Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

redsoxpanama t1_j7h87lc wrote

Can you have a heat pump installed and have natural gas burner at your house? Kind of like play which ever one is cheaper or functioning based weather outside? My house is 25 years old. Not sure how well insulated it is. Would be nice to be able to rely on whichever source happen to be cheaper at the time as well as switches to the other if Temps dip into the negatives.

3

magellanNH t1_j7h957c wrote

Yes. You can definitely do this. Gas heating costs can be tough to beat at lower temps, but above 25 or 30 the mini split is likely a slam dunk and that covers a lot of winter hours. The only trouble is that heat pumps can be kind of expensive and the cost might be tough to justify if you only use it a little.

OTOH, with the new heat pump rebates in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), I think it might always make financial sense to go with a high efficiency mini-split heat pump over of a plain mini-split AC. The heat pump rebate should more than cover the additional cost of the upgrade.

2

thread100 OP t1_j7iq3o8 wrote

We had a hybrid system from a company in Nashua. It would automatically switch from heat pump to oil at a predetermined temperature. I think temp was in the teens a few years ago. Very happy with it.

2

SheenPSU t1_j7kksai wrote

I’d look at alternatives regardless of if you decide to go the heat pump route or not

Personal experience: bought my house ~2 years ago and used a little under three tanks of oil for a heating season. Installed a pellet stove this past spring, which I mainly use for heating the home, and haven’t hit half a tank used yet

The pellet stove is paying for itself way earlier than I anticipated. I’m sure people who converted to heat pumps/stoves can say similar things

1

zeeke42 t1_j7pjx83 wrote

Yes, I have the "Kumo Station" on my Mitsubishi hyper heat system. It can control up to 4 zones of backup heat. You set which heat pump zones are backed by which backup zones. Then you set two temps. Above temp A, the backup never runs. Between A and B, heat pump runs first. If it fails to hit set point for the configured delay time, it adds the backup heat. Below temp B, it goes straight to backup heat.

The system works great. I first installed it in my Massachusetts house, because you got huge rebate. It went from $400/ton to $1600/ton by adding the integrated control system. Rebate change more than paid for it. The heat companies charge a bunch for it and some of them don't understand it. When we put the mini-splits in the NH house, I just bought the kumo station and installed it myself.

1