News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
A family member in rural MA talked to three different HVAC installers about converting from gas to heat pumps. All of them suggested leaving the gas system as backup for the coldest months for financial reasons, despite the MassSave whole house heat pump conversion $10k rebate. So, more legislative pressure would definitely still be a help to counter entrenched fossil fuel preference.
Like you said "keep as a backup". In areas that get cold, you can't just use a heat pump. Residential heat pumps are only good to about 20 to 25f. Once it gets colder than that you have to have a gas or an electric backup, and at that stage electric is less efficient than gas. So why install an electric backup system (coils that get hot in your blower unit) when you already have gas in place and set up? Running the electric backup coils like I have set up in my all electric house with heat pump uses a large amount of electricity when I have to use it. I have a heat pump that's a bit older (2007), so it stops warming closer to 30 degrees.
Large scale commercial units (like 14 ton units, where residential is usually around 3.5 ton) can do more. Even down to around -3 f, but not residential, and where I'm at it sometimes get below those temps as well.
That was true a couple decades ago, but hasn't really been true in a while.
A combination of inverters, variable speed compressors, vapor injection, and using slightly different refrigerants means there's a number of cold climate heat pumps on the market that will heat down below -13°F.
Our heat pump (Mitsubishi H2Hi) did fine regularly in single digits F last winter. I know there's a limit (for efficiency more than function) but it's definitely getting lower. We had one day -10F or so and no pipes froze (we were actually out of town which was nerve wracking so I don't know if the house got colder than the thermostat requested).
We had 3 days of -10 to 0 ish in Colorado over MLK Jr weekend, my H2i kept 68F in the house no problem. It dropped to 67 a few times during defrost cycles, since I have no backup. It works great, im sure your house did just fine unless is severely undersized.