installation work version of your product. This will be a big hit
| in places with insane labor costs- like New York City.
| cmui wrote:
| Gradient is a great product, uses 120V, great for small spaces,
| like apartments in NYC.
| https://www.protocol.com/climate/gradient-nycha-heat-
| pumps-q.... Electric Air is really targeted at replacing
| natural gas furnaces in single family homes.
| trollied wrote:
| This: https://ecorenovator.org/forum/showthread.php?t=484 is a
| homemade heat pump setup, documented over 10+ years of forum
| posts. A great read if you have a few hours to spare. 2 million
| views!
| Max-q wrote:
| In Norway most homes have one or more heat pumps. We are living
| in a cold climate and the pumps are being used like 9-10 months a
| year.
|
| The most common brands are Japanese: Toshiba, Mitsubishi and
| Panasonic.
|
| I will not agree that the user experience is bad at all. They are
| very good products. Stand alone they work well and with
| integration they work together with the power company to optimize
| the energy consumption vs energy price during the day.
|
| Be careful to just think the existing products are bad because
| you want them to be. It's an existing, competitive, multi billion
| market with very good products.
| ttul wrote:
| They are UGLY though...
| michpoch wrote:
| It is not really clear / mentioned anywhere - are the sales
| limited just to the USA?
| brianjoseff wrote:
| looks very cool. consider putting estimated savings in the
| pricing area too. similar to solar where big upfront cost but
| amortization prob makes it relatively cheap!
| verelo wrote:
| Chris, great and i love that you're working on this. We need more
| heatpumps in this world!
|
| Any chance there's a solution coming for people with hydronic
| systems? We have a house in rural Ontario that has in-floor
| hydronic in the basement and hydronic radiators upstairs too.
| We'd love to get off propane, but there are virtually zero
| options without us installing ducts (which due to the German
| wood-frame design is very difficult to achieve without a lot of
| unfavourable cosmetic alterations)
| braingenious wrote:
| This sounds pretty coo--
|
| > _combined with a smart thermostat_
|
| --nevermind. You lost me.
| izolate wrote:
| I live in Buffalo NY, and from the recent record-breaking
| snowstorms, I've concluded that the push for electrification of
| home appliances may not be the best solution. Although gas
| furnaces still require electricity, they can operate for a more
| extended period on a generator, and gas stoves are a crucial
| backup option for staying warm during a power outage. Until our
| electricity grid becomes more reliable, I would hesitate to
| switch to an all-electric setup.
|
| While I think your product looks excellent and applaud your
| launch, I regret that it's not something I'd purchase anytime
| soon, given my concerns about relying solely on electricity
| during power outages.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > gas stoves are a crucial backup option for staying warm
| during a power outage
|
| Isn't CO (and other combustion byproducts) an issue? When
| cooking a meal the duration is short enough to not matter much,
| but at extended durations to provide heat I would think this is
| a bad idea, unless you monitor air quality enough to run a
| vented range hood at the optimization point between unhealthy
| and wasting most of the heat you're generating.
| izolate wrote:
| I agree that these byproducts can be an issue. However, in
| the context of a life-threatening situation like a power
| blackout in a blizzard, where the alternative is death from
| exposure to the cold, running a gas stove for a long duration
| may be an acceptable risk.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Also so many of our electric lines are above ground. I wouldn't
| feel comfortable 100% relying on that. Snow and ice take these
| things out in the winter and summer storms have their way too.
| And then the unreliable grid. How many brownouts have been
| occurring in part of the USA over the last few years?
|
| I actually have a heatpump but I also have 2 furnaces/ACs as
| well for 3 systems total for my home. I don't plan on moving to
| electric for stovetop anytime soon.
| Dnguyen wrote:
| So the difference in cost between natural gas and ElectricAir is
| ~ 400/yr. And it costs $14,000 to install the ElectricAir system.
| It will take a very long time to break even. It will be very
| difficult to convince people with current working natural gas
| system to switch over.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Unless the ruling changes and one won't be able to install
| fossil fuel based heating, like in EU soon.
| garduque wrote:
| Sure but his target market is North America, where I don't
| think there is too much danger of dropping fossil fuel
| heating anytime soon.
| anovikov wrote:
| 3-5x is an exaggeration. Recent EU study put it at 1x-3x
| depending on the temperature outside, with <1x or even inability
| to work at all at coldest temps (under -15C or so). Maybe 2x is a
| good average in practical use. Not 4x.
| briHass wrote:
| Would've loved to see a different approach to the typical
| refrigerant-split units. I'm EPA certified, and do my own heat
| pump work, but something that could really blow up the heat pump
| space would be a closed-loop refrigerant system that uses water
| lines to the indoor coil/air handler. This would make the system
| a true DIY self-install, since you'd never be messing with
| refrigerant loops.
|
| The indoor coil/AH could be made as lightweight and small as
| possible (or multiple configurations) so it could easily be
| installed by a DIYer or a handyman for extremely low cost using
| insulated PEX lines for the water with basic tools. The outdoor
| unit would be heavy and require an electrical circuit, but would
| otherwise be as easy as swapping a window-unit AC.
|
| Just like with solar, the biggest problem with adoption of heat
| pumps is labor cost to install. The units themselves are
| shockingly cheap (and continuously getting cheaper), but labor
| adds 3-4X the cost of the unit itself. The certification, tools,
| and knowledge to handle the refrigerant is the 'secret sauce'
| used by HVAC companies to keep prices high. Imagine how few
| people would have window AC units or refrigerators if they needed
| to be installed by an HVAC company that wanted to make $300/hr to
| install.
| cmui wrote:
| It's a different but valid approach. You still need a pump
| station and someone comfortable with hydronic loop
| install/fittings. Some areas also ban PEX. Northeast is
| definitely the place to do this, as there is way more hydronic
| knowledge than other parts of the US. System efficiency takes a
| hit because the secondary water loop adds more lift to the heat
| pump.
| earleybird wrote:
| Absolutely this. 3-4x? Sibling of mine just had a minisplit
| installed where the unit was probably $4-$5k and the total was
| north of $24k.
|
| A sealed water loop where any plumber and most DIYers could
| manage would be miles ahead in both reliability and
| accessibility.
| briHass wrote:
| Good point; I forgot to mention the reliability/environmental
| aspect as well. Most DIY, and even pro installs, of mini
| splits fail due to leaking flare connections, which must be
| made in the field. Modern refrigerants operate at very high
| (400+ PSI) pressures, and getting a perfect seal is critical.
| Having the entire refidgerant loop sealed and tested at the
| factory significantly decrease the common issues and prevents
| dumping climate-harmful gasses into the atmosphere.
|
| Even with more reliable brazed connections, modern heat pumps
| are very sensitive to contamination of the refrigerant lines.
| Brazing must be done with utmost care not to overheat the
| copper, and nitrogen gas needs to flow through the pipe at
| specific volumes to prevent carbon deposits that can decrease
| the longevity of the system. Any damage caused by improper
| brazing is largely invisible (inside the pipe) and the
| process is time consuming and precise; in exact opposition to
| the incentives an HVAC installer to get it done quickly.
| cmui wrote:
| Though somewhat controversial, ZoomLock also seems
| promising. Agreed though, there are obvious benefits to
| having a fully factory sealed refrigerant loop.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| there are diy systems with threaded connectors, pre-
| vacuumed units and linesets filled with refrigerants.
| danans wrote:
| > something that could really blow up the heat pump space would
| be a closed-loop refrigerant system that uses water lines to
| the indoor coil/air handler.
|
| Add in hot water heating and storage, and that's basically what
| Harvest Thermal is doing:
|
| https://www.harvest-thermal.com/product
|
| They even use an off-the-shelf heat pump compressor (SanCO2)
| that as the name implies, uses CO2 as a refrigerant. It's a
| pricey compressor though.
| egillie wrote:
| This is fantastic timing with natural gas prices skyrocketing!
| unixfg wrote:
| I see an "App" section, but it's pretty light on details.
|
| Is the plan for it to be cloud driven (both app and thermostat
| connect to a remote server) or will there be a local network API?
| Zigbee/Thread?
|
| I can see some real value in a system that is fully accessible to
| a home automation platform.
| deedubaya wrote:
| I'm in the market for a heat pump in my home to replace electric
| forced air which is in a cold climate. It seems like this heat
| pump would work great for me, and being able to see pricing up
| front and self-order sounds awesome!
|
| I'm gonna be a no on purchasing tho. I don't want a smart
| thermostat that is not system agnostic. High risk of it bricking
| the system or not being upgradable, minimal reward when compared
| to all the other smart thermostat options.
|
| A heat pump manufacture that's trying to be a tech company? Nah.
| fintechjock wrote:
| Really cool and interesting. I definitely think the market is
| there for this.
|
| I'm betting that your biggest hurdle will be post-purchase. If I
| remember correctly, Tony Fadell talks about how hard it was to
| disrupt the contractor model when building Nest. People often
| just bought whatever thermostat their contractor recommended, and
| those contractors were incentivized to push them towards specific
| brands. They beat this by just making the product super easy to
| install by the consumer and cutting out the contractor all
| together (something I doubt is feasible with a heat pump).
|
| Maybe that won't be a problem with the DTC model considering the
| contractor is only brought in post-purchase, but I wonder if this
| really takes hold if competitors start trying to corner local
| installers. Good luck!
| foobarian wrote:
| > They beat this by just making the product super easy to
| install by the consumer
|
| I think it was more than that, I cannot possibly overstate how
| stupidly better the design/UX was compared to alternatives. In
| my home I spent years looking for a replacement for the
| ancient, round thermostat with a mercury switch. That
| thermostat is a marvel: you spin the dial with instant visual
| feedback, and there is an off/heat/ac switch. That's it! The
| Nest just added networking.
| el_don_almighty wrote:
| Parts & Service documentation means more than software
|
| The nerds can always reverse engineer practical controls. As a
| systems integrator, your job is providing access to comprehensive
| service information and long-term, easy access to parts. This is
| harder than it seems because of the necessary infrastructure and
| product management control. (Engineers are always tweaking
| something)
|
| Of course, then you have to withstand the inevitable liability
| risk and lawsuits from idiots improperly installing capital goods
| in their homes. Let's be honest, there are people out there
| struggling to fasten their airplane lap belt...
|
| The technology is NOT the hard part, it's all in the distribution
| and support
|
| I would make sure your systems focus more on self-diagnostics,
| data logging, and anything else that makes troubleshooting faster
| and easier
| samstave wrote:
| Can you have a system, such as a "Solyndra-type-rod"(s) which
| placed down a deep well and a solar pump to flow water intor a
| unit that sits within the ground-well water level and use that as
| a coolant supply and the solar to provide a small amount of elec
| to a downward pump to push water through the closed system, and
| then have a solar powered UV light strip to kill bacteria on the
| upward flow... then pipe that to a rooftop black-ulta-paint pased
| piping module to allow solar heating for the water.... in
| addition to your system?
| cmui wrote:
| That feature ships Winter 2034.
| mfreeman451 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| kiddz wrote:
| Hey Chris. . . given the novel nature of your product (it looks
| very sleek btw) and you're looking to gather feedback, maybe we
| can talk using askhumans.io to gather feedback at scale? also,
| many years ago, I worked on compressed air energy storage on the
| demand side and we looked at co-generation opportunities to drive
| the caes turbines. anyways, would love to connect.
| zorrobyte wrote:
| I installed my own Heat Pump (Pioneer) setup in my RV. I
| evacuated my system using a vacuum pump myself, total cost was
| around 3k. Got Home Assistant working through a hacked Local Tuya
| script.
|
| This unit is 22 SEER.
|
| +1 for a LOCAL API that doesn't require the cloud and +1 for a
| self install. I can buy two whole higher efficiency Pioneer units
| for your $6k install fee
| rcme wrote:
| Those are beautiful looking units. It's a cool idea to focus on
| giving something very pedestrian and utilitarian a nice cosmetic
| overhaul.
|
| I just replaced radiators with a heat pump install. I had a few
| questions about your units: What are "backup heating strips?"
| They're mentioned in passing when talking about cold weather, but
| I imagine there is some meat here. Also, even though many heat
| pumps work in cold weather, their efficiency drops. Where is the
| break even point? Also, what is the sound level of the condenser
| unit? It looks like you only list sound levels for the air
| handler.
| NickM wrote:
| How did you replace your radiators? Did you have to install
| ducts, or did you find a cost-effective way to have a heat pump
| heat the water for your radiator system?
|
| Good ways to upgrade homes that use radiators to use heat pump
| heating seems like a big gap in the market right now (though,
| not sure if this is just a market problem or a gap in the
| technology, since my understanding is that radiators need
| higher temperatures than forced air systems).
| rcme wrote:
| I installed ducts. For me, personally, I think it was worth
| it. I live in an old home, but someone 50 years ago replaced
| all of the radiators with baseboard radiators (why???). So
| ducts over baseboard radiators is a huge upgrade.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| >"backup heating strips"
|
| Big resistive elements sitting in the air handler. Think big
| toaster oven coils that are used when the outdoor temperature
| drops too low for the heat pump to handle the load.
| signaturefish wrote:
| In the context of heat pumps, a "backup heating strip" is a
| resistive heating element - electricity goes in, heat comes out
| just like an old electric heater. They're generally used during
| defrost cycles for the external air handler in cold weather, or
| to provide a temporary thermal boost when the heat pump is
| having performance trouble e.g. when the exterior temperature
| is near the bottom of the heat pump's operating range.
|
| More detail at https://carolinacomfortsc.com/hvac/what-are-
| heat-strips/ (no affiliation, they were the first authoritative
| return from my web search).
| rcme wrote:
| Whole-house heating with resistive electric heating is going
| to get expensive, quickly. If they're serious about
| installing these in cold weather climates, they should have
| more information about the cut over temperature and the
| efficiency of the heat pumps at those temperatures.
|
| Just for context, my heat pumps cut over around 40-45 degrees
| to gas-based heat.
| signaturefish wrote:
| Yeah, I'd like to see those figures too, and I think they
| might surprise you (and me). I don't have figures or
| references to hand here, but as I understand it modern heat
| pumps should be good down at least a little way below
| freezing. They're widely used and popular in Norway, for
| example, and the Norwegians aren't exactly new to cold
| weather.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| You have an older system. New systems can provide 100%
| rated capacity well below freezing. Mine is -5F and not
| specifically a "cold climate" unit. The unit in OP seems to
| offer 100% nameplate capacity at 5F.
| rcme wrote:
| These are brand new heat pumps. I don't think it's
| possible to have high efficiency at cold temps because of
| the need for a defrost cycle. I just check and mine are
| around 2 COP at 8F and 5 COP at 40F.
| tgtweak wrote:
| High efficiency heat pumps with built-in defrosters (or
| "heating strips") can often provide full heating capacity
| (ie: 48,000btu for a 4 ton unit) down to -12f, with reduced
| output at even lower temps. The COP efficiency drops quite
| a bit though and it will eventually get to a point where it
| is essentially as energy efficient as a resistive heater.
| Whether it's more efficient than using gas or not is a
| difficult calculation based on your gas price, heat pump
| COP temperature curve and electricity price. If you expect
| to see <-20f temperatures regularly, you'll want/need a
| backup heat source anyway.
| soheil wrote:
| I very much get the vibe of a Kickstarter campaign. Is YC
| advising its startups to go that route more and more now that the
| VC money has dried up?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I tried like hell to install an air-to-water heat pump instead of
| a replacement gas boiler and it didn't make anything close to
| economic sense to do so.
|
| What do I want from a heat-pump:
|
| I want it to work with a contact-closure (TT/XX) input to call
| for heat/cooling. Sure, if you have a fancy thermostat that works
| better, I'm going to read the brochure, but I'm not buying it if
| I find out it won't work with just a dry contact input.
|
| I want it to use parts that are in stock at my local HVAC supply
| house. I don't want to be without heat for 3+ days while some
| obscure custom part is shipped in from someplace across the
| country.
|
| I want it to have an open interface to extract data (similar to
| the open interface of a dry-contact closure) about run-time,
| performance, etc. (I will, however, buy it without this.)
|
| I want it to be sold/serviced by multiple competing suppliers in
| my area. (This is what ultimately undid the chance to install an
| A2W heat pump: only one company was in the business of supplying
| them and they priced it accordingly.)
|
| For a mini-split system, I want to be able to run the refrigerant
| and condensate lines inside the building so I don't have hideous
| lineset covers festooning my house.
|
| I'm happy to chat more as a homeowner interested in the space
| (but with a 6 month old Bosch boiler on the wall and possibly
| interested in the minisplit for shoulder season heating and
| summer cooling).
