Heat Pump "Helper"?

[SamSpade]

I've seen this before - companies which provide backup heat when your heat pump is operating at a temperature lower than it can work efficiently. I was just at the Besche Oil site, and to no surprise, their "helper" is an oil furnace.

What do you have as "backup"? Is it worth it? I mean, if I have oil backup, what's the point in having a heat pump at all? Is a "helper" the same cost to install as a whole furnace?

 

[camily]

I've seen this before - companies which provide backup heat when your heat pump is operating at a temperature lower than it can work efficiently. I was just at the Besche Oil site, and to no surprise, their "helper" is an oil furnace.

What do you have as "backup"? Is it worth it? I mean, if I have oil backup, what's the point in having a heat pump at all? Is a "helper" the same cost to install as a whole furnace?

Wood stove.

 

[GWguy]

I've seen this before - companies which provide backup heat when your heat pump is operating at a temperature lower than it can work efficiently. I was just at the Besche Oil site, and to no surprise, their "helper" is an oil furnace.

What do you have as "backup"? Is it worth it? I mean, if I have oil backup, what's the point in having a heat pump at all? Is a "helper" the same cost to install as a whole furnace?

This is very common. Usually the backup is electric coils (very expensive to run). A few folks on here have oil backup, some have gas backup, some none at all and use a wood stove or something else.

heat pumps are VERY efficient in the 50* range, but don't work well when the temps start dropping. It can't keep up, and that's where the backup comes in.

 

[camily]

I've seen this before - companies which provide backup heat when your heat pump is operating at a temperature lower than it can work efficiently. I was just at the Besche Oil site, and to no surprise, their "helper" is an oil furnace.

What do you have as "backup"? Is it worth it? I mean, if I have oil backup, what's the point in having a heat pump at all? Is a "helper" the same cost to install as a whole furnace?

It is a furnace. Yes.

 

[camily]

This is very common. Usually the backup is electric coils (very expensive to run). A few folks on here have oil backup, some have gas backup, some none at all and use a wood stove or something else.

heat pumps are VERY efficient in the 50* range, but don't work well when the temps start dropping. It can't keep up, and that's where the backup comes in.

Maryland is right at the cut off for furnace efficeincy.

 

[bobbyb]

Any Heating and Air Conditioning company

Any Propane Company

The Gas Company

 

[SamSpade]

We're going to upgrade this year, the sooner the better. We absolutely have to replace the old heat pump. It's ancient. Lately the blue light has been on nonstop. But no matter how efficient, we need a backup.

We HAVE an old wood stove. It's a little smoky, and probably could stand to be upgraded, but it has a fireplace insert for our chimney. I just need to figure out how to get all that good, warm air into the rest of the house. As it is now, IF I use it, the only room that is ever warmed by it, is the one it sits in downstairs. I can get that thing going full blast, get that room good and toasty - and the blue light will STILL be on upstairs.

 

[camily]

We're going to upgrade this year, the sooner the better. We absolutely have to replace the old heat pump. It's ancient. Lately the blue light has been on nonstop. But no matter how efficient, we need a backup.

We HAVE an old wood stove. It's a little smoky, and probably could stand to be upgraded, but it has a fireplace insert for our chimney. I just need to figure out how to get all that good, warm air into the rest of the house. As it is now, IF I use it, the only room that is ever warmed by it, is the one it sits in downstairs. I can get that thing going full blast, get that room good and toasty - and the blue light will STILL be on upstairs.

Do you have a blower for the wood stove? That's pretty much all we use and the house stays toasty. Of course, we took out a coat closet that divided that room from the middle level when my dad was sick and put in an elevator. When he dies and we took out the elevator and put up a banister so the heat comes into the rest of the house better. The furnace rarely kicks on.

 

[GWguy]

We're going to upgrade this year, the sooner the better. We absolutely have to replace the old heat pump. It's ancient. Lately the blue light has been on nonstop. But no matter how efficient, we need a backup.

We HAVE an old wood stove. It's a little smoky, and probably could stand to be upgraded, but it has a fireplace insert for our chimney. I just need to figure out how to get all that good, warm air into the rest of the house. As it is now, IF I use it, the only room that is ever warmed by it, is the one it sits in downstairs. I can get that thing going full blast, get that room good and toasty - and the blue light will STILL be on upstairs.

If the text under the "blue light" is ON or HEAT, yeah, probably time to get it replaced. If the text under the "blue light" is "EMERG" or "BACK", then you're running electric backup.

I should say too, that the colder it gets, the longer the heat pump will run. I've read a few articles that said you cannot treat a heat pump like a furnace, that a heat pump gets it's best efficiency when run for 8 hours straight in colder weather, not on and off.

 

[SamSpade]

Do you have a blower for the wood stove? That's pretty much all we use and the house stays toasty. Of course, we took out a coat closet that divided that room from the middle level when my dad was sick and put in an elevator. When he dies and we took out the elevator and put up a banister so the heat comes into the rest of the house better. The furnace rarely kicks on.

Yeah, there's a noisy blower. It sure helps keep that room warm.

We live in a split foyer, and the fireplace/wood stove is downstairs at one end of the house, connected to the chimney. It's about as far from the bedrooms as is humanly possible. I've tried cascading fans to get the hot air up the steps, but the very best I've ever gotten is, you get a little warmer on the lower stairs. By the time you're upstairs, you feel nothing. If that blower could pump air straight into our existing ducts, that would be great.

We had an outrageous electric bill this month, and we're serious about dealing with it once and for all, but I don't really have a good idea for backup heat. About the best alternative I can think of is open loop geothermal but I don't think we can afford that at all, even WITH tax credits.

