this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Good Lord - $2600 for a whole house system? I think that's what my local (mid-Atlantic US) HVAC shop is getting for a single-room mini-split.
Wait until people find out about ground-source heat pumps and water heater heat pumps. What you get out of those is more consistent year round, too. It's almost like leveraging technology has benefits over just burning carbon and hydrogen to make heat.
2600 is dirt cheap even by Euro standards, trust me.
Here in Italy a single room split would cost you around 1k to 2.5-3k depending on the brand.
A whole house system you're probably looking at 10k and then some.
I got a quote in rural America for a single room minisplit, $10,300.
Absolutely bonkers.
That is absolutely bonkers. I put one in myself for my one room garage that I converted to a place to hang. Cost 720$ after tax for a Pioneer mini split. It's entering its third year in use and I love it. That being said, I wouldn't be so risky as to put my own in when its task was heating or cooling my home. Just my garage is my problem, the rest is my family, and so I paid. But I got a whole home solution, two floors, Carrier units, for about $15k.
I believe what you're looking for is out there and not ridiculous price.
The guy you quoted just want to make his monthly paycheck on you alone, because that's way over anything reasonable
Also in rural America. How did you get someone not to laugh at you when you asked? God I fucking hate the small mindedness around me, but I couldn't stand the city either. I cannot find someone to put one in my house so I'm going to have to install it myself next summer.
$2600 is utter bullshit. I had several quotes for a 1000sf house, not a single one was under 16000 installed, after rebates. My payback period was going to be almost 20 years even against a medium efficiency gas furnace.
And this is why the comments here miss the point- sure, heat pumps nowadays can work that low but in a lot of places the payoff period is well outside what anyone is looking at.
You're just repeating what all the gas installers keeep repeating so they don't lose business.
Every House built after 1990 or houses that have had insulation makovers in the past 20 years are perfectly fine to heat with a heatpump.
Half of my house was 8k, the other side I'm planning to install myself because I don't have that kind of money just waiting to be spent anymore.
Even the Diy mini splits, you're paying $600 to $1000 easily for just one single unit.
Paid $6700 in May to replace mine.
I don't think Geothermal makes much sense unless you live in one of the extremes, mainly the cold one, For example I an from Slovakia and I don't think the temperature here went under -20C in the last few years, I barely remember any days going under - 10C, so you would be paying quite a premium for a geothermal heat pump for rather marginal gains, it would certainly need quite a good analysis if the difference in performance would ever pay for the price difference, especially with better insulation and heat recuperation systems becoming mandatory.
There are also things like heat pump based driers now on the market btw.
I suspect it’s mostly a function of mass availability. Even here in the states ground source heatpumps are rare, even though the systems are more reliable (since there is no equipment exposed to weather) and a shallow borehole isn’t excessively expensive.
I’d forgotten about heat pump clothes dryers. Those are fascinating, and really interesting for older buildings or locations without close access to exterior venting.
Shallow geothermal is basically dead in most of the world because it's too much hit and miss, the geology is simply too complex and involved (and underground) to predict. There's also a fuckton of issues with water ingress, minerals that like to expand when getting wet and such. You can't really take Iceland as an example for countries not straddling a continental rift.
Deep geothermal is utterly reliable but for the longest time drilling that deep was just too expensive. Plasma deep drilling is a solution but it's still in its infancy.
that's not the geothermal we are talking about, geothermal heat pumps
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/geothermal-heat-pumps
Those are ground source heat pumps.
Seriously by that nomenclature we'd also have aerothermal heat pumps.
Yeah similar in the UK. £3k for a single room mini split. £6k for a two room, etc. There's no way you're doing a whole house for less than bend-over money.
Wow that's really pricey. Here in Malaysia a 2 HP mini split with inverter costs roughly RM 2400 including installation (around $500).
Granted the average salary here is much lower but it's amazing how much the prices differ given that they all basically come from the same factory.