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >but I'm not buying it if I find out it won't work with a dry
| contact input.
|
| But... why?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Because it's from a new entrant to the market and I don't
| know that their complex interface will be available,
| supported, and serviceable 12 years into the 20 year lifetime
| of the equipment. I do know that I will always be able to
| provide a dry contact closure in the event they go belly-up
| and the thermostat goes unsupported.
|
| I have my current gas boiler working via an outdoor reset
| mechanism that provides flow water at 116degF to 135degF via
| a dry contact closure from the zone relay box. There's no
| reason for me to believe that Bosch (and others) can create a
| modulating boiler that works efficiently from just a dry
| contact closure input from the house (plus a flow temp
| sensor, a return temp sensor, an outdoor temp sensor, and a
| programmed reset curve in the heating unit), but that a heat
| pump would be unable to do the same.
|
| The boiler can modulate up and down based on the delta-T
| between return and supply and the target supply temp from the
| outdoor reset. A heat pump could do exactly the same thing
| (with an inverter drive, it can do it with even more
| granularity than a multi-stage gas valve affords).
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| Nobody will build a heat-pump system with an on/off control
| system like that because the performance will be awful.
| Certainly not an air-to-water system.
| yencabulator wrote:
| My Carrier wall unit has a button for manual operation:
|
| > MANUAL CONTROL is intended for testing purposes and
| emergency operation only.
| thaeli wrote:
| As a backup option, the incumbents already make this. Carrier
| Infinity is a good example. Proprietary protocol (RS-485
| based, so it can run over existing thermostat wiring) between
| the smart thermostat and the furnace, and between the furnace
| and outside condenser unit. Even with all these smarts, there
| is still a fallback mode provided with a regular old dry-
| contacts control wires that can hook to any standard
| thermostat. Yeah, the system won't operate at peak
| performance, but it will operate, and that's very important
| when every HVAC tech carries a standard thermostat with them,
| or even uses basic jumper wires, in an emergency until they
| can return with correct parts.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It already exists. Check out Mr. Cool Universal and Gree
| Flexx. Heat pumps that work with a normal thermostat exist.
|
| Most of the info about this stuff online is trash because
| HVAC is the most toxic online community compared to any other
| contracting profession. One of the reasons highly efficient
| mini splits haven't took off in the USA- the self proclaimed
| experts want to charge $2000 to drill a hole and charge a
| line set, so most people DIY.
| thaeli wrote:
| I've often wondered why this is. My best guess is that the
| EPA cert (not actually hard to get) has been turned into
| some sort of weird quasi-guild-membership thing.
|
| I can walk right in to a "to the trade" electrical or
| plumbing supply and they'll deal with me, no problem, no
| questions asked. With HVAC.. they won't even talk to you
| without an EPA number, even if you're not buying
| refrigerant.
|
| DTC for whole house systems, if they can make the
| regulatory side work and provide a good customer
| experience, is the most important part of this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm a potential customer for DTC/DIY installation, but I
| think that's a pretty small slice of the market. Many of
| my friends are entirely willing to drop $4-5K for a
| single zone mini-split install (that's $1-1.5K of
| equipment and 2 hours of labor) and wouldn't dream of
| drilling a hole in the side of their house to save $3K.
| abakker wrote:
| I recently got quoted $17k for 2 zone mini split. I
| bought the tools, instructions, and watched youtube and
| spent $4500 total. At that savings, I don't need a
| warranty. I can just buy and install another system if it
| fails.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've been electrifying the heating of our house bit by bit and
| I'm probably in the target market for your product. The big
| killer for direct-to-consumer here is that the refrigerants used
| are environmentally hazardous and most of them are greenhouse gas
| producers. Making it so that you don't need a licensed
| professional (who will charge you an arm and a leg for something
| that should be simple and end-user safe) would go a long way to
| drive adoption.
|
| What refrigerant are you using?
|
| Will your device require internet access? (if so it is a non-
| starter for me, I don't want any of my appliances connected to
| the internet and to have some stupid service grafted on).
| gumptionary wrote:
| Love what you're trying to do. I recently moved most of the way
| off oil-based hydronic baseboard heating in my 1800's New England
| farmhouse through installing 3 ductless mini-splits with
| Mitsubishi Hyper Heat condensors. Just to help with your user
| research, my biggest decision points:
|
| 1. Cold weather operation. I get you're saying the units are good
| down to -15f, but there's nothing like the fact that I can talk
| to plenty of other people who have good experiences with
| Hyperheat at -15f to ensure that they'll actually work. Given I'm
| using these primarily for heat (the AC is a bonus), if they
| didn't heat well and efficiently at 0f then it was all pointless.
| 2. Repairability. Again, given I'm trying to use these as my
| primary heat, I need to know I'll have someone who will service
| the unit who can be here in a matter of hours. This is why I went
| away from the DIY route. Most installers around here (semi-rural
| New England) are super brand aligned and won't service the stuff
| they don't install.
|
| Would be happy to help with user research if you're looking for
| folks to talk to.
| harterrt wrote:
| +1 to servicability. It's hard to get someone who knows how to
| clean my minisplits. This looks really cool, but I'd need to be
| confident that I could maintain my units myself.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I'll send you a note.
| aloukissas wrote:
| This is great to see. I have a question around the "a
| delightfully uniform temperature in each room". I live in a
| 3-story townhome, which has largely non-uniform temperature
| across floors (since warm air travels up). So, cold lower floors
| in the winter and hot upper floors in the summer. AFAICT, this is
| pretty common with central duct systems and the usual fix is to
| switch to split-unit systems. How does your product handle this?
| cmui wrote:
| Good question. The uniform temp is really within a room, what
| you're describing is the not uncommon experience of having
| unbalanced duct work. A few options for you (1) DIY or pro duct
| balancing. You change the position of dampers and vents, might
| have to modify duct work (2) actuated zone dampers, these live
| in the duct work and install is expensive (3) a smart vent that
| you can DIY, battery life is surprisingly good
| https://flair.co/ (4) mini-split system, every major room gets
| a wall unit connected to an outdoor unit (condenser), and you
| can control the temperature of each room the mini-split is in.
| Electric Air offers wall units for this if you're not able to
| make a ducted install work. (5) hybrid setup, you use a
| centrally ducted furnace for most of the house, heat pump or
| otherwise, and use a mini-split in the upstairs rooms that are
| not reaching the desired temperature.
| aloukissas wrote:
| Thanks for the pointers! Coming from Europe, I really love
| ductless split systems, so that's probably my preference.
| throwawayacc5 wrote:
| Why would I go with you versus a Mitsubishi heat pump system that
| has years worth of supply chain, installers, trained techs, etc.
| behind them?
|
| Is there a term for releasing products that are decades old in
| Asia/Europe in the US as new, cool, hip, etc.? Maybe "technology
| arbitrage"?
| solived wrote:
| Good on ya! This is a huge challenge, but sorely needed in the
| industry. How are you going about designing these systems? Do you
| have ducted options? HEPA filtration is not an end-all to indoor
| air quality, is there any consideration for ventilation?
| cmui wrote:
| We are primarily targeting ducted options. For us, air quality
| means manage particulate (PM2.5), CO2 with fresh air intake,
| and humidity in the home.
| mrexroad wrote:
| Request: Allow homeowners to self install without voiding
| warranty. Some of us here can sweat/flare copper, vac test and
| flush lines just fine.
| kazinator wrote:
| Of course you sell to homeowners; otherwise you'd have to get a
| distributor (e.g. Home Depot) to carry the product.
|
| This is not a feature; it's just how you have to hustle.
| vladgur wrote:
| The costs to install/replace an existing gas furnace-based system
| are ridiculous and are not likely to offer any cost benefits over
| long period of time, especially if you live somewhere with pricey
| electricity and (relatively) cheap natural gas.
| steren wrote:
| As someone who recently picked a contractor to install a heat
| pumpt I need to see:
|
| - confirmation that it does both heating and cooling - the price
| - a list of approved contractors who can install it in my area -
| the expected installation costs
| muhammadusman wrote:
| Does this include an integration with Matter or Thread?
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| This looks absolutely amazing, and I think you guys are going to
| win big here.
|
| My only concern is why the low SEER2? For a state of the art
| system like this I was expecting 22+
|
| I am hovering over the pre-order button regardless...
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| The website lists 3 different sizes, but it doesn't say which one
| is recommended for a home of $SqFt. Do I need a small or medium
| if my house is ~1100 sqft?
| beefman wrote:
| I have a 5400sqft house with 3 thermostats driving 3 natural gas
| furnaces and 2 air conditioners. System is loud, works poorly,
| and is expensive to operate. Outdoor temps from 30 - 110 degF.
| Can you help?
|
| I do not want the system connected to the internet.
|
| Currently paying $0.36/kWh for electricity and $2.80/therm for
| natgas.
| nightski wrote:
| This is cool, but we just bought a very nice high end gas furnace
| and electric AC which was about $8k installed in total. I'd love
| a heat pump, but $22k even after federal rebates? That's kind of
| crazy.
| dolmen wrote:
| I bought a house with two air heat pumps. I live in France.
|
| One day it stopped working. I tried to find a contractor to
| repair it. It was hard. Too long to wait in the winter. I
| immediately bought electric heaters to replace the heat pump as
| wiring was already in place (the heat pumps were already v2 of
| the house heating).
|
| I finally got one contractor to come for the heat pump. It
| happened that he came to my home the only day the last 3 years
| that temperature was below -5 degC. The issue was apparently a
| gas leak, but because of the low temperature he couldn't do
| anything. Despites my calls, he never came back. And I haven't
| been able to get someone else to fix the thing. The only other
| contractor I found was only asking 250 EUR to decommission the
| thing.
|
| So I still have a non working air heat pump in my living room.
| surfmike wrote:
| Why not also have a way to integrate with Nest, ecobee, etc?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I really appreciate the transparent pricing. There is so much
| secrecy in the industry where I live (non-US) it seems, I get the
| feeling I'm supposed to be lured in before someone will actually
| tell me what it costs, even just the price of differently sized
| heat pumps, I'm not even talking about the variable cost of
| installation.
| pjsg wrote:
| I want to know how to prevent my house from freezing (I'm in New
| England) in the middle of winter during a multiday power outage.
| Today, I run a 7kW generator that can keep the oil furnace
| running and the fans to circulate the air through the heat-
| exchangers (it is a multi-zone system).
|
| It seems that I need soft-start compressors _and_ coordination
| between the different units so that they don 't all try to start
| at once.
|
| I don't care if the house gets down to 40F during this period. I
| just don't want the interior water pipes to freeze.
| lukepighetti wrote:
| All I'm looking for is a heat pump that can maintain a COP of 3.0
| or higher down to -20f, can be easily controlled via MQTT on my
| home network OR via standard 3 wire thermostat, does not use the
| cloud for any of it's core functionality, and does not require an
| HVAC license to buy parts and see technical manuals.
|
| If you've nailed that down, awesome!
| tomcam wrote:
| > There's a big push to end fossil fuel use in US homes by
| electrifying all end-uses
|
| If all end uses are electrified, where does that electricity come
| from if not fossil fuel in large part?
| exicer wrote:
| Yeah this is only necessary, not sufficient! What a dumb idea.
| afterburner wrote:
| Solar and wind prices are extremely low and still dropping.
| They are already cheaper than other newly built options. Coal
| plants have been shutting down, natural gas is now way more
| expensive, nuclear can't build soon enough or cheap enough.
|
| The transition in generation is happening too.
| tomcam wrote:
| Solar and wind do not come close to handling peak loads
| right, especially when the weather doesn't cooperate.
| codingdave wrote:
| I'm all for this effort, but this is not yet a compelling story.
| I've never had a problem getting a heat pump installed in prior
| homes. So if the market value is avoiding pain in hiring
| contractors... I simply have not felt that pain. Asking me to
| pre-order something that already exists when you have no physical
| prototypes feels like you are jumping the gun.
|
| I do hope you succeed - I love heat pumps and want more of them
| to exist in this world. But not having a prototype yet and asking
| people what their ideas and experiences are feels like you are
| just starting market research, not that you are in a place to be
| taking orders.
| cmui wrote:
| What regions have you done those heat pump installs in? There's
| a lot of regional variability. Thanks for the feedback!
| codingdave wrote:
| My experiences were in the Southwestern USA.
| gregmac wrote:
| I have been an Ecobee user for years, and one of the main things
| that sold me on that is the room sensors.
|
| In my house, there's large south-facing windows that let in a lot
| of sun, and for a lot of the year the north side of the house
| will be several degrees cooler than the south. I was constantly
| battling how to set the thermostat, especially to keep the
| upstairs a decent temperature at night.
|
| The Ecobee 100% solved that: at night the upstairs room sensors
| control temp, while during the day mostly the main floor does. No
| guessing: it just works regardless of how sunny it was that day.
| It would be hard to give that feature up.
|
| Another handy feature which I didn't realize until owning it is
| the "min fan runtime per hour". Even set to 20 mins, this helped
| drastically with evening out the temperatures throughout the
| house.
|
| There's already a thread about an open, local API, and I'd mirror
| that here. The Ecobee isn't open+local, but if they were to go
| under (or do something stupid like block HomeAssistant), it's $$$
| to rip it out and switch to something else. When we're talking
| about a $$,$$$ system I wouldn't even consider it without a
| company committed to providing a proper local API -- including
| that it won't disappear in an over-the-air firmware update.
| Nition wrote:
| It's strange seeing this post describe heat pumps as if they're a
| new thing, and everyone commenting as if they are.
|
| I live in New Zealand and heat pumps have been standard in new
| builds for just about 20 years now. They're great. If you want to
| add one to your home you can call up various companies to do it
| for reasonable prices (not sure how this stacks up against US
| prices, but I recently had a small 2.5kW cool/3.2kW heat mini
| split heat pump installed in my office room for $1,200USD
| including labour). It helps that we have relatively mild seasons,
| with it getting just a little too cold in winter and a little too
| hot in summer - pretty much the ideal environment for a heat
| pump.
|
| I have never seen a residential home in NZ with a furnace or a
| pure air conditioner (that can't also heat). The standard
| installed system before heat pumps was a wood fire or sometimes
| gas heaters. In summer you just put up with being hot.
|
| Re smart thermostats, I've been in many homes with heat pumps and
| never seen one. Everyone just uses the controls in the heat pump
| remote. They all have the option to cool to a certain temp, heat
| to a certain temp, stay at a certain temp, and set a start/stop
| time. Basic but generally good enough.
|
| Re ducted systems, my experience is they never seem quite as
| efficient or effective as just installing two totally separate
| mini split systems. Which is also usually cheaper and has the
| added bonus that you can only run one if you're not in the other
| part of the house.
|
| Looking at your wall unit, it looks really nice, but can that
| front face tilt to blow air either up or down?
| thaeli wrote:
| I'm in the US and have had a heat pump for 15 years. It was a
| fairly small cost add from a straight cool. I get this depends
| on region, especially for the older units, but I never
| understood why they were such a hard sell even in mild heating
| climates.
|
| Ironically, I bought this system because at the time natural
| gas looked like it would be becoming more expensive more
| quickly than electricity in my area. Since the cost delta was
| small, and I don't think it made my total monthly utility bills
| any higher, no big deal, but I might not have even bothered
| with a heat pump if I'd known about the fracking boom at the
| time. (I'm also fortunate enough to live in a state with
| powerful utility regulators, so electricity prices never
| spiralled like they did in "deregulation" areas.)
| kevstev wrote:
| Interestingly, I am in the middle of replacing my HVAC which
| died last fall. I was dead set on getting a heat pump. I
| didn't really care about the increased upfront cost, so long
| as I was getting increased comfort and there would be a
| reduction in costs after install.
|
| When I really looked at the numbers though, my cost of
| electricity is so high, and my natural gas is so cheap, that
| I would need a COP of over 5 or an HSPF of around 20 on the
| heat pump to just break even on heating- I pay about 16.5
| cents per KWH for electricity all in, and $1.05/therm for
| natural gas in NJ just outside of NYC. Efficiencies that high
| don't exist on central units. It would cost me easily an
| extra $100/month to heat my home, and the additional upfront
| cost was $7-10k. In cooling mode they are slightly less
| efficient than the best AC units as well, not by a
| significant amount- but its not like it will make up for it
| on the cooling side of things.
