Gas or heat pump in Midwest?

Just bought a house that's all electric and has a heat pump for heating. Is that a good choice for the Midwest region? We're installing a gas line for a fireplace and I wonder if I shouldn't replace the heat pump with a gas unit when it dies. It's 18 years old now so I don't see many more days of life in it.

How about the water heater? Gas or electric?

Reply to
Steven Andrade
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It all depends on the rates you are paying. In most areas of the Midwest you are going to save using gas over electric. In the case of home heating/cooling it is not so clear. The total cost of heating and cooling using a heat pump is likely to be near the same cost as gas heating and an standard A/C unit. Heat pumps tend to be more efficient than single use air conditions.

Good Luck.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Generally a heat-pump will use electrical strip heaters for the second stage or for backup heat. You can also have a heat-pump use gas for the same purpose.

One more thing to think about, standard air conditioning is allot easier to work on than an heat-pump to allot of technicians. If the company you are using and you feel they know what there doing, no problem.

Reply to
Moe Jones

Agree w/ Joe...what are current rates and what is the outlook for NG in your area as well as where in the midwest? The colder/longer the winter, the less advantage of the air/air heat pump owing to the lowered effectiveness -- once air temp gets much below freezing, the heat pump really loses out and has to run much longer and as someone else noted, you may be heating w/ resistance heating much of the time, anyway.

You might consider another alternative as well -- the ground loop heat pump. More expensive to install initially because of the need for burying the heat exchange loop, but if have sufficient area available, can eliminate the need for resistance heating entirely and will definitely be better efficiency than the air/air.

The switch out on water heating is almost entirely one of relative fuel costs. The one other advantage of gas imo is if you have hard water, the amount of tank fouling is much less w/ gas as the point-source heating electrodes are much worse for that ime...

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Reply to
dpb

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:41:19 -0400, Steven Andrade wrote Re Gas or heat pump in Midwest?:

A heat pump quickly looses it's efficiency advantage over resistance heating when the temp falls below 35F. If you live in a "cold" climate area, unless your electric rate is very low, gas is usually more cost effective.

Reply to
Caesar Romano

First, get a good crystal ball and see what the utility rates are going to be over the next 20 years. In my area, both have increased, but gas has increased more. You should also find out the source of your electricity; my sister lived in upstate NY and their electricity was from the falls; I don't see the cost of that increasing as much as in my area, where it is virtually all from generating plants. Incidentally, I've read that many electrical power suppliers are building new plants that use gas; that should increase the cost of both.

If your home now is all electric, you should find out how much it will cost you to have the gas hooked up; if that is thousands of dollars, for example, that could eat up a lot of savings from making the switch.

My understand> Just bought a house that's all electric and has a heat pump for heating.

Reply to
Not

Don't know unless you post your utility rates, but my bet is that the HP is going to be cheaper.

Main issue with electric water heaters is that they don't recover as quickly as gas.

Reply to
<kjpro

I plan to install a ground source heat pump when I replace my HVAC eventually. One thing to keep in mind is that there are several ways to install the ground loop and some installers are still pushing the somewhat obsolete and much more expensive drilled vertical loop installation or long loop horizontal installations. The newer trenched vertical coil type installation is much cheaper to install and has been proven to be equally efficient as the older methods. The trenched vertical coil method cuts a narrow trench to a suitable depth and then installs the loop piping like a flattened stretched out slinky.

Reply to
Pete C.

Only true for air source heat pumps, old technology. Geothermal a.k.a. ground source heat pumps have no such issue due to stable soil temperatures.

Reply to
Pete C.

Air source heat pumps need supplemental (usually electric resistive) heat in cold areas. Geothermal / ground source heat pumps don&#39;t since their coils are below frost lines and soil temps are stable.

Reply to
Pete C.

But I would estimate at least 90% of all new heat pumps installed are still air/air and is what virtually anyone means/thinks of when hear "heat pump"...

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Reply to
dpb

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I&#39;d revise that slightly as geothermal / ground source heat pumps _may_ not if sufficient heat source/sink capacity is available since their coils are below frost lines and soil temps are relatively stable.

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Reply to
dpb

Midwest where? Midwest Iowa a heat pump doesn&#39;t make much sense except for minor savings in the transition seasons when the temps are not much below freezing. Here in Midwest southern Missouri they work well with a 10k heat strip for those few near zero temps.

As far as water heater, if you use the heat pump, then I would go all the way with electric. Check with your electric company. You might get discount rates if you put your heaters on a separate meter as my son and b-i-l did in central Iowa.

Reply to
Mike Dobony

Depends on local rates. Most areas, it&#39;s less expensive to heat using gas. Electrically heated water is very expensive. Expect gas rate prices are up 10% this coming winter. On top of that it&#39;s expected to be a colder winter than average. My personal choice is all gas appliances which I have. My current gas bill is $24.12 (nice!). My electric bill is $215.17

Reply to
Phisherman

Laclede Gas: Free for the first 75 feet from the main if installing something other than a seasonal item like a gas fireplace. They will run the line and hang a meter. User must plumb into the house

Reply to
Steven Andrade

Yeah, that&#39;s a big concern, The expertise of the HVAC techs I&#39;ve seen run from stupid to good, so you need a good tech to maintain it. Luckily my best friend is a super tech.

Reply to
Steven Andrade

I&#39;ve read about such systems but have never seen one installed. Is it a major task involved to bury the loop? How long, large, and deep is the trench?

Reply to
Steven Andrade

Depends... :)

On how much capacity you need, where you are, type used...

In most locations you&#39;ll want it at a bare minimum of 4-ft and it should be 6-ft or so to minimize the thermal swings (winter _and_ summer).

For a ranch w/ fully furnished basement of roughly 1700 sq-ft per level, we had about 400 lin-ft of trench in E TN. As noted, there are some newer techniques since then that may cut down the actual size needed.

I personally recommend talk to your local Water Furnace distributor. At the time we did ours (15 years ago now, almost!!!) Oklahoma State had the recognized best collection information source out there along w/ TVA. I&#39;ve not looked recently to see, but I&#39;d start there.

It cut our heating/cooling costs by nearly two-thirds over the air/air unit it replaced...

We moved in &#39;99, but just a year or two ago another friend in the neighborhood still mentioned via e-mail he had seen the fella&#39; who had bought the house and asked and the unit was still fine w/ no maintenance.

Reply to
dpb

That could motivate the water heater change or furnace change.

Bob

Reply to
Bob F

Quite likely, which is why you have to specify "geothermal" or "ground source". The air source units work ok in areas with outdoor air temperatures that don&#39;t get too cold or hot, and are still cheaper than ground source. Ground source have the advantage of near silent operation in all cases since they don&#39;t have a big outdoor fan.

Reply to
Pete C.

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