Looking to get some anecdotal experiences from someone living in a cold climate using a heat pump as their main source of heat.
Looking to get some anecdotal experiences from someone living in a cold climate using a heat pump as their main source of heat.
I have a heat pump heating and cooling my basement in Atlantic Canada.
Temperatures in the winter hold steady around -20C with some dips a few times in the -40c range when accounting for windchill.
Works just fine. I keep my basement a nice 21C. Heating works well. I see lots of disinfo posted online about heat pumps not working in the cold and it’s all horseshit. Make sure you’re buying a heat pump that’s built for colder temperatures and you’re golden.
Windchill isn’t relevant when it comes to how heat pumps work. It only effects how humans perceive the cold. Technically, I think wind would actually boost heating performance during winter, but I don’t know by how much.
Does you place require much cooling in the summer? I bet your system is probably sized for the winter more than the summer
Yeah. below -20 C thermometer temperature the cold-climate ones start to crap out. To be fair, that’s pretty cold, and is probably only regularly relevant on the prairies and in the north.
There’s work ongoing to commercialise an electrocaloric heat pump. You could use normal methanol as the fluid, then, and it would work all the way down to -90. I’m holding out for that, because I’m on the prairies.
This just isn’t true. I’ve used my heat pump beyond -20 up until -40 and it still worked and heated the air. I don’t know why this is so hard to grasp for some people. I know my house, I’ve experienced the heat pump functioning without any issue in -30 range cold.
Really? Thermometer temperature, not windchill? Interesting. They’re only marketed as working down to that cold (with some variation) according to everything I’ve read. I’d be worried about damage any lower.
Really? Thermometer temperature, not windchill? Interesting. They’re only marketed as working down to that cold (with some variation). I’d be worried about damage any lower.