|
| I really wanted to go this route, but this would be an extra
| upfront as well as ongoing cost. I really have no option but
| to replace with a conventional system and in 10-15 years re-
| evaluate. I will likely eventually get solar, but my roof is
| currently close to, but not yet at its end of life, and I
| have a townhome with limited roof space and a historic
| district to contend with, its not going to solve the
| electricity cost problem.
| dang wrote:
| Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason!
|
| _200-year old heat pump technology is back_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846762 - Feb 2023 (205
| comments)
|
| _How a heat pump works_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34739375 - Feb 2023 (324
| comments)
|
| _Heat pumps are defying Maine's winters and oil industry
| pushback_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34708161 - Feb
| 2023 (174 comments)
|
| _Heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming the technology of the
| future_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397715 - Jan
| 2023 (477 comments)
|
| _Do heat pumps work in cold climates?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34352309 - Jan 2023 (326
| comments)
|
| _French startup unveils new residential thermo-acoustic heat
| pump_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233719 - Jan
| 2023 (219 comments)
|
| _US companies are producing heat pumps that work below -20F_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34160672 - Dec 2022 (330
| comments)
|
| _Heat pumps are now mandatory in new homes in Washington
| State_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33589627 - Nov
| 2022 (48 comments)
|
| _WA building council votes to require heat pumps in new homes
| and apartments_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526419
| - Nov 2022 (14 comments)
|
| _Homemade Heat Pump Manifesto (2009)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959850 - Sept 2022 (247
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Heat Pumps, Hooray - A heat pump calculator for your
| home_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32838748 - Sept
| 2022 (56 comments)
|
| _Interest in heat pumps has increased dramatically in recent
| years_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712140 - Sept
| 2022 (257 comments)
|
| _Heat pumps: what they do and why they're hot now_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32431077 - Aug 2022 (23
| comments)
|
| _Heat pumps are efficient and eco-friendly. So why are they so
| rarely used?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32182699 -
| July 2022 (34 comments)
|
| _Vartan Ropsten - The largest sea water heat pump facility
| worldwide (2017) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31985467 - July 2022 (19
| comments)
|
| _DOE announces breakthrough in residential cold climate heat
| pump technology_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31791444 - June 2022 (398
| comments)
|
| _We must ban boilers to force public to switch to PS10k heat
| pumps '_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086020 -
| April 2022 (26 comments)
|
| _Why Heat Pumps Are Immensely Important_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30814536 - March 2022 (23
| comments)
|
| _You and the planet need a heat pump_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746081 - March 2022 (139
| comments)
|
| _Warmth from the earth and air: could heat pumps replace our
| gas boilers?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28258855 -
| Aug 2021 (13 comments)
|
| _Heat Pump Water Heaters_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23000192 - April 2020 (214
| comments)
|
| _Heat Pumps Work Miracles_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19271162 - Feb 2019 (243
| comments)
| robomartin wrote:
| > Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason!
|
| Because they are throwing money at it. Billions. All policy
| driven, not science-driven.
|
| If every home in the US switched to electric powered HVAC
| heat-pump systems we'd have huge blackouts in every city. Our
| power grid and power generation systems are not ready for
| this at all. Add electric cars to the mix and the scenario
| gets much darker (no pun intended, lights will go out!).
|
| This is a case of placing the cart ahead of the horse. We are
| in desperate need of a non-trivial 25 year program to
| _double_ out reliable power generation and delivery
| infrastructure.
| cmui wrote:
| You're right about switching everything over all at once.
| That would be a big step change in grid load! But large
| scale heat pump adoption is going to take a decade or more,
| and in the meantime we can work to build out the grid, and
| also on technologies that make load shifting more feasible.
| robomartin wrote:
| Of course. My issue is that there seems to be no serious
| acceptance of this reality and, therefore, a strong
| political push to address it. All we talk about are the
| wonders of electric-everything, as if power will
| magically appear from somewhere.
|
| Gradual adoption is conceptually easy to understand,
| except that in certain places it will not take much for
| gradual adoption to reach a threshold that will lead to a
| painful reality. Speaking in terms of Southern
| California, it doesn't take much for a city like Los
| Angeles to create a power availability/grid crisis. We've
| already been there multiple times.
|
| The issue with _reliable_ (strong emphasis on that term)
| power generation is that, in the US, it takes decades and
| much red tape to address it. In other words, cart before
| the horse: We can 't afford to materially increase demand
| without a solid preexisting plan to also materially
| increase supply ahead of demand. The two need to be out
| of phase, with power generation build-up happening first.
| AnonMO wrote:
| I don't think he ever sold it ad new tech its more of a Silicon
| Valley spin on old tech. And heat pump are in the US but many
| are hesitant because of the climate in the states can be
| extreme and as you said NZ has a milder climate compared to the
| US. for example in my state just last month we hit lows that
| aren't supported by any heat pump on the market for days on end
| but my furnace kept me warm and on the other side of the
| country temperatures break world record highs every year.
| Everything op said fits the US market very well heat pump
| demand is on the rise, alot of people have smart thermostats
| they're even provided by some utility companies, the product is
| a very compelling.
| nfriedly wrote:
| In the US, heat pumps are not unheard of, but they are fairly
| rare. (Not counting air conditioning, which no one here thinks
| of as a "heat pump" even tough it essentially is.)
|
| Trying to get a HVAC company to install a heat pump can be very
| difficult and/or expensive in may parts of the US.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| I didn't read everything you posted, but I've always also wanted
| "central humidity"... is that possible/feasible/does it already
| exist?
|
| I would like a fully electric central HVAC(H) system that keeps
| my house at 72F AND 50% humidity.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Interesting, you accept preorders from anywhere in the world?
| LastTrain wrote:
| How long will I own this before you start trying to squeeze more
| revenue out of me by locking up basic functionality? I mean, this
| isn't just Sonos, you could literally freeze people out!
|
| Seriously though, how is your system better than the heat pump
| that has been installed in my parents house since the mid
| eighties?
| ddalex wrote:
| I have been thinking for a while on heat pumps, and I think your
| proposition here is golden ! It is an obvious sale to me if you
| put up the savings upfront, esp. for new builds. I live in a
| house warmed by heat pumps, and the magic of utility bills is
| great!
| nemo44x wrote:
| Who is going to install these? I am close to a lot of contractors
| and they aren't going to install equipment from a company they
| don't have a relationship with. Who gets called back when there's
| a problem? They also aren't going to install something the end
| user provides. They make money on reselling equipment, etc.
|
| Seriously, sourcing the labor side of it is a really difficult
| problem. Labor has to be licensed, etc. No one is installing this
| themselves.
|
| And although the designs look cool, if it costs so much as a cent
| more to build then no one will buy it. No one looks at their HVAC
| appliances before they buy them.
|
| I guess my point is - why would I buy this rather than just call
| my local HVAC companies and get some estimates?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Please consider on-boarding to Home Assistant.
|
| Avoid proprietary protocols to communicate between sub-systems as
| much as possible.
|
| The system should be self contained _from the start_ and must be
| able to function without a local network & internet.
|
| Do not require internet connectivity, a hub, or some intermediary
| solution if a third party system (such as Home Assistant) wants
| to communicate to the system.
|
| My biggest fear is attempt to lock me into an ecosystem that
| charges me a monthly fee to just exist, while selling data about
| me. _No promise_ will make this fear go away, as consumers
| mistreated many many times in the past. Show it through your open
| design.
|
| Good luck.
|
| > What issues have you had with your existing heat and cooling,
| and do you have any interesting stories around a heat pump
| install or use? I would love to hear your ideas, experiences, and
| feedback on any and all of the above!
|
| Fan motor on compressor broken, company insist everything needs
| changed. Another similar incident was with a capacitor. Such rip-
| offs create a disdain in consumer.
|
| In some very cold nights, the heat pump fails to keep the heat
| and emergency/aux heat kicks in.
| cmui wrote:
| I hear your concerns! Just want to reiterate (since this is one
| of the top comments) no internet connectivity is required to
| operate the system. We will have integrations that also allow
| you to change the setpoint with your home system of choice.
| We're not interested in holding people hostage, we want to make
| the best way to heat and cool your home, and make it easy to
| get. If you're willing to turn on wifi, you can ingest demand
| response, weather and rate plan signals to optimize energy, and
| remotely operate the system.
| ilamont wrote:
| > The system should be self contained from the start and must
| be able to function without a local network & internet.
|
| Rural users often have limited or no access to Internet
| service, yet need technology like this to heat and cool their
| homes.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Yes, the internet is not as ubiquitous as some might presume,
| and not just in rural areas. Some newly developed suburbs of
| large cities do not have internet connectivity, not even
| Starlink yet. I have learned about this in Ohio, Delaware,
| Texas, and most recently in Florida. Some where just too
| isolated & not big enough for the carriers, some were blocked
| by politicking, and some I have no idea why.
| jdlshore wrote:
| Hi Chris, good luck with your startup. I'm in the market for a
| natural gas --> heat pump remodel and expect to be signing a
| contractor's proposal today. I'm looking to put in a 4 ton
| Mitsubishi hyper heat system with an air handler to replace the
| gas furnace and four minisplits for the cold spots in the house.
| I live in the PNW.
|
| The Mitsubishi remotes and thermostats do indeed look like
| they're going to be terrible, and their cloud-based offering is a
| joke whose website has been offline every time I looked at it. I
| still won't be considering your startup's offering. In the
| interest of providing constructive feedback, here's why:
|
| 1. Timing. My existing air conditioner is defunct and I need a
| replacement before summer.
|
| 2. No track record. This is by far the biggest issue after
| timing. I'm not comfortable making such a big purchase, which I
| expect to maintain for decades, with a company without at _least_
| a five year history and the opportunity to work out the bugs.
|
| 3. Multi-port system. My house has serious problems with hot and
| cold spots that can't be resolved with the existing ducting.
| Minisplits are necessary. I like that the Mitsubishi system runs
| the central air and minisplits off a single compressor.
|
| 4. Contractor. This is a big install and I'm not going to do it
| myself. I contacted several contractors. Each has their preferred
| vendor, and the one I liked the best prefers Mitsubishi.
|
| I hope this is helpful. Again, best of luck to you. Competition
| in this space can only be a good thing.
| amluto wrote:
| The Mitsubishi thermostats aren't _that_ bad. And you can buy a
| locally-controllable system from Cool Automation for an
| egregious price to control them, too.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! If you feel ok saying, how much was
| the quote for this install? Do you place any value in indoor
| air quality?
| [deleted]
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| I recently purchased and installed a 3 ton MrCool Universal (Gree
| Flexx, I believe) with lineset for ~$4K shipped:
| https://hvacdirect.com/mrcool-universal-36-000-btu-heat-pump...
| Worked just fine during the Christmas arctic blast. We will see
| about longevity but at 1/3 of the price of your proposed units,
| I'm not worried about slapping a new one at any time. I am
| essentially on my own for service as no contractors will work on
| it but it seems your units would present the same problem.
| cmui wrote:
| My hats off to you for doing a DIY install. This is not a bad
| route to go if you enjoy/feel comfortable doing the work and
| don't care about air quality, smart thermostat integration,
| etc. Re contractors, we will have local contractor partners do
| the install and handle servicing, so you won't be left with an
| unserviceable system.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| Are you able to say more about that? "We will have local
| contractors" sounds great but in my area I don't think you
| will be able to find anyone to work with you. The local
| contractors and supply houses have closed ranks to fend off
| internet sales. I can't even buy sheet metal from the local
| supply houses without presenting an HVAC license. These folks
| are seeing their livelihoods threatened by a looming shift
| toward the "appliance" model (which I for one surely welcome)
| so they would see partnering to service a model like this as
| slitting their own throats.
| briHass wrote:
| Agree 100% (I have my EPA cert and do my own installs)
|
| Trying to bust into the HVAC company cartel will be the
| death of this idea. Most HVAC companies are highly local
| and have built their business around partnerships with
| supply houses and the US big-boy manufacturers (e.g.
| Carrier, Trane, Lennox). The Asian brands (Mitsubishi,
| Midea, Gree) have taken years to start penetrating the US
| market, and even then, many have done so through
| partnerships with the above US brands.
|
| No reputable HVAC company is going to install a 'no name'
| dotcom branded unit that they won't be able to service with
| parts from their local supply house. They, and their
| suppliers, won't be getting the typical kickbacks or be
| able to mark up the unit costs and they likely won't offer
| any kind of warranty (at least on labor). To them, this is
| no different from Joe Homeowner ordering his MrCool/Goodman
| unit online and expecting them to install and service it
| for a low hourly fee. It's not worth their time or
| potential risk when the customer raises a stink a year
| later when that company reminds them they have zero
| warranty and parts aren't readily available.
| cmui wrote:
| There are ways of working with local HVAC contractors that
| provides value to them and doesn't just undercut their
| current way of business. Electric Air can provide lead gen,
| tools to support install, improved payment terms on jobs.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| mr. cool has it's own smart thermostats/apps. you can use it
| also with nest/ecobee. with regards to air quality, usually
| this kind of stuff better managed by dedicated systems.
| nerdface wrote:
| > This is not a bad route to go if you enjoy/feel comfortable
| doing the work and don't care about air quality, smart
| thermostat integration, etc
|
| You're insinuating that doing the work yourself means you'll
| have poor air quality, poor thermostat integration etc.
| That's not true at all. If you've gone to the trouble to do a
| DIY install then you're now already experienced enough to
| install a heat-recovery ventilator to get fresh air into your
| home via an independent system. I installed my own ecobee
| thermostat with my heat pump and electric furnace and it
| works with HomeKit so is integrated with my entire ecosystem.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I keep reading lots of horror stories about heat pumps. People
| are complaining about all of the following:
|
| - Enormous energy bills because under some conditions (cold
| weather?) heat pumps use a lot more energy than expected.
|
| - Heat pump equipment and radiators taking too much space in
| small homes.
|
| - Cold homes and/or a requirement to keep windows shut because
| heat pumps just don't generate enough heat.
|
| - Only suitable for very well insulated homes.
|
| Am I only reading this because people are more willing to speak
| up when something bad happens to them than when everything works
| as expected?
|
| I worry that heat pumps are only viable under perfect conditions,
| installed by exceptionally competent engineers that hardly exist
| anywhere.
|
| Please tell me it is not so! :)
| cmui wrote:
| Other replies have great points. A few of my own (1) Proper
| install is really important, we're building a software tool to
| make sizing heat pumps and qualifying ducts easier (2) Having a
| dedicated smart thermostat means that back up heat strip
| operation is much better than the normal control logic (3) A
| well installed heat pump system provides a better thermal
| environment than a furnace because it precisely matches the
| load of your home instead of cycling on and off. This lets the
| surfaces in your home soak to a more uniform radiant temp, and
| radiative exchange is ~50% of your perceived thermal
| environment at room temperatures.
| toast0 wrote:
| You probably don't hear much from people who are happy with
| their heat pumps, because it's boring when it just works.
|
| But, the competence required for heat pump sizing depends on
| the local climate. If you need more heat than the outside unit
| can gather, you're stuck with fallback heat, which is usually
| resistance strips, which is expensive. Some thermostats will
| call for the fallback heat anytime the requested temperature is
| 2-3 degrees F above the measured indoor temperature; if you've
| got a thermostat like that, you've got to be careful how you
| adjust it, and HVAC installers don't always explain that in
| ways that the users understand. Lots of people want it a few
| degrees colder when they're sleeping, but setting that up in
| the most straightforward way leads to resistance heating in the
| morning.
|
| You're going to tend to want to windows of conditioned spaces
| closed, otherwise you're sending your heating budget out of the
| windows. Heat pumps are usually setup so you can directly
| regulate the temperature as desired, rather than boilers where
| it gets so hot that you need to open the windows to balance. If
| you want to run it with the windows open, you'd need more
| capacity, and you'd really need to convince your HVAC person.
| It probably makes more sense to look into a heat recovery
| ventilation system, which gets fresh air in without losing as
| much of the heat (or gaining as much heat if you're cooling).
| This is probably a norms thing.
|
| Insulation helps reduce heating / cooling costs for sure, but
| if your home is less insulated than the norm, you _just_ need a
| larger capacity system. That 's another place where installer
| competence comes in. Actually measuring airflow and calculating
| requirements is unfortunately not very standard, there's a lot
| of rules of thumb or replacing with similar size units or the
| neighbor has X so use that. Again, this is workable in mild
| climates, but if you've got outside temperatures much below
| freezing, you need a competent installer, as capacity goes down
| quite a bit as the temperatures go down, and that's also when
| you need it the most. And, just insulating the heck out of an
| old home that was built to be drafty can cause issues with
| retained moisture and mold; it needs to be done carefully and
| appropriately.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| So the fallback heat issue seems fixable by learning how to
| operate the equipment properly. That's good to know.
|
| Unfortunately, the requirement to keep windows shut and
| install a ventilation system instead rules out every single
| place I have ever lived in.
| toast0 wrote:
| Yeah, if you're accustomed to keeping windows open during
| the heating season, I think you're going to have a bad time
| unless you live with a mild climate. Sounds like you're
| probably on a boiler / radiator system; which probably
| means you're not in a very mild climate.
|
| You could ask an HVAC company what it would take to be on a
| heat pump with the windows open, but it's probably going to
| cost a lot of electricity, and if you build the system for
| that, when you eventually do decide to close the windows,
| the system is going to be too big and you'll have comfort
| issues from that.
|
| Do you have air conditioning? Do you leave the windows open
| during the cooling season?