 

[rockfish]

If you upgrade to a heat pump system, you will have an outside unit and an inside unit. The backup heat system comes as part of the inside unit. It's basically electric coils that sit over top of the blower, and comes on automatically if the heat pump can't satisfy what the thermostat is calling for.

 

[SamSpade]

If you upgrade to a heat pump system, you will have an outside unit and an inside unit. The backup heat system comes as part of the inside unit. It's basically electric coils that sit over top of the blower, and comes on automatically if the heat pump can't satisfy what the thermostat is calling for.

I know - and that's the most inefficient way to heat a house. So even if I upgrade to a high efficiency unit, it could still mean very high heating costs with the heat pump.

 

[NTNG]

heat pump helper?
A sweater and heavy socks!

 

[czygvtwkr]

I had straight oil and and old central A/C unit and the furnace needed replacing, a year ago I got an oil furnace and had the A/C unit replaced with a heat pump. You will hear this referred to as a hybrid system in some circles. You just would not believe how much money I save. My electric bill rose maybe $20 and my oil bill was more than cut in half.

In all the cost was $6.5K i think. There is a thread on here, lemme find it.

Here it is http://forums.somd.com/consumer-financial-affairs/100421-contractor-new-oil-furnace-c.html

 

[jsouthan]

Yeah, there's a noisy blower. It sure helps keep that room warm.

We live in a split foyer, and the fireplace/wood stove is downstairs at one end of the house, connected to the chimney. It's about as far from the bedrooms as is humanly possible. I've tried cascading fans to get the hot air up the steps, but the very best I've ever gotten is, you get a little warmer on the lower stairs. By the time you're upstairs, you feel nothing. If that blower could pump air straight into our existing ducts, that would be great.

We had an outrageous electric bill this month, and we're serious about dealing with it once and for all, but I don't really have a good idea for backup heat. About the best alternative I can think of is open loop geothermal but I don't think we can afford that at all, even WITH tax credits.

Growing up, we lived in a split foyer with the woodstove in the lower level and the bedrooms right above it. My dad cut a hole in the floor and put a register in that allowed the hot air to go straight up to the bedroom area. Heat would also go up the stairs to the living room area. The register was probably 12x12 in the floor/ceiling, nothing fancy just a "pass through" kind of thing (hope that makes sense). We hardly ever used the heat pump in the winter when my dad had that thing going.

 

[awpitt]

Some of the Heat Pump helper systems out there are actually mini-boilers that run hot water through coils in the air handler unit when the temps are too low for the heat pump to work on it's own. The mini-boiler also provides the hot water to the house.

 

[Warron]

>>Some of the Heat Pump helper systems out there are actually mini-boilers that run hot water through coils in the air handler unit when the temps are too low for the heat pump to work on it's own. The mini-boiler also provides the hot water to the house.<<

This is exactly what I have. The heat pump helper is just an oversized hot water heater that supplies both the hot water to my tap and circulates hot water through the same blower my heatpump uses when the temperature is below 40 F.

The reason you would want to keep your heat pump is that the heatpump is still used for AC and it is also much cheaper to use then a fuel oil heater at higher temperatures.

 

[camily]

Yeah, there's a noisy blower. It sure helps keep that room warm.

We live in a split foyer, and the fireplace/wood stove is downstairs at one end of the house, connected to the chimney. It's about as far from the bedrooms as is humanly possible. I've tried cascading fans to get the hot air up the steps, but the very best I've ever gotten is, you get a little warmer on the lower stairs. By the time you're upstairs, you feel nothing. If that blower could pump air straight into our existing ducts, that would be great.

We had an outrageous electric bill this month, and we're serious about dealing with it once and for all, but I don't really have a good idea for backup heat. About the best alternative I can think of is open loop geothermal but I don't think we can afford that at all, even WITH tax credits.

How about a wood burning furnace?

 

[SamSpade]

How about a wood burning furnace?

That's pretty much the way we're going to go. I had someone come by this weekend, and they're gonna do a lot of the work.

I have a neighbor who has a small propane fireplace hooked up to his fireplace, and he says it heats his downstairs - where he spends most of his time anyway - for a decent price per fillup a month. I still don't like the idea of being tied to a fossil fuel, and my wife likes the idea of a pellet stove.

I kind of do, too. My only concern is - well I have an abundance of wood on my property already. A lot of it is crap - like poplar - that burns poorly and it's a ##### to ignite fires in my existing (ancient) wood stove already, and keep them going. A good pellet stove burns longer, more evenly and - well I don't have to keep opening the door to stoke it by hand like I do now - or risk something falling out.

I've been reading about the availability of wood pellets and there's no reason to believe there will ever be a long term shortage. There's just no end to the ability to make pellets.

 

[JoeMac]

I can clear up some of your questions, I used to be in HVAC.

The new heat pumps work good down to about freezing. After that they need supplemental heat. This can be delivered several ways.

Electric strip heat
Oil furnace
Gas furnace
Gas fired hot water
Oil fired how water

Electric is the most common and the cheapest.

Oil sucks, it is inefficient smelly and usually loud. The only plus is that it is really warm.

I would get propane, it is efficient, quiet, clean and warm. There are a plethora of units that can do both heat and hot water, a good choice.

Yes you will generally cut your fuel bill in half with a heat pump with fossil fuel backup.

Some of this depends on how long you plan to keep the house, if longer than 5 years this should be a consideration.

You are a better man than I if you are willing to keep a wood furnace stoked

Hope this helps