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Understood, thanks!
|
| I'm in London using a gas boiler like almost everybody
| here. Our windows are always open in the summer and also
| during much of spring and autumn to keep the mold at bay
| and the air fresh.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Heat pumps are trying to compete against very inefficient, yet
| very powerful, forms of heating.
|
| A 100 year old house might have 12 fireplaces, each of which,
| when loaded full of wood or coal, can output 10 kilowatts.
| Thats 120 kilowatts of heat - 500k btu/h.
|
| If upgraded to a gas boiler, that same house might be fitted
| with a 30 kilowatt system - 100k btu/h
|
| The same house outfitted with a heat pump might expect to get a
| 10 kilowatt system - 34k btu/hr.
|
| See how we are fitting smaller and smaller heating systems to
| our houses? Thats because a heat pump's cost scales with
| capacity, so we don't want to oversize. In fact, a typical
| house wouldn't even have enough electricity for a heat pump as
| powerful as those fireplaces!! Whereas a fireplace doesn't
| really cost any more to make it a tad bigger.
|
| The less powerful heat sources need to run all the time, and
| will take many days to bring the house up to temperature after
| being turned off. Even then, they need to be paired with extra
| insulation to reduce losses.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 12 fire places? Is that a mansion or something? Or just
| poorly designed and not insulated in any way?
| londons_explore wrote:
| A typical WW1 'workers house' would have ~5 bedrooms, 10
| foot ceilings, ~6 other rooms, and one or two fireplaces in
| each room.
|
| With no heat circulation system, you would want a fireplace
| in each room for comfort. Typically windows wouldn't really
| seal, so you needed the radiant heat.
| hd95489 wrote:
| They aren't a drop in replacement. Heat pumps need large ducts
| or you won't have enough flow because the air in the ducts is
| not that much hotter than outside air. Delta t is low
| ezrast wrote:
| I've no horse in this race (not a homeowner), but Technology
| Connections has made a series of videos advocating heat pumps,
| most recently this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVLLNjSLJTQ
|
| The gist is that heat pump technology is continuously getting
| better at working in cold conditions, so if the horror stories
| are more than 5-10 years old they may not reflect the current
| state of things, and in extreme situations resistive heating
| can always be used as a backup.
|
| Heat pumps are "just" air conditioners that point the other
| way, and AC is extremely common in the USA, so I'd doubt that
| the competency required is exceptional.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I replaced my electric furnace with a heat pump. It takes up
| the same space as the old furnace, so you're not wasting any
| space inside the house. There is an outside unit, but we just
| put it on the side of the house where we don't see or hear it.
| They are noisy outside, that's one thing they don't always tell
| you.
|
| When the temps are too cold out, there are still electric
| elements inside the unit in the house. Sure, that's probably
| not saving me any power when it's running, but most of the time
| it's not. It pretty much only kicks in when there's a big temp
| differential between desired temp and current temp. It's
| basically like having the best of both worlds. Plus, as a
| bonus, I got A/C for the summer to offset all my winter
| savings.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> It takes up the same space as the old furnace_
|
| Is that a size similar to a gas boiler?
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Those prices... out of this world? Can you explain to me how it
| is possible to get a 7kW air/air heat pump installed for a total
| cost of ~17.000 [1] Swedish kronor (~$1600 at current rate) for a
| fraction of the price of these things? These devices all come
| with networked remote control, most of them can be integrated
| into 'home automation' systems without problems, they tend to
| work down to around -30degC (-21degF) albeit with lower
| efficiency (as will these devices). All that is 'missing' is the
| 'air quality' claim - although several of these heat pump
| manufacturers make claims about their devices filtering the air,
| using ionizers to 'increase air quality' and such. What remains
| is the Apple/Nest-like design and the claim of better integration
| with thermostats. To me this does not explain the factor 10 price
| difference, especially given that the Swedish prices include the
| high Swedish value added tax (25%) as well as the installation
| costs. What am I missing?
|
| [1] https://www.polarpumpen.se/varmepumpar/luftvarmepump/
| robomartin wrote:
| A lot to unpack here.
|
| First, I tend to react badly to the usual SCV "We are going to
| disrupt <XYZ>" when there's nothing wrong with <XYZ>.
|
| The current policy-driven push for heat pump systems is, at best,
| nonsensical.
|
| Why?
|
| Just speaking of the US (and guessing it might be the same in
| other regions) the power grid and power generation capacity are
| already stressed to the point where, in places like CA, power
| outages and having the governor ask electric vehicle owners not
| to charge their cars are a thing.
|
| Now we want to push 80 million homes to ADD, not remove,
| electrical demand to the tune of kilowatts per home, in the name
| of efficiency?
|
| This is deeply misguided. We need to get serious about upgrading
| our power generation and distribution systems before adding non-
| trivial demand.
|
| Current estimates are that we need to double our power generation
| and transmission capacity to be able to support electric cars.
| Going with an electric heat-pump based system for cooling and
| heating means having the potential to add somewhere in the range
| of 3 kW to 6 kW or more of nearly steady-state load for 6 to 12
| hours to tens of millions of homes.
|
| While it is never a good idea to apply averages to this kind of
| analysis, if I were to do the math for the endpoints, we are
| talking about 240 GW to 480 GW of new power demand for 80 million
| homes going electric. That is nothing even close to trivial.
|
| For context, a nuclear power plant is typically rated at 1 GW.
| This means we might need somewhere between 240 and 480 new
| nuclear power plants to support full electrification of our
| heating and cooling systems. And we are not even talking about
| large commercial buildings, hotels, etc.
|
| Add that to the 1200 GW deficit for full electrification of
| ground transportation and we quickly approach a requirement for
| over 1500 new 1GW nuclear power plants.
|
| No. You cannot do this with solar. You cannot do this with solar
| and wind combined. These technologies are not reliable. Under the
| best of conditions they might be able to reach 80% reliability.
| Another way to say it is that towns and cities will go dark 20%
| of the time without having 100% backup systems.
|
| In other words, the energy story on this (not the startup, but
| rather the idea of placing all of our eggs on the magical
| electric-power-will-save-the-world basket) isn't good at all.
|
| As far as the startup itself. I know there are first adopters out
| there who might jump on something like this. I am a first adopter
| of many technologies. I have spent a thousand dollars on 3D
| printers that turned out to be crap. Not a big deal. When it
| comes to my home, no, sorry. Not going to happen.
|
| First of all, your company is a YC funded startup with no
| manufacturing history or infrastructure whatsoever. Sorry, this
| isn't like making smart watches. What you are going to do is
| come-up with a design, go to a company in China and make
| something. A unicorn. Your design will change based on what that
| company already makes. It will be, for the most part, not much
| different internally than what Carrier and other companies make.
|
| The difference is that companies like Carrier have been around
| forever. They can stand behind their product and I can be assured
| they --and the extended support infrastructure that knows their
| product-- will be around for decades. You are one bank failure or
| investor decision away from being out of business.
|
| Others may think differently, of course. In my case, there is no
| way I am going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a unicorn
| that nobody will want to touch of maintain. I saw a post from
| someone in France who cannot get their heat-pump system serviced.
| That's a reality in the US if one installs something your local
| service infrastructure has never seen or isn't interested in
| dealing with.
|
| Another consideration: Installing a no-name system in a home can
| have negative consequences when it comes time to sell it.
|
| HEPA, air quality, smart thermostat, API's, cloud, etc. Yeah, no,
| not interested. As someone else said, a contact closure is all
| you need and want. No air conditioning maintenance guy is going
| to show up with a laptop to connect with your A/C unit via SSH.
|
| Air filtering is easy and cheap. Depending on how you want to do
| it, it can, quite literally, cost less than $100 to have
| excellent filtering. I recently experimented with building a
| couple of these:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi%E2%80%93Rosenthal_Box
|
| I used 20 x 30 inch tall filters, which don't cost much more than
| 20 x 20's. The result was super-cheap high-performance filtration
| with measurable results and very low power consumption.
|
| I do wish you the best. I am not a potential customer. In fact, I
| am surprised YC funded you. My guess is they are jumping on top
| of the billions that will be available in this segment. The
| investors will do well. I don't see anything in your product and
| company history to lead me to believe you will be able to produce
| anything "disruptive" at scale. The Carrier's of this world will
| get the bulk of that business, and rightly so.
|
| Here's something you could do that would be disruptive. It has
| nothing to do with heat pumps but could easily be integrated into
| one:
|
| Rather than build a single large system (say, 5 ton cooling
| capacity equivalent), create a single high efficiency "box" that
| effectively houses multiple smaller systems. For sake of a
| discussion, imagine a system that is five 1 ton units in one box.
|
| Why?
|
| Everyone wants zone controls. If you own a two level home, and
| you don't have a zone system, you hate your life. Upstairs is
| always ridiculously hot when heating and downstairs is freezing
| when cooling.
|
| Come-up with a truly innovative way to create a zone system with
| room-scale granularity. Make it super easy to install without
| having to have ugly heat exchangers mounted on the wall. Easy
| enough that, when done, the home will not look materially
| different.
|
| Do this and you will --if they trust you-- have lots of
| customers. Or, more likely than that, one of the large HVAC
| companies will acquire your company for the technology.
|
| That's the real energy efficiency story. Room-scale granularity
| in HVAC at a price not materially different from a centralized
| single-zone system. I want thermostats (or sensors) in every
| room. There is no need to cool or heat the bathroom all day.
| There is no need to cool or heat the bedrooms when nobody is in
| there until the end of the day. A lot of homes would be just fine
| if one room was actively cooled/heated while the rest of the
| rooms were "off" and a couple (kitchen and one bathroom) were
| programmed to be at the JNC threshold (Just Nominally Comfortable
| --my term).
|
| That, to me, would be innovative and disruptive. Not an easy
| task. You would have to come up with a way to build such a system
| in such a way that you did not have to penetrate the home with a
| million refrigerant hoses (a pair per room?) and work with the
| standard installation to the extent possible.
|
| There's a lot more to something like this. Just making a heat
| pump that looks good and has wiz-bang controls, from my
| perspective, isn't disruptive at all. There are lower cost
| solutions in the market today that can be financed, people trust,
| contractors can install and support.
|
| Your opportunity for disruption, in my opinion, is in delivering
| a material and non-trivial improvement to best-in-class
| performance of products available today. That, to me, means a
| granular zone system.
|
| Personal context: I have decades of thermal management and clean-
| room design and operation experience as well as life-support
| level experience in aerospace applications. Some of the
| technology we helped engineer orbits the planet and, in time,
| will go to the moon.
| jakedata wrote:
| You should give some thought to offering an AC-DC power supply.
| Being able to dedicate several solar panels directly to heating
| or cooling might get people out of a regulatory bind with crazy
| interconnect fees and local regulations.
|
| The trick would be to supply supplemental DC solar power in a
| manner that would not be considered grid-tied. That would
| eliminate a whole level of installation costs, permitting fees
| and time consuming approvals. Plus you could run the system at
| some capacity during a grid outage which could be a lifesaver.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Most ultra high efficiency heat pumps are already using DC
| inverter technology which allows the compressor, fans and pumps
| to run on fully variable speed. If Electric Air is planning on
| using DC components for their heat pumps, they could make it DC
| powered as well. The issue is that it would increase cost
| substantially for people who don't necessarily need it since a
| 5KW class DC controller (to run the aforementioned off of
| solar) would add a good chunk to the bill of materials. It
| would also add a lot of complexity to the system. Lastly, it is
| only really practical in hotter summer climates for cooling
| where your cooling demand and sunshine line up nicely. In
| heating applications, you need the most power when it is cold
| out (in the middle of the night) and so the demand and
| generation is almost fully inverted.
|
| One feature that would be great (and universally practical) is
| using the heat pump to heat water with the waste heat from air
| conditioning in the summer (or when any time the house doesn't
| need the air heated). Add to this the fact that heat-pump water
| heaters are in the $2000 range, and eligible for many credits -
| it could be a great add-on.
| jakedata wrote:
| I wouldn't try to over complicate things. A 5KW DC solar
| controller does not need to be included in every product. The
| system could allow for DC power input in a manner controlled
| by software that could offset power delivery from the AC
| stage.
|
| Individual panel optimizers can already tune output voltage
| and current, it is just a matter of telling them what you
| want. If you are really clever you can set operational
| parameters to cap power consumption based on available solar
| power, but that's all for later.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| This product doesn't really have much oomph without integrating
| with other appliances. If this was combined with other equipment
| like a water heater and heat recovery it would be a much better
| value.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Have you considered doing double-vapor injection?
|
| Ie. have a 2nd injection port on the compressor, and another
| valve and heat exchanger after the first?
|
| Software could then decide to use none, one, or two, depending on
| the desired heat output vs efficiency.
| amluto wrote:
| Some questions:
|
| What is the HEPA for? Is it on the fresh air intake or are you
| actually HEPA-filtering the recirculated air? If the latter, why
| not MERV 16? HEPA media is probably more expensive, and it
| definitely has much higher pressure loss, and there is no actual
| need for it outside of healthcare.
|
| How are you humidifying?
|
| Can you control the coil temperature in cooling mode and thus
| control the sensible/latent cooling ratio? (i.e. can the amount
| of _de_ humidification be adjusted on the fly as needed?)
|
| Can you integrate with some kind of HRV or ERV?
| Beached wrote:
| I would like a standard air filter to be used. a lot of
| individuals don't require HEPA, but I do. I would like to be
| able to source my own filters from anywhere, and put them in.
| just like my current furnace. let people pick their level of
| air filtration they are comfortable with
| amluto wrote:
| How standard? The hardware store products are fundamentally
| pretty poor because they're at most 2" deep. But Aprilaire,
| Lennox and some others have nice 4" filters at reasonable
| prices.
| tguvot wrote:
| 4" is standard. plenty on amazon and other places. hardware
| stores don't usually carry it because people probably don't
| understand that 4" is better from one side, and from the
| other not all filter boxes/supplies can accommodate > 1"
| cmui wrote:
| Good questions.
|
| We have a way of running HEPA with not unreasonable pressure
| loss, and then dialing back the amount of filtration when PM2.5
| levels are reasonable. Separately a homeowner can request a
| high filtration mode.
|
| Humidifying is though a system similar to a whole home
| humidifier - a small bypass from the supply side of the furnace
| evaporates water off a media.
|
| Yes, through a combination of reheat and coil temperature
| control we can change the sensible/latent cooling ratio.
|
| HRV/ERV only makes sense in certain applications. We're looking
| at making one integral in the system, but it will come down to
| minimizing total cost for homeowners. Comfort metrics will be
| unaffected.
| amluto wrote:
| Do you have a diagram of the system (with water connections,
| duct connections, fresh air connections, exhaust, etc)?
| euph0ria wrote:
| I would only buy it if it has an API that I can access like NIBE
| does. It should have WiFI and also be able to run completely
| without internet connection. No functionality should be limited
| if internet is down except for functions that rely on external
| data such as live electricity prices etc.
|
| Also, it should be modular so it is easy to repair. Nibe sucks
| from this aspect and I would love a different heat pump that has
| better parts prices and was repairable.
|
| As a final must have: Silence. The NIBE is way too noisy and we
| have it placed next to a bedroom which causes a lot of
| frustration. When the compressor starts it travels through the
| walls. I'm currently building extra walls to isolate it and
| reduce the noise.
| konigschnell wrote:
| Professional installer for NIBE products here. Your experience
| doesn't align well with what I hear from my customers. Out of
| curiosity, what product do you have?
| jcuenod wrote:
| Heat pumps were quite the rage in South Africa. Family members
| replaced their water heater ("geyser") with one, but I have not
| been impressed by the ability to heat water for baths and
| showers.
|
| @Chris, I guess that you would say that heat pumps vary in
| quality and ability. What sort of metrics should I use to assess
| the quality of the pump that I am buying to avoid buying a dud?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| There are even (somewhat weak at recovery) domestic water
| heaters that run off 120V for those replacing a gas water
| heater in North America and want to avoid the cost of new
| wiring/breaker/panels.
| Eumenes wrote:
| i'm glad to have a wood stove, electrical rates keep rising, and
| wood is pretty consistent (plus I source some on my own, tons of
| free firewood if you know where to look) ... unfortuantely it
| doesnt solve my hot water problem, but one 200 gallon tank of oil
| lasts me over 1.5 years
| kayson wrote:
| Ducted systems are horribly inefficient. Why heat/cool the entire
| house if you're only in one room?
|
| We paid $11k to have a 4-unit 42kbtu mini-split system installed
| in our condo. We love it. We turn the two units on in the living
| areas during the day, and just the two units in the bedroom at
| night. Each unit comes with its own remote and can be programmed
| individually. No need for an app-enabled/iot multi-zone
| thermostat. But if you want it, there were addons available to
| enable it.
|
| The only downside in my mind is limited filtration, since the
| heat exchangers aren't very big, but we have some nice quiet hepa
| filters running that keep the air quality quite good.
|
| This does leave CO2 as a potential problem, since its just
| recirculating inside air, but you'd have the same issue with a
| ducted system if the intake is inside, which most are.
|
| You can always get an energy-recovering ventilation system, but
| that does require ducting. Interestingly, electric air mentions
| bringing fresh outside air in, but doesn't have any details about
| energy recovery. In fact the details are pretty sparse all
| around. I couldn't even find dimensions of the units!
|
| All that being said, I hope this succeeds because heat pumps are
| way better than furnaces, and adding competition to this market
| will be great.
| chewmieser wrote:
| You could always use smart vents (e.g. https://flair.co/) to
| eliminate some of the inefficiencies you mentioned with ducted
| systems.
| kayson wrote:
| Yes! This is what I wanted to do first but we only had an
| aging furnace and no AC. I've read that you can run into
| problems with back pressure if you close too many vents,
| though.
| mdeeks wrote:
| My main problem with mini-splits is that they are just ugly. I
| can't get past it. Neither can my wife nor others I've talked
| to. My engineer brain loves the idea, but I just don't want
| them on my walls nor do I want five different remotes laying
| around. I suspect thats a problem for many others too.
| skellington wrote:
| You can get mini-splits that don't have protruding wall
| units, but the real downside of mini-splits is indoor air
| quality.
|
| They don't have good filters and they basically recirculate
| the air in the same room.
|
| For a very tightly built house, you need to bring outside air
| in continuously, ideally through an energy recovering
| ventilator (ERV), and then you want to filter that air with a
| MERV 13 filter (or whatever target you want), plus you want
| to move and filter all the house air in general, plus you
| often want to control whole house humidity.
|
| Mini-splits can't do any of the above.
| kayson wrote:
| My wife (who invested heavily in the aesthetics and interior
| design of our home) shared the same concern. We decided to do
| it anyways, and though they're certainly a little ugly, they
| blend in and just sort of go away. It helps that they're
| fairly close to the ceiling.
|
| The remotes aren't lying around. They all have wall mounts
| that we placed near the light switches and ceiling fan
| remotes. With the units being programmed, though, you don't
| often have to mess around with them anyways. Unless you're
| the sort who likes fiddling with the temperature and fan
| speed.
| turtlebits wrote:
| You can get ceiling cassettes as well as radiator style floor
| mounted air handlers. They just cost more.
| synctheship wrote:
| Have you looked at cassette style mini-splits? Nothing on the
| wall's you'd just replace the vent in your ceiling. They are
| quite a bit larger than your standard vent though.
|
| As far as remotes, there are a bunch of universal remote
| control options and smart (wifi/bluetooth) based controllers.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| it's possible to use zone system with ducted hvac. extra layer
| of fun.
| lukepighetti wrote:
| I'm sniffing an air of "California syndrome" when it comes to
| HVAC products. The literature says 3-5x more efficient than my
| existing furnace. I believe that may be true in SF climate. But
| is it true where I live, in Northern Maine?
| shagie wrote:
| They're viable in Maine too.
|
| Heat pumps are defying Maine's winters and oil industry
| pushback https://wapo.st/3YK0hbC
|
| From an (opinionated) Youtube channel out of the midwest
| (Chicago area which isn't known for being warm) - Why Heat
| Pumps are Immensely Important Right Now
| https://youtu.be/MFEHFsO-XSI
| lukepighetti wrote:
| I'm not questioning if they are viable, I'm questioning the
| blanket claims and the direct comparison. What kind of
| furnace? Natural gas? Oil? A heat pump in Maine is not going
| to be 3-5x more cost effective than a natural gas furnace in
| Maine. In fact, it's currently more expensive than natural
| gas, and at parity with oil furnaces.
| https://www.maine.gov/energy/heating-fuel-prices
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/heating-cost-
| compari...
|
| And you can update the values there. There are some
| approaches that are even more cost effective.
|
| I will also note on the url that you provided:
|
| > Heat Pump Water Heater (HPWH) and Air Source Heat Pump
| (ASHP): Final fuel prices (i.e., far right column) reflect
| the increased efficiency of HPWHs and ASHPs. According to
| Efficiency Maine Trust and when compared to electric
| resistance heating, HPWHs are 2.98 times more efficient and
| ASHPs are 2.93 times more efficient. To obtain a
| theoretical and relative fuel price per unit, divide the
| price per kWh by 2.98 or 2.93 depending on your technology
| (e.g., $0.2099 for an ASHP is like paying $0.0716 for
| electric resistance heating).
|
| The numbers in the heating cost comparison roughly match
| the ones that you have. A natural gas furnace can be as
| cost effective. The point with the heat pump in part isn't
| the cost effective nature for the residential user - even
| if in parity, but that in addition to being similarly
| priced it is more environmentally sound to use a heat pump
| than to burn hydrocarbons for heat.
|
| The comparison that we're making above is also natural gas
| vs heat pump. When you get the rural locations, natural gas
| isn't always an option and so then you need to change to
| the propane and heating oil versions.
|
| From the WaPo article:
|
| > "Oh, hell no," Casagranda said, when asked recently if
| she missed her propane furnace. As part of the experiment,
| the agency promised residents they could have their fossil-
| fuel-burning systems back if they didn't like the results.
| So far, none of the homeowners have wanted to go back,
| according to agency officials, and Casagranda said she is
| more than satisfied.
|
| > ...
|
| > But oil's market share is falling. Whereas 74 percent of
| the state's homes relied on oil to keep warm in the winter
| of 2010, according to the Census Bureau's American
| Community Survey, that figure had fallen to 60 percent by
| 2021.
|
| > ...
|
| > Despite the bitter cold, a drive up U.S. Route 1 reveals
| a quiet transformation underway with major implications for
| climate change. Mainers who have heated their homes,
| diners, libraries and churches with oil and propane for
| decades are turning to an alternative source of warmth.
| gcheong wrote:
| How far away can the condenser be located from the air handler?
| Does it have to be outside or can it work in a garage? Also, how
| do I determine the size of system I need? Biggest problem with
| our current nat gas furnace, which isn't a fuel problem per se,
| is that it isn't zoned (which I can alleviate somewhat with the
| ecobee and its remote temp sensors) so I am considering
| installing mini-splits in the bedrooms and downstairs room and
| having the main furnace for heating the living room and other
| areas as needed but I'd also like to move the main furnace off
| nat gas as well at some point if possible but I don't want a big
| condenser taking up space in the rear patio which is potentially
| where I could see your unit come in.
| brudgers wrote:
| If not part of a major remodel, a mini-split would by my
| recommendation for retrofit.
|
| Horizontal runs usually aren't a problem with HVAC lines.
| Vertical runs can be.
|
| But read the manual for limitations and when the lines need to
| be upsized.
| cmui wrote:
| Condenser can be typically ~25ft from the air handler. It would
| have to be outside, otherwise it would act as a refrigerator
| for the garage, and tank the efficiency of the system. System
| size - we're working on an online tool to get you close to the
| right size. In the current flow you preorder and a contractor
| will prepare the final quote and system sizing (we give them a
| web app to turn a utility bill into a heat pump size).
| neilalexander wrote:
| This is interesting but many systems like it fall at the first
| hurdle in countries like Britain where forced air is not the
| norm. How are products like this supposed to work in a house that
| is currently optimised for radiators and combi-boilers and with
| no existing air ducts?
| shagie wrote:
| You can either move the air (via ductwork) or the coolant with
| a small insulated pipe.
|
| The question is where do you have the exchange. The central /
| forced air tends to be a furnace in the basement. But its also
| viable to have a ductless mini-split heat pump (
| https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/ductless-mini-split-heat-...
| ) that just moves the heat carrying fluid to a room and then
| have that room with an exchange.
|
| > Ductless, mini-split-system heat pumps (mini-splits) make
| good retrofit add-ons to houses with "non-ducted" heating
| systems, such as hydronic (hot water heat), radiant panels, and
| space heaters (wood, kerosene, propane). They can also be a
| good choice for room additions where extending or installing
| distribution ductwork is not feasible, and for very efficient
| new homes that require only a small space conditioning system.
| Be sure to choose an ENERGY STAR(r) compliant unit and hire an
| installer familiar with the product and its installation.
|
| > Like standard air-source heat pumps, mini-splits have two
| main components -- an outdoor compressor/condenser and an
| indoor air-handling unit. A conduit, which houses the power
| cable, refrigerant tubing, suction tubing, and a condensate
| drain, links the outdoor and indoor units.
|
| > The main advantages of mini-splits are their small size and
| flexibility for zoning or heating and cooling individual rooms.
| Many models can have as many as four indoor air-handling units
| (for four zones or rooms) connected to one outdoor unit. The
| number depends on how much heating or cooling is required for
| the building or each zone. This can be affected by how well the
| building is insulated and air sealed). Each of the zones has
| its own thermostat, so you only need to condition occupied
| spaces, which can save energy and money.
| masterj wrote:
| They're not. Instead you can use air-to-water heat pumps to
| swap out those systems.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Yeah you would either get an air-to-water heat pump, or better
| yet a minisplit system where a single condenser has multiple
| runs of small tubes carrying refrigerant to heat exchangers in
| different rooms.
| cmui wrote:
| That's a great point. Our initial market will be North America
| where this makes the most sense. For people with radiators, you
| could also do an install with our wall unit. If you have a
| radiator + boiler system there are also a lot of air-to-water
| heat pump options for you today. It's an area worth exploring
| for future Electric Air products.
| Vvector wrote:
| It's not designed to work in those houses. It's specifically
| designed for homes with ducts.
|
| "The most common heating system in the US is a natural gas
| furnace connected to ductwork, with the hot air ultimately
| coming out of vents in each room. This heat pump is a great
| replacement for the furnace and air conditioner in these ducted
| systems."
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| not OP. My understanding is that situations like these really
| require installation of the (IMO, ugly) wall units ("mini-
| splits").
|
| Current air-source heat pumps can't produce hot water at
| temperatures necessary to drive radiators.
| abakker wrote:
| I think they can produce water at temps to support both
| radiators and radiant floor heat, but they can't produce the
| capacity/volume needed
| oceanplexian wrote:
| They don't have to be ugly! You can get mini splits in a
| cassette format that just looks like an air vent.
|
| I'm not against ducted systems or anything (Most houses in
| the US have them). But the laws of physics pretty much
| guarantee that a mini split will always be more efficient.
| Air ducts are harder to insulate and not that good at moving
| heat energy compared to sending refrigerant right to where
| you need it.
| skrause wrote:
| It depends on your radiators and insulation. As a rule of
| thumb modern air-to-water heat pumps have a good efficiency
| up to a water temperature of 55 C. That can be enough if you
| have radiators with a large enough surface and no terrible
| insulation.
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| From their website homepage:
|
| > An optional wall unit heats and cools homes without ducts.
| Replace your expensive baseboard heaters and radiators with an
| efficient, ductless unit that blends into your home.
| sleton38234234 wrote:
| I already got a heat pump water heater and I love it! I'm totally
| in the market for a heat pump heater to replace our Heater/AC.
| the primary concern are three things: up front cost, and
| electricity costs for heating and 3) performance. the last quote
| I got was about 11K, so that's pretty steep. and on top of that
| heat pumps don't perform well for heating: it has to be on most
| of the time and will struggle to increase temps.
| abakker wrote:
| If you ever want to chat with a technical homeowner, who is mid-
| process in reevaluating HVAC retrofit in a house that would be a
| great candidate for this, contact me at the email account in my
| profile. I'd love to talk about this.
|
| I've installed a few mini splits, understand load calcs
| (basically) and have plenty of experience with ducting systems
| and electrical and control systems.
| richwater wrote:
| I was raised on the belief that Heat Pumps could not be used in
| climates that really got "cold". I see the website lists -15
| degrees as the operating temperature. What has changed in the
| past years to enable this? It seems like this would cover most of
| the contintental US now.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Probably better/more efficient defrost cycles. And maybe
| refrigerant choices.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| Refrigerant, pressure, vapor injection, and a highly
| "managed" vapor compression cycle.
| HEPA_As_Service wrote:
| Regulation has helped a lot! Government can act as the
| unifier of buyer's not that long ago central systems scored
| 6 now this lowballs at 18.
|
| If you increase the time of operation you can earn greater
| return on the costs invested. Commercial water heating is
| storing heat cheaply now to avoid storing water warm that
| will be used as that causes biofilms and disease.
|
| Healthy sleep in room you want to work in upon rising
| creates a challenge for live pumping of heat. A sudden heat
| is best and that means storing from day before. We thrive
| sleeping in cold being woken by warmth.
|
| $20,000 on a four ton heating load is compromised by this
| design tragically.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| What's the COP?
|
| There's just a vague 3-5x more efficient claim on your web site.
| More efficient than what?
|
| I currently have a 5-year-old 2.8ish COP whole house system that
| won't last forever. I get a monster bill in January and February,
| so when it's time to replace it, I'd like to go with something a
| bit more modern.
| cmui wrote:
| Good questions. A heat pump is 3-5 more efficient than any
| fossil fuel furnace. Fossil fuel furnace is 70-96% efficient,
| heat pump is typically between 300-500% 'efficient'. COP varies
| depending on the outdoor conditions, but you can infer COP at
| various temperatures by looking at the HSPF2 (heating season
| performance factor) which is the weighted average of the btu
| output/watt input at various outdoor/indoor conditions.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| My gas furnace sits next to my gas water heater. I want a central
| air heat pump that dumps the heat into my water heater when I'm
| cooling the house.
| js2 wrote:
| In the meantime there are heat pump water heaters that can
| absorb the heat in your furnace room.
| cmui wrote:
| There are some combined space heating + water heating heat pump
| options out there. A few points to watch out for (1) install of
| an extra hydronic loop for the air handler can be expensive (2)
| your air handler + heatpump combination will not run as
| efficiently because of the losses associated with a secondary
| loop (3) there's a bit of a trick to getting the heat pump
| properly sized for cold weather + domestic hot water operation
| (4) if the demand temperatures for domestic hot water and space
| heating are far apart, the whole system will run at the lowest
| efficiency dictated by the highest demand temperature.
| jahewson wrote:
| We have a heat pump water heater, it pumps out cold air. In
| theory we could duct it into the house (at least in the summer)
| though it cools the garage for free, so that's nice.
| politician wrote:
| How do you envision the installation working in the direct-to-
| consumer sales model?
| cmui wrote:
| Similar to solar. We connect you with a contractor to do a site
| visit, provide final quote and ultimately do the install.
| sabareesh wrote:
| Typical medium unit at market place is only around 3K compared to
| your offering at 12k. Why is it so expensive
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/Pioneer-36-000-BTU-3-Ton-18-SEER...
| cmui wrote:
| Fair point, I should do a better job of communicating the unit
| sizes. Heat pump capacity varies as a function of outdoor
| temps. A standard unit is rated at 47F but the sizes I'm
| showing are at 5F (cold climate conditions). Also for this
| price you get the air quality module which does HEPA, fresh air
| intake and humidification and a smart thermostat that's
| designed to fully optimize this heat pump system.
| sosodev wrote:
| When you say it's rated at 47F do you mean its efficiency is
| measured at 47F? If so, does that matter much?
|
| The unit linked in the post you're replying to states that it
| can operate as low as -13F.
| cmui wrote:
| Talking about capacity for heat pumps is tricky, their
| available heating power changes continuously as a function
| of outdoor temperature. The convention is to refer to the
| available capacity at 47F for 'normal' heat pump and the
| capacity at 5F for a cold climate heat pump.
| sosodev wrote:
| Makes sense. How much does their capacity typically
| change over their operating temperature range?
| cosmosisjones wrote:
| so what about places like Duluth, MN where it can be -20F
| ambient, then -40F to -50F with a windchill for several weeks
| of the year?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Custom ground source heat pump my friend :) side benefit
| (energy cost) free hot water.
| cmui wrote:
| Ground source is great! (if you can afford the install).
| [deleted]
| throitallaway wrote:
| Windchill is irrelevant here, it only indicates what the
| temperature feels like to warm blooded mammals.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| windchill as a concept can be applied to all evaporative
| cooling systems.
| 16bytes wrote:
| Heat pumps are not an evaporative system.
|
| You can't lower the temperature across a gradient lower
| than the fluid temperature, no matter how fast that fluid
| is moving. You can cool things down faster, but you can't
| go lower.
|
| So if it's 10F, a 5F heat pump will work equally well at
| 0mph wind and 30mph.
| cmui wrote:
| You got it. A brief technical aside, heat pump
| performance is hurt by frosting, which happens at
| intermediate outdoor temps (~35-50F). Basically the
| outdoor coil is both below freezing, and below the
| dewpoint of the air. The frost forms a thermal insulating
| layer around the coil, and intermittently you have to run
| a defrost cycle to melt off the ice. This is a small hit
| to system efficiency.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Yes, I never claimed they were. I was responding to the
| idea that only warm-blooded mammals have the concept of
| wind-chill. Any system that takes advantage of
| evaporative cooling will have the concept of wind chill.
| A "swamp cooler" is one example.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's not designed for those areas. The world is plenty
| large, they don't need to accommodate every single address
| in the country to have a viable or useful product.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I would be very interested in stats on the gradient of home
| energy use by average outdoor temperature. I imagine that
| "Places where it gets too cold for heat pumps" represent a
| large percentage of heat usage; That is, there's (made up
| numbers) 10% of the population living in those areas, but
| they represent 90% of heating energy use.
|
| If every home that could use your heat pumps year-round
| installed one and used it exclusively, what's the upper
| bound on energy saved? If every home across the country
| installed one and used it primarily (whenever it was warm
| enough outside), what would be the energy savings? Not to
| disparage, I'm certain it's still significant, but I'm
| curious to quantify it.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This is quantified by "heating degree days" and I don't
| think your intuition is correct here.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Unite
| d_S...
|
| The difference between "Can use a heat pump" and "can't"
| is only maybe 10o or 15o. The coldest places are only
| ~20% colder than much more populated areas with millions
| of more residents.
|
| Metro Boston has around 5 million people -- that's more
| than 3x as many as who live in North Dakota and South
| Dakota combined. Their climate is cold and they get
| around 6,000 HDD every winter compared to the frigid
| upper plains who average something like 8,000 or 8,500.
| So 1.3x more heat requirement per person but spread out
| across 1/3 as many people.
|
| Not to mention all of e.g. Chicago, Denver, Des Moines,
| Cleveland, Detroit, New York, the rest of New England,
| etc. etc. where heat pumps do just fine.
| triceratops wrote:
| Not every product is for everyone.
| elil17 wrote:
| Windchill doesn't effect, and you can handle small dips
| below -15 F (like for a couple hours at night) because the
| house has some thermal mass. However, Duluth, MN is right
| at the edge of being too cold for this heat pump (99th
| percentile cold temperature in the coldest month is -15.16
| F). If I was in Duluth and was considering a heat pump, I'd
| want to make sure I had an electric furnace or some space
| heaters as a backup. However, it would still be worth it to
| get the heat pump because you'd be able to heat your home
| much more efficiently/cheaply >99% of the time.
| hedora wrote:
| Even in coastal California, most ducted heat pumps have a
| built in electric or gas furnace.
|
| I imagine anything sold in areas where it actually gets
| cold will as well.
| turtlebits wrote:
| If you want to control air quality, you do this with a
| separate fresh air intake, not with a ducted furnace. Many
| older homes have furnaces taking air from sub-optimal spaces
| such as garages or crawl spaces.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| [dead]
| cmui wrote:
| Great point. You don't source from the same spot you source
| combustion air - you run a separate fresh air intake. This
| system has HEPA, fresh air intake and humidity control
| packaged/integrated together well. The fresh air wouldn't
| come from a garage or crawl space, but from the outdoors
| via a dedicated (small) duct.
| sabareesh wrote:
| Do you have product specification sheet like this https://ima
| ges.thdstatic.com/catalog/pdfImages/96/96c34548-a...
|
| You say 5f but I dont see any reference to that on your site.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| First - this thing is awesome so nice going.
|
| Second - yes, significantly better communication on the
| website is going to help. Some economic analysis (the section
| of savings is ambiguous) with specifics, specifics on how it
| would look with financing, for different house sizes etc
| would get a lot of people across the hump. It's quite unclear
| to me if this thing makes sense financially.
|
| Third - nice going, this really is awesome.
| bythreads wrote:
| From a country where these are super normal: The air inside gets
| bone dry due to the hx and humidity of outdoors vs indoors.
|
| Its super unhealthy, but a good design avoids this by using
| either an entalpic(moisture permeable) hx or a rotor hx (humidity
| is controllable)
|
| If you really want to be different do this, not just a fancy
| cover and an api...
| dang wrote:
| Offtopic but for those wondering: there are two Launch HNs on the
| front page today because we're getting close to Demo Day for YC's
| W23 batch, so it's launch season. When we do pair them, I'm
| trying to select two startups that are uncorrelated with each
| other. Also, I thought it might be good to start the week with
| two launches that have nothing to do with LLMs.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I vote for a whole month of no LLMs.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Super interesting product! I've been chewing on this idea and
| market for a while (as a potential customer, primarily) but with
| a slight twist. Conventional heat pumps tend to fall back to
| resistive heating as things get colder; where I'm at in Canada,
| we routinely hit -40C/F in the winter and unfortunately this
| means that the efficiency is the worst when we need it the most.
| Your approach with the improved condenser is great but... any
| thoughts on how it would handle -40F?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'd like a furnace company that has a financial incentive to keep
| my house warm and efficient.
|
| Todays furnace/heat pump makers test their kit in a lab under
| perfect conditions, and then when it is installed it often costs
| double or more to run compared to what the datasheet says.[1]
|
| I would like the company to say "we will keep your house at 70F,
| year round, for $3000/yr. We will pay any electric/gas use to
| achieve that, and pay for and install maintain and upgrade the
| hardware".
|
| Then, the company has a direct incentive to keep costs down. The
| company can optimize maintenance schedules, energy contracts,
| algorithms to control fans and pumps, etc. Doing this, they
| should be able to keep total costs lower for the homeowner (who
| isn't an expert on any of those things)
|
| [1]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212...
| potatolicious wrote:
| > _" and pay for and install maintain and upgrade the
| hardware"_
|
| The problem is that the cost of running the kit has much less
| to do with the actual HVAC equipment itself and has to do with
| your house - which no sane HVAC company wants to make
| guarantees on.
|
| - What kind of insulation is in the walls? What's the R-value?
| The vast majority of home owners do not know this, and _many_
| homes have old and deeply substandard insulation.
|
| - What kind of windows do you have? Expecting an HVAC company
| to guarantee the thermal properties of your windows seems
| unrealistic.
|
| - _How many_ windows do you have? Do you keep them open a lot?
| How many doors? Are the doors well-sealed?
|
| - What is the attic situation? What's the insulation in the
| attic like?
|
| The list goes on. I can _potentially_ see a company willing to
| entertain such a guarantee for a brand new home that they knew
| the specs of, but for an existing home it feels totally
| unrealistic.
| londons_explore wrote:
| They could make an estimate based on the age and size of the
| house. Build in a profit margin.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| This is wishful thinking. the ability of a structure to
| retain heat depends on SO MANY factors that guaranteeing a
| temperature is a fool's errand.
| zamnos wrote:
| An _estimate_ , not a guarantee, and just bring in a
| FLIR/thermal camera to see where the heats getting lost
| and how much. They're cheap enough for professional use
| these days.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Sure, the profit margin would have to be wide enough to
| account for a lot of variance.
|
| Seriously, the insulation effects on your heating bills
| cannot be underestimated. Two houses that look
| superficially the same on the curb can have a margin of
| error that is a _multiple_ of your heating bill, and that
| largely comes down to what the insulation is in the house.
|
| Like we're not talking about "variances up to 30%"
| territory, we're talking "variances up to 300%" territory.
| No one is willing to make that guarantee without pulling
| off your drywall and examining the state of your
| insulation, not to mention the various behavioral issues
| others have brought up that vastly alter your bills.
| dolmen wrote:
| +1
|
| THAT would be disruptive to the market.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would the company also have control of the doors and windows,
| or at least perfect knowledge of how long they are open? And
| number of bodies in the house, or amount of cooking being done?
| londons_explore wrote:
| No, just like a taxi doesn't charge extra if you're too fat,
| even though it costs him more in fuel.
|
| Obviously they can send reminders to keep the doors closed...
| Or have sensors on the windows and have it not heat when a
| window is open...
|
| Or they could just not renew the service for customers who
| leave the window open all year.
| itissid wrote:
| Chris, I live in a high rise in a US city with only PTAC
| units[1]. The same unit provide both heating and cooling. Can
| this replace them?
|
| [1] https://www.trane.com/Commercial/Uploads/Pdf/1129/ptac-
| svx01...
| cmui wrote:
| A few options for you, if you have a viable mounting situation
| for the condenser (big if), you can use an Electric Air unit
| with wall unit. Otherwise you're best off with a drop in heat
| pump PTAC, or a heat pump window unit like Gradient.
| soheil wrote:
| > we have the industrial design and also largely understand how
| this will be built. The core technology risk is quite low, it's
| really about executing the scope well and also finding the right
| product that homeowners find compelling
|
| How many HN readers are going to read this and think why not give
| it a try myself? Is this really a deposit collector campaign or
| more of a competitor generator.
| cmui wrote:
| Heat pumps are really important for reducing fossil fuel use in
| homes, and we need better products. Scaling this sort of
| company has unique challenges, but it would be a net positive
| if more people build good products/services in this space.
| HEPA_As_Service wrote:
| The net positive is disrupting the space for emerging markets
| with the incent-er's rather clearly being focused AGAINST
| THAT.
|
| You are targeted away from INDIA etc. markets that are mainly
| cooling. But I support your wanting to improve the thermostat
| for variable speed and also provide design room for the buyer
| into higher efficiency by oversizing and controlling
| accordingly.
|
| What bothers me is your premise that outdoor air can address
| indoor pollution. You need to offer other filter case options
| and be drop in for new or existing construction leasing it to
| incent cost engineering pollution elimination in the lived in
| envelope.
|
| Also you should offer body climate control not just "air".
| One company takes this seriously, for uncontrolled worker
| neck contact, and only leases! Fujitsu does not even lease in
| Most english speaking or even European etc. Handful of
| countries.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > How many HN readers are going to read this and think why not
| give it a try myself?
|
| I did but then saw what it cost -- from the comments and not
| the website.
|
| I really want to get a heat pump for the "free" AC, lived in
| Phoenix too long I guess. The problem is (aside from not making
| Silicon Valley wages) justifying spending those prices on a
| house I got for $15k.
|
| Well, and I've seen too many SV startups do a very bad job
| looking outside the bubble they live in and go away as soon as
| products end up in the hands of real people.
| Brystephor wrote:
| I have family that works as HVAC techs for both residential and
| commercial. I also used to work at the shop but did other stuff
| primarily.
|
| Here's my question though: it states as a direct to consumer
| sales route. However the pricing includes installation. I don't
| know of any contractors that would be willing to do a customer
| supplied part installation for something like a heat pump. I also
| know that if they did do it, they would provide no warranties
| around it. So then from the consumers point of view, you've paid
| $10k to have something installed and if it breaks, you're out of
| luck and it's time to pay up again.
|
| I'm interested in hearing more about this product and seeing how
| it works. Would love to chat more about it.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| $22000 with install seems high. Got a ducted a reverse cycle air
| conditioner and an additional split reverse cycle air conditioner
| supply and install for about $8k aud (us$5k) 10 years ago so say
| us$10k with inflation. Is this a competitive price. I don't know
| btu but in total about 4kwh input.
| tikkun wrote:
| Related: https://calv.info/heat-pumps
| fridder wrote:
| I have a very tightly insulated house so I have an ERV. Does your
| system integrate with ERVs?
| caeril wrote:
| Very confused about this. How is it any different from any other
| high-SEER heat pump currently on the market?
| spennino wrote:
| great to see someone take a holistic approach here. heat pumps
| are imperative to moving off fossil fuels and it's crazy how
| difficult it is to get these devices installed in homes right
| now.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > The system operates at all temperatures. Thanks to vapor
| injection technology the condenser is rated to -15F, and the
| backup heating strips can operate at all outdoor temperatures.
|
| I call bullshit. Demonstrate a unit at the south pole if you
| disagree.
|
| The heating strip can operate at all outdoor temperatures perhaps
| -- it's just a heating strip! -- but that doesn't necessarily
| make the rest of the system work. Your -15F figure is warmer than
| what existing products claim, so you're underperforming
| competition there, yet trying to boast about being superior.
|
| Similarly, the cooling part can only work when you still can dump
| heat outside.
|
| Established manufacturers state ranges like -22..86F/-25..30C for
| heating and -22F..122F/-30..50C for cooling. You trying to say
| "all" is just a lie.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| The holistic approach is nice to see.
|
| There are obviously already several major players in the industry
| (notably, Mitsubishi, but also more "DIY"-focused brands like
| "Mr. Cool") offering heat pump systems with air handlers, such as
| this.
|
| But this approach seems to be much more integrated in ways that
| actually might make a difference.
| cmui wrote:
| What I've observed is that getting a heat pump turns into a
| real science fair project for homeowners, and forget trying to
| integrate air quality in a good way. The proprietary
| communicating thermostats that come with heat pumps are really
| bad, and you can force an Ecobee or Nest to work with the heat
| pumps, but it hurts system efficiency by turning your variable
| speed equipment into less efficient fixed stage equipment. Lots
| of integration problems to be solved!
| csense wrote:
| My main experience with heat pumps is a heat pump installed in
| the northern US in the mid 1990's.
|
| As a user, the main problem is it's fine in spring and fall, but:
|
| - (1) In winter (when the temperature is below freezing) it can't
| keep up, and needs to switch the gas furnace on
|
| - (2) It often needs to be manually switched at the thermostat,
| you should be able to interface an outside thermometer and say
| "below X degrees use the gas furnace"
|
| - (3) The homeowner told me that they'd never have bought a heat
| pump if they'd known it would only work for like 25% of the year.
| Decades have passed, so presumably you have better tech. But you
| need marketing and customer education to explain that it's
| better, and assure your customers that past bad experiences
| aren't indicative of future results if they buy your system. For
| me, that means performance metrics (e.g. curves for various house
| sizes showing the duty cycle needed to maintain a given indoor
| temperature as a function of the outdoor temperature) and
| testimonials from customers in states that border Canada.
|
| Also, you stress fighting climate change a lot. My sense is that,
| if you emphasize climate change, you'll potentially alienate the
| half of the country who thinks climate change is fake news. (As a
| group, homeowners who buy heat pumps are probably older and more
| conservative.) You have a bigger market if you stay apolitical
| and sell a practical product. Features and cost savings appeal to
| everyone; fighting climate change does not.
|
| Your pitch is fine for HN. But for a general audience I'd either
| (a) leave out the references to climate change, (b) move them
| pretty far down (not at the end but maybe 2/3 of the way down),
| and/or (c) emphasize "the government wants to fight climate
| change and is making the following assistance available..."
| informing customers those financing options exist without
| yourself taking a position on the issue.
|
| Also, I agree with other commenters: It's important your product
| will keep functioning if you go out of business or the customer
| stops paying a subscription fee.
|
| For me personally it would be great to have a wifi and Ethernet
| enabled thermostat with an HTTP JSON-RPC endpoint that gives raw
| data of when the heater turns on, indoor / outdoor temperatures,
| and be able to change the set-point or turn the system on/off via
| LAN (protected by some auth mechanism). An interface to existing
| FOSS home automation solutions would be nice to have but not
| essential. The main thing for me is that your interface is open
| and can be run without any subscription fees or access to the
| cloud.
|
| It would be a real plus if everything's open source and off-the-
| shelf components. Ideally if a voltage spike sets the computer on
| fire, I can unplug the cables, slide the board out, buy a
| Raspberry Pi, Arduino or similar, re-cable everything, download
| the software onto an SD card, and bring it back up.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your perspective! Cold weather and general
| performance has come a long ways thanks to variable speed
| equipment and vapor injection. Re climate change messaging, I
| think you're right. The product page doesn't have any climate
| change messaging on it, and I'm interested in making a product
| that homeowners find compelling outside of its climate
| motivations.
| 5amdotis wrote:
| Can someone install and use it without the app?
| cmui wrote:
| We will have standard home integrations (Google Home, Apple
| Homekit, likely implemented via Matter standard). Using those
| you can set temperature easily, however to have deeper insight
| into system state, energy use, air quality, you'd have to use
| the app. We could also set up the thermostat so it can be used
| standalone - no app integration.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| The design looks pretty good! The Apple of heat pumps?
| adanto6840 wrote:
| Wish you had been around a few years ago, before I took the
| plunge on two 5-ton Bosch "BOVA 2.0" heat pump units -- I'd have
| seriously considered your product.
|
| The Bosch units are inverter driven and contain some interesting
| tech; we've had some issues with them, unfortunately I'm not sure
| that the HVAC industry is ready for such tech, but I do generally
| think it's the future.
|
| I continually wish (and search Github bi-annually for) there was
| a way to see what frequency ("capacity") my BOVA units are
| running at -- aside from just being able to see the "staging"
| (purely controlled by temperature delta via Ecobee). There's a
| USB port on the board, but I can't find any info/data on it &
| obviously I don't want to take chances on >$15k -worth of HVAC
| units. But it'd sure be nice to see, at the very least, what the
| capacity/frequency is -- without having to physically take screws
| out to remove the panel covering the board.
|
| Alas, maybe some day -- perhaps once my units are out of warranty
| I'll be daring enough to try and get something from that (very
| tantalizing) USB port.
| cmui wrote:
| I'm sure there's some contractor unit that lets you see the
| live readout of compressor speed. As for Electric Air - we want
| to give visibility into system operation, what's the input
| electrical power, what's the output thermal power, how much
| have you spent on heating so far, and what's your average COP
| for a given time period (ratio of heating out/electrical in).
| adanto6840 wrote:
| If you remove the service panel there's a screen that
| displays what capacity they're running at. My installer had
| some issues initially, and Bosch actually had 2 regional reps
| (corporate) visit the site themselves. I'm sure the protocol
| exists somewhere, but the guys they sent wouldn't have known
| and I don't believe they connected anything to the board --
| the Bosch reps couldn't even correctly explain to me how/what
| logic controls the speed of the interior blower fan (two
| speed).
|
| I actually never really did get an answer to that question --
| what/when will the interior fan go to it's "second speed"
| (when only sending 1 cooling signal & letting the Bosch board
| have 100% control over capacity), so we ended up wiring my
| units to be "remote" controlled, like a 2-stage system -
| though it's then critical to enable an extra setting
| ("Reverse Staging" on Ecobee), otherwise you'll just end up
| with short-cycling when stage2 cooling calls are made. If you
| search the topic you'll probably stumble on my Reddit thread
| which has quite a bit of detail on the topic. =D
|
| I wish you luck; I do think it's the future. FWIW I think
| your product's ideal audience/target market is probably not
| here/us, but I think a relatively large addressable market
| does exist. How you can best reach & tap into that market, at
| a price point that make sense & while providing a (sales) UX
| that actually converts -- I think those are the main
| challenges you'll have to solve.
| cmui wrote:
| Wow, sorry you had to go through that setup hassle. I would
| also say you are probably in the 1% of motivated homeowners
| trying to get those details right. A lot of this difficulty
| seems like it stemmed from trying to get the Ecobee to play
| nice with the Bosch. With Electric Air I hope to avoid
| setup issues like this, the thermostat is specifically
| designed to work well with the other equipment.
| HPMOR wrote:
| Hi Chris, I'm an investor in Carrier Global the largest
| manufacturer of HVAC equipment. Curious on how you see your
| product differentiating yourself from their heat pumps, I.e
| superior specs? Also, I believe Carrier sells residential heat
| pumps directly to consumers through their service centers and
| also through large commercial deals, so not sure if your business
| model is strictly different than theirs.
| criddell wrote:
| My HVAC is 14 years old so we're actually planning on replacing
| it sometime in the next 24 months.
|
| I've talked to a couple of HVAC companies already because I want
| more cooling power. When it's above 100F (which it is for 3+
| months of the year) my current system struggles to hold 80F. If
| we use the oven on a hot day, we may not get the temperature back
| down for days. Our winters are relatively mild (we don't get much
| below 25F). We're in central Texas.
|
| The HVAC companies I've spoken to won't sell me an oversized
| system. They've never really said why, but from my research I
| think it has to do with mold problems resulting from cooling air
| with too much moisture in it. It doesn't seem like a big ask for
| the thermostat to include humidity in its decision on how hard to
| run the AC, but apparently that doesn't exist.
|
| Would one of your systems solve any of these problems? I'm not a
| DIY person, so I don't really want to buy direct. Do you have
| installation partners in the Austin, TX area?
| adanto6840 wrote:
| Sounds like you may have had a whole-home energy audit done
| already -- including a blower door test? If not, I'd highly
| recommend it; I paid ~$500 for one a few years back which
| included thermal imaging, blower door tests, airflow
| measurements & calcs, current/draw measurements for all energy-
| consuming devices, thermal load calcs, etc. You may find better
| pricing even -- ours included a detached structure/office, and
| house is relatively large, multiple HVAC
| units/solar/pool/servers/etc...
|
| In my case, I didn't end up with any _super_ directly-
| actionable insights -- but it was still very well worth the
| money IMO. Even just to confirm that we weren 't
| losing/"leaking" energy egregiously. The reality was, our
| household simply uses a lot of energy - hah.
|
| I mention this all because, at the time, we were just about to
| replace our HVAC units & we had just installed solar + storage.
|
| I'm located in Las Vegas -- summers are HOT (!) -- but our
| units (2x 5-ton Bosch heat pumps) can near-trivially keep us at
| 70F (or cooler), even on the hottest of days. I _try_ to
| "push" the thermostats up a bit (we leverage a ToU energy
| plan), but there are days when the battle isn't worth having &
| the wife needs it at 69F -- and, even on the hottest Vegas
| days, we're able to hit it (can be expensive to do so,
| depending on time of day -- but is totally doable).
|
| Edit to add -- Oversizing a system can very easily lead to
| issues; short-cycling, humidity control, etc. The ideal system
| will run nearly non-stop on "design" temperature days. See if
| you can find any highly-rated Bosch installers locally; they'd
| likely be willing to "oversize" a system since the Bosch units
| are "variable capacity" (inverter-driven), which means you're
| less susceptible to hitting some of the common issues/concerns
| when oversizing traditional systems. Alternatively, the high-
| end variable-speed options from major brands are generally
| well-regarded though they can be extremely expensive (the price
| segmentation, and resultant value propositions, are bordering
| on dubious IMO).
| criddell wrote:
| Thanks for the Bosch recommendation. Your system is _much_
| larger than ours, but you likely have a lot more square
| footage (we are ~2100 sq ft). I don't recall the exact
| number, but I think we are 2.5 or 3.5 ton.
|
| Our system is old enough that it's just time to replace. It's
| the one the builder installed 14 or 15 years ago and it's
| fairly low end.
|
| What you've accomplished in your home is exactly what my
| installer tells me they can't do. He told me no matter how
| large of a system I buy, the system will never be able to pul
| the indoor temperature down more than about 20F (internet
| searches for "max ac cooling" seem to back that up). He says
| a bigger system will get me down to the 20F floor faster, but
| that's it.
|
| I don't believe it though because of stories like yours and
| because commercial spaces around here are very cold on hot
| days.
| tutorialmanager wrote:
| How about just adding a small minisplit with heat. Warm day =
| use the minisplit. Hot day = existing central air. Very hot=
| use them both. If one goes down you still have something while
| you wait for repair. The mini split could also provide some
| heating when its mildly cold.
| criddell wrote:
| We had a mini split installed into our garage (a Daikin
| that's been great). I'm not sure how we would do that for the
| house. It's a forced air system with outlets and return air
| in every room. I'm not sure how feasible it would be to pipe
| the output from a split system into that ductwork.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Mini splits aren't ducted (generally the air handler is
| mounted high up on a wall). They are great for spot
| heating.
| buttersbrian wrote:
| Have you considered assessing your home's insulation?
| criddell wrote:
| We did. We had more insulation blown into our attic (it gets
| crazy hot up there) and we are now looking for new windows.
| tguvot wrote:
| actually i'll advise you to take a look at temperature of
| your walls. both inside and outside. they have a bunch of
| thermal mass. during the summer they effectively heat the
| air inside the house. unless you manage to cool walls
| somewhat (lets say during night), hvac will have to really
| fight to keep temperature down. I live in bay area and I
| installed whole house fan which is typically runs through
| the night at summer. For most of the cooling season it
| sufficiently cools air and walls in order to require only a
| couple hours of hvac a day.
|
| additional point, you wrote that you have current system
| installed 15 years ago. back than design temperatures (i.e.
| how hvac sized based on outdoor temperature) were
| different. recent updates sometime bring those temperatures
| up by 10F or so, what can result in extra half a ton - ton
| of hvac.
|
| you could retain company to make a proper hvac sizing
| (called manual j calculation). hvac contracts from my
| expirience won't do it.
| brudgers wrote:
| You don't want an over-sized system.
|
| They short cycle.
|
| An over-sized system can quickly cool to the thermostat
| setting, but leave the latent heat in the water vapor in the
| air.
|
| So you experience the "feels like" temperature...it's not the
| heat, as they say.
|
| A properly sized system runs long enough to condense water
| vapor and with it remove the latent heat from the air.
| criddell wrote:
| The short cycle argument only really applies to older and low
| end systems that are not variable speed.
|
| A variable speed system integrated with a humidifier should
| be able to slowly bring the temperature down, making sure
| that the cooling does not get ahead of the dehumidifying.
|
| I want an "oversized" system that can do > 20F temperature
| drops. I know they exist because a lot of commercial spaces
| have them.
| [deleted]
| bartislartfast wrote:
| $14,000 is competitive with quotes I've seen for heatpumps. I've
| been quoted up to EUR18,000 for a small retrofit.
|
| I would have expected the cost of heatpumps to have fallen as
| adoption goes up, like solar, but instead the opposite seems to
| have happened and they're far more expensive now than five years
| ago.
|
| Any insights into why this is?
| turtlebits wrote:
| Labor is extremely expensive. The costs of heat pumps has
| fallen greatly. I put in a 12k mini split in my house last year
| which cost $850. (The tools to DIY cost around ~$150, but I've
| done 2 installs so far).
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Cloud tie in. Maybe acceptable for a $30 gadget. Not acceptable
| for a home appliance. Hard pass!
| rappjo wrote:
| I have many of the issues you've hit upon - I currently have an
| older heating and no cooling, and I wanted to upgrade to a newer
| system. I signed a contract with a vendor that had previously
| worked in our HOA, but they reneged and cancelled our contract,
| so now we've been left in the lurch with the existing system we
| had without a good way to proceed. Would love to have a new
| system that plays well with my smart home, is efficient, and cost
| effective (both in terms of installation and ongoing operational
| cost).
| steviedotboston wrote:
| > For homeowners switching from natural gas, the savings are
| usually 0-30%, varying based on the local cost of electricity and
| natural gas.
|
| Yeah, that's gonna be a hard sell for lots of people. The
| majority of people with forced air (which is the target market)
| have natural gas. So the savings are potentially nothing, with a
| huge upfront cost for a new, untested startup product.
| chime wrote:
| I would love to upgrade once my existing unit dies, especially if
| you can get a test unit reviewed by
| https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/search?query=...
| immy wrote:
| Doing some good work. Hope you find some investment or
| partnership with some trusted appliance names. Sounds like you'll
| be subbing out installation, I wish you luck building and
| protecting your brand reputation.
|
| I'm an edge case in Bay Area, don't have ducts, so looking at
| ceiling cassettes. I'll go learn about vapor injection
| compressors now.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the support! Vapor injection is cool - if that's
| interesting look at some other novel architectures like cascade
| cycles, hot gas bypass, and internal heat exchangers.
| Denzel wrote:
| The value prop on this is unbelievable. I've been trying to get
| an affordable whole home heat pump system for over a year now.
|
| You've explained the problem space, the solution, and why your
| background is relevant, extremely well. Kudos. I put a preorder
| in.
|
| Minor nit: the grey on white on your preorder page is practically
| unreadable for my eyes.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Let me know when I can buy one to install under my house in the
| crawl space. My house was built in the 30s before forced air was
| available and the ductwork is a retrofit because the crawl is
| almost big enough that I can stand up in it. We currently have a
| giant Rheem gas furnace and I'd love to replace it with an
| electric since they're no longer up to code as of this year.
| roamerz wrote:
| How do you compete with the likes of Mr Cool? Me and my father
| replaced his 15yr old heat pump/air handler in his house a few
| months ago. Took us a weekend and about $4500. That was a 3 ton
| unit.
|
| Similarly we installed a 1.8 ton split unit in a new house. About
| $2500 for that one.
|
| Both were complete kits including thermostat and required no
| refrigerant install as everything was pre charged. The 3 ton was
| even 21 seer if I remember correctly.
|
| These Mr Cool units sell locally at Home Depot and other places.
| AkhSha wrote:
| Why are heat pumps suddenly getting so much attention? Here in
| Australia they have been common for at least the last 20 years.
| Most new houses have been fitted with heat pumps, or as we know
| them, reverse cycle air conditioning.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| [dead]
| odysseus wrote:
| I have a heat pump. It works well, especially for air
| conditioning. I only have 3 complaints:
|
| * Fan is noisy (but at least that noise is confined to the
| outside)
|
| * During ice storms, it ices up and I have to jam a stick through
| the grate to knock off the ice around the components inside. (or
| the fan doesn't spin)
|
| * Natural gas furnace backup (that comes when temps dip below
| freezing) heats the house considerably faster than the heat pump
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| How will you compete with Goodman/Daikin and needing lineset runs
| with usually high voltage work and panel upgrades that sometimes
| come with converting to a heat pump.
|
| If you don't use 24V AC controls i don't think it would take off
| with any installers and you seriously limit and then hinder
| yourself needing way more customer support.
|
| What refrigerants are you considering as there is more
| environmental stuff coming out killing 410A.
|
| You will be competing against installers that can offer 10 year
| warranties (Bosch, Mitsubishi) without any of the backing of a
| large company saying parts will still be available and that is a
| big worry with start ups, at least when nest got bought you can
| still run systems without the cloud or could swap to any 24V
| controls system.
|
| I used to be an installer but am out of the trades now and I
| think you'd kind of off the mark with your shortcomings to the
| current experience, the biggest issue you're gonna find is duct
| leakage and contractors skipping out on the testing and then the
| old vac n run and the new construction builders literally will
| want whatever is cheapest and gets them through the build fastest
| (80% gas single stage with a empty coil box is hella common)
|
| I hope you have seen the variety of retro installs that will need
| to be done as there are still lots of oil burners out there.
|
| Honestly i've almost talked myself into the idea that I should be
| working on this project. LMAO.
|
| Please tell me you aren't going to rely on internet and at least
| use local RTD sensors at least.
| Panino wrote:
| > What refrigerants are you considering as there is more
| environmental stuff coming out killing 410A.
|
| I'm also interested in this. Specifically, I'm interested in
| R-744 (CO2) as it has a GWP (global warming potential) of only
| 1. R-32 (Difluoromethane) has a GWP of 675 while R-410A has a
| GWP of 2088. Japan has had R-744 heat pumps for years now.
|
| Drawdown lists refrigeration improvements as the single most
| effective method (we need to do all of them) for combatting
| climate change.
|
| https://www.drawdown.org/the-book
| mixdup wrote:
| The site is kind of sparse with specifics, this seems like a
| marketing ploy to people who don't know heat pumps exist or have
| existed for decades. Mostly marketed to people who think a gas
| furnace is the only option
|
| What do I get out of this $10k, 24k btu system that I don't get
| in a $4,695/36k BTU Mr Cool mini-split, or $4,528/5 ton (~60kbtu)
| ducted Goodman heat pump system?
|
| If you're going to be charging 2.5x per btu, you're probably
| going to need to explain why
| hd95489 wrote:
| Your install costs are super low. Is there some sort of
| innovation that would drastically reduce install costs? We just
| got quoted for a conventional heat pump install in Seattle 2/3 of
| the cost is installation. The unit costs like 6-8k but to get an
| installer to install its 18-22k. That's with 5 quotes so I don't
| think it's abnormal. How do you plan to keep install costs so low
| at 6k
| cmui wrote:
| How much ductwork are you having upgraded, also any electrical
| panel upgrades? There can be extra scope that drives up install
| cost.
| hd95489 wrote:
| They don't itemize that out but the existing electrical line
| has to be retrofitted to current code and some duct work
| needs modified to fit a new unit. Nothing crazy though, going
| from one heat pump to a new one. A drop in replacement was 4k
| unit and 8k costs so 6k listed here seems super low
| zainhoda wrote:
| I installed a Mr. Cool DIY mini split in my home for 2 rooms and
| so far it's been great. That initial foray was a bit of an
| experiment. I'd like to just replace my central air now with a
| ducted heat pump but I haven't found a good solution that doesn't
| cost a ridiculous amount for a professional to install.
|
| I think you have a big problem with selling direct to homeowners.
| Most HVAC companies will not touch a homeowner-purchased system.
| So if you're selling direct, then you're going to need DIY quick
| connect line sets like Mr. Cool.
| hi_hello wrote:
| Your point on HVAC companies not servicing homeowner-purchased
| systems is worth underlining.
|
| In our case, we need some duct work to fit a 2-ton Mr. Cool
| system to our existing ducts. Every licensed HVAC
| contractor/company we've contacted has refused to touch any
| part of consumer purchased system, citing liability issues
| (context: Bay Area, CA).
| simplyaccont wrote:
| i am thinking to replace one of the hvacs with ducted
| mr.cool. just curious, what was the needed duct work ?
| tguvot wrote:
| same mrcool has ducted diy heatpumps
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| [dead]
| mattcantstop wrote:
| I have had a lot of issues with my mini-splits. I am a firm
| believer in the technology, but my Pioneer units have had a lot
| of issues. I am glad some innovative companies are getting into
| this industry. I built a passive house that has triple-framed
| walls. We don't need much heating/cooling, so mini-splits seemed
| the obvious answer. Hopefully we get them squared away soon as we
| have been in the home for 1.5 years and have learned that in the
| Denver area (zone 5b) they don't perform well when it gets into
| freezing temperatures. I am interested in the technology you have
| described (the injection) to keep it heating during really cold
| days.
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| UV lights as an extra disinfectant inside the furnace around the
| filter would look heckin' smart
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| If the Vapor aspect works well then this might make air source
| heat pumps tenable in cold countries. The current crop here in
| the UK are costing home owners a fortune as the 3-4 kw multiplier
| drops to 1 below 0degC or so and hearing becomes horrifically
| expensive. I know a chap who was paying PS1,200 a month to hear
| is home at the worst of this winters cold and the energy price
| jumps we have here.
| pappn wrote:
| FYI, air-to-air heat pumps are very popular in Norway. There
| are models that have >2 COP in -15 C, for instance Toshiba
| Daiseikai 9S at 2.35 at -15C, and >5 at +7C.
| IanCal wrote:
| That doesn't sound right. They should be above 1 for much lower
| temperatures.
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| "Cold climate" air source pumps have been available for years.
| Even my cheap MrCool Universal has 100% output down to -5F and
| it is not even really a "cold climate" heat pump.
| obituary_latte wrote:
| Does it explain somewhere that I missed how the different size
| units translate to sq. ft.? I would think that would be a great
| way to convey which size might work for people, but I might be
| missing some other factor that doesn't allow for that conversion?
| simplyaccont wrote:
| it doesn't translate. there is a thing called "manual j"
| calculation, that take into consideration size of house,
| orientation, insulation, number of rooms. windows in each room,
| type of windows, appliances, a bunch of other parameters and
| then how many people live in house. topped of with required
| temperature inside during winter/summer and outside temperature
| during winter/summer. after this you get unit sizing
| heatpumpfan wrote:
| Sizing heat pumps by the sq. ft. is hairy reasoning. Load
| calculations take into account climate zone, insulation,
| building materials, orientation, ceiling height, etc. Any
| recommendation based on 2D area is sketchy. For replacement of
| existing professionally installed systems, going by the
| capacity of the installed unit is a better shortcut.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| There is actually good reason to bump up capacity by half a
| ton to ton, unless currently installed unit was sized
| recently. The reason for this it's that design temperatures
| jumped up, sometime in a big way in a recent ashray published
| design conditions (and many companies don't even know that
| this is the case and use those from 10 years ago or more).
| And even the published numbers tend to be off and they
| usually use one specific weather station in a region that may
| or may not have same weather as you.
|
| When I replaced hvac a couple of years ago, I retained
| company to make manual j calcuation as none of hvac
| contractors were willing to do it. I provided it with design
| temperatures that I calculated after scrapping data from a
| bunch of private weather stations in few miles radius
| cmui wrote:
| In the process of building out a tool that allows you to do
| just that on the website. You need some basic info about the
| home + a recent energy bill to do this. You can also go more
| bottoms up where you have all the geometric/thermal + air
| leakage properties of the home and the local weather, this is
| more involved.
| obituary_latte wrote:
| Ah, very cool (LOL). Even if it's not totally accurate,
| getting a ballpark sense of what the costs might be would be
| huge. Thanks!
| Animats wrote:
| "Preorder". "Shipping Winter 2024".
|
| "While we don't have any physical prototypes at the moment, we
| have the industrial design and also largely understand how this
| will be built."
|
| No. You have to build it before you can sell it.
| leviathant wrote:
| Reminds me of Noria (later Kapsul), a somewhat early
| Kickstarter darling that promised to have revolutionized window
| air conditioners. Theirs would be quiet and light, and
| inexpensive ($250!), and would ship within a year, all they
| needed to do was raise $250,000!
|
| The timeline graphic is still up here:
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kurt/noria-cool-redefin...
|
| They raised nearly $1.5MM, because as it turns out, people will
| throw money at a solution that sounds amazing, regardless of
| their understanding of manufacturing and physics. They finally
| started delivering some five years later, and what they
| delivered amounted to a repackaged traditional window air
| conditioning unit. Still noisy, still heavy, and the build
| quality wasn't great. Cf.
| https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/06/23/kapsul-air-conditi...
|
| Johnson Controls does $20-$30 billion in annual revenue.
| They've swallowed up all kinds of other HVAC companies over the
| decades. Turns out, there's not a whole lot of innovation to be
| had in the HVAC world, because of the limitations of physics.
|
| Nest, on the other hand, did some wildly overdue disruption on
| the control side of things, doing a little bit of math on
| historic local data to help figure out how to cycle radiators
| more efficiently, but for the most part, the cost savings
| tended to be from Nest suggesting that it's silly to be running
| your AC at 68 degrees F on a 98 degree day.
|
| I appreciate there's an attempt to be transparent at the cost
| here, but "shipping winter 2024 even though we don't have a
| physical prototype" for an HVAC system is as big a red flag as
| there is, to me.
| cmui wrote:
| I get where your coming from. There's a lot of scope to this
| though, and not a lot of technical risk. I think in this case
| it makes sense to sell units, and also generate feedback about
| the product as early as possible. We're not selling fusion or
| self driving cars.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| In this particular case, and given your background, I am not
| worried about your ability to build it. Yes, a bit easier
| than fusion energy :)
|
| I am wondering, though... Why don't you make a prototype, and
| attach a webcam in front of it, with a few sensors, etc?
| joezydeco wrote:
| _Where_ will you be building these?
|
| _I think in this case it makes sense to sell units, and also
| generate feedback about the product as early as possible_
|
| So you're going to use end customers as your test base?
| That's pretty gutsy. Especially when they're shelling out
| $10K and ripping out their existing (and _working_ ) HVAC
| system to do this. Don't use the car analogy here, there's no
| backup if it doesn't work.
|
| Unless you predict 100% flawless execution and satisfaction
| on that aspect, you're going to get screwed. Your customers,
| more so. A few fucked up installations, or performance below
| expectations, and it's over.
| cmui wrote:
| Definitely agree that a good customer experience is key
| here. We're not shipping half baked hardware to end
| customers. That's what engineering development (alpha
| build, design validation build, production validation
| build, home pilot) is for. After all that happens, then
| customers can an install (and one that's well designed and
| tested).
| joezydeco wrote:
| I guess your definition of "feedback" is different than
| mine. Maybe that's a Tesla thing.
| mdasen wrote:
| I guess I'm wondering what this offers over calling an HVAC
| company and having them install a heat pump system. The system
| seems expensive at $14,000 for a 48k BTU 18 SEER system. It looks
| like I can get that for $4,000. Is the sleek software and design
| of your units worth the extra $10,000, especially when I'm not
| really going to see my air handler frequently?
|
| I do like that it monitors CO2 and offers humidification, but
| presumably that means that it needs a hookup to a water line for
| humidification (not that easy since my air handler is in my
| attic) and a source of fresh air (so presumably a hole in the
| roof or something to accommodate that).
|
| I'm also curious if the mini-split system on your site would also
| handle fresh air and humidification. Wouldn't that require each
| air handler to have access to fresh air and water?
|
| I'm also curious why 18 SEER? Are there diminishing returns above
| that? I'm in a pretty cold climate so I've been thinking it would
| be better to get a 20 SEER unit.
|
| My suggestion for your company: Add stoves and hot water heaters
| to your offering. I'm not going to switch to a heat pump and
| continue to have natural gas for my stove and hot water heater.
| If I'm going to put in a heat pump, I'd want to get natural gas
| out of my place. I don't want to have to get a heat pump from
| you, then call someone else to deal with my water heater and
| another person to deal with my stove.
|
| I'm certainly not an expert on this so maybe you'll just say that
| you're using more reliable equipment than the stuff I've seen,
| but it seems like something I'm more inclined to go with a local
| HVAC company than a startup.
| dmarlow wrote:
| Same thought as well. I recently self installed an 18k BTU
| unit. The lines came pre-charged, but I wanted it to be run
| exactly to length. For someone to come and do just that part
| (cut, flare and vacuum/charge the lines) cost me just $150. I
| got the unit (a pioneer) for under $900. The rest of the world
| has heat pumps figured out, no need for a tesla-ish version
| charging a premium. Cost will be the biggest factor for
| adoption for ElectricAir, imo.
|
| If anything, a sweaty startup offering just the install for a
| nominal fee would do really well here.
| adventured wrote:
| > The rest of the world has heat pumps figured out
|
| A single digit percentage of homes globally are using heat
| pumps, most of the world does not have it figured out. That's
| specifically why Electric Air exists, they're chasing what is
| going to be a gigantic market (if it were already such a
| figured out market they couldn't get funding without a
| revolutionary 10x approach, YC would have little interest).
| yurishimo wrote:
| Europe as a whole has been utilizing heat pumps for
| residential heavily over the past decade. With global
| temperatures rising, heat pump installs in OECD countries
| are skyrocketing as the climate becomes uncomfortable for
| larger and larger groups of people.
|
| In the Netherlands, I can purchase a minisplit with
| installation for under EUR4k. It could get cheaper if I
| wanted something less powerful.
|
| While your point about "single digit percentage[s]" is
| accurate, it's not helpful when discussing the merits of
| this product, or the wider industry as a whole in most of
| western world.
| adventured wrote:
| > it's not helpful when discussing the merits of this
| product
|
| Of course it is. How would global market size, present
| and future, not be helpful as a discussion topic? The
| parent I replied to was referencing that very issue,
| directly or indirectly. It indicates heat pumps are still
| a relatively small market, and the OP company is betting
| it's going to get a lot larger, meaning there is a
| landgrab going on right now and they're aiming for
| capturing a segment of that future market.
|
| You contradict your claim that it's not a helpful
| discussion point in pointing out how usage is
| skyrocketing (ie the market is getting bigger fast) and
| having to reference the larger established use in some
| parts of Europe to try to make your point. You proved it
| is a pertinent discussion point in trying to claim that
| it's not.
| veb wrote:
| I'd say in New Zealand we definitely have them figured out.
| Every rental needs a heat-pump if there's no fireplace.
| Landlords will prefer the heat-pumps primarily because it's
| less maintenance. Apparently 25% of all households in NZ
| have one: https://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/tips-and-
| tricks/articles/use...) you may also be interested in:
| https://figure.nz/chart/HkvN4YjwyylwL2A4
|
| Ours are exactly the same sort of units that I saw in
| Singapore - they're A/C systems, but can do cold or hot. I
| remember when I saw the 'heat-pumps' in Singapore, I was
| like "Wow, why does everyone have a heat-pump" and everyone
| looked at me and went "What's a heat-pump?" as they always
| called them A/C units - doubt they ever got above 16
| degrees or something.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > The rest of the world has heat pumps figured out, no need
| for a tesla-ish version charging a premium.
|
| USA has heat pumps (the technology) figured out as well.
|
| What the USA does NOT have figured out is how to accomplish
| trades like HVAC and construction without massive grift.
| hcrisp wrote:
| I agree, in fact a couple things in the pitch don't add up.
|
| _> ... where the 80M single family homes in the US replace
| their furnaces with heat pumps._
|
| Where did they get this statistic? I already have a heat pump
| and know many that do too. Are we included in this 80M
| estimate? What about those in the northern half of the US
| that also need back-up heat for when it is very cold? They
| aren't going to replace their furnaces with a heat pump. They
| might add one to their setup but replace, no.
|
| _> In addition the process of getting a heat pump is
| painful, including finding a trustworthy contractor, sorting
| out financing, and wading through rebates. And finally
| contractors struggle with installs because of the difficulty
| of properly sizing the system, and understanding if your duct
| work is compatible with a heat pump_
|
| I don't know the contractors they are talking about, but I
| literally had to say the words "heat pump" to my local
| Carrier installer and they did all the rest.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I mean, they estimate $10k for installation, so you _are_
| calling an HVAC company and having them install a heat pump
| system. It 's not clear to me from the website if the idea is
| that they are actually integrating installation in-house or if
| they will contract out the work, in which case it's likely the
| exact same installers as if you ordered a system from somewhere
| like Home Depot.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Well, at least the ones that agree to work with it. For
| example, the most reputable HVAC company I can find locally
| has picked their favorite 1-2 brands and largely only
| installs those, so they know what they're bound to be
| repairing later.
| [deleted]
| papertokyo wrote:
| Small suggestion for your preorder buttons: the gray/white combo
| doesn't have great contrast and might be perceived as being in a
| disabled state. I'd recommend black/white on light backgrounds
| and white/black on dark backgrounds to make them fit with the
| (very nice) industrial design theme.
|
| Our building (Western Canada) has a heat pump system and it's
| very capable of keeping the apartment comfortable in all seasons
| as long as your definition of summer cooling isn't "like being
| inside a fridge". Great to see the tech being developed for mass
| adoption.
| cmui wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestions!
| tgtweak wrote:
| Difficult market to jump into with Tesla openly saying they want
| to disrupt the heat pump/heating space with their established
| manufacturing and dealer/installer network. They also have some
| significant IP in the heat pump space with their octovalve heat
| pump design which is being battle-tested and proven in one of the
| most hostile environments.
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