There have been plenty of threads where the cost's been shown, I think electric may even be more expensive than propane....you have pretty much the most wasteful system you could have!

I would say an HP is pretty much a no-brainer, I don't know where you live but they work very well down to some say 30f to 20f - below that certain point, they can't keep up with the demand, and the supplementary heat kicks in.

Some people like Bryant offer a package deal, rebates etc on hybrid systems, you'd have a gas furnace, probably high efficiency (probably cheaper to instal if you don't have vents for a normal gas furnace) plus the heat pump which will of course provide ac as well.

Places like NZ and Australia where it rarely goes near freezing use heat pumps a lot, so it's quite a mature technology.

The rule of thumb for savings as I understand is - resistive electric heating, what you have, is more or less 100% efficient, ie, 100% of the electricity used goes into heat with little or no loss (not including fan etc of course) whereas the heat pump is around 300% efficient.

It's not a wormhole overturning Einstein's theories, but the heat pump is able to extract heat from the outside environment (geothermal is even more efficient but is fairly expensive to set up and might not be possible with an existing dwelling) so that for the same amount of electricity used to heat your house, let's say $100 for a month, you'd heat your house with an HP for three months.

Even if it's cold and you have to use your fallback heat (you could opt for electric 'emergency' heat and you'd be no worse off than you are now) if you were using gas, you'd still be saving....gas will heat a house cheaper than pure electric will.

To get the best out of a hybrid system, you need a decent programmable thermostat set up to handle a hybrid system, but that's really quite a minor cost.

Given the age of the system it could die on you anytime soon, so I think you're wise to be considering this. Pretty much all of a new system whatever sort, will be more energy efficient than what you have now. Since it's not yet an emergency, you have the luxury of being able to shop around for the best deal, rebates and whether there are state or federal subsidies available.

Hello,
My basic furnace is 36 years old. It is an 80% efficient gas unit. Based on the testing proceedure of SEER, it is probably a 1 SEER. But when you consider the other issues the furnace is more efficient than a 80% unit built today. It will cost less money to operate than the 80% furnaces built today. Why would I claim this? First off, it has no electronics. This means when it fails the PCB is never a problem. The heat exchanger is made of heavy cast iron. CI seldom will crack or rust apart. This is opposite of todays equipment. Heat exchangers on a 90% and higher furnace have a typical life expectancy of 10 years. Motors are not the same quality as the older designs. The older designs use more energy, but will last 5x-10x the life of newer motors. Motors have only slightly changed in efficiency in the last 80 years. The difference is in the capacitor, vs shaded pole. The starting capacity has changed to a higher torque in the same time period. This may be good in some peoples considerations, but not necessarly so good by other considerations (Life of the motor and strain on the windings)

For many years Natural Gas was the heating fuel of choice. With the normal changes to the cost of gas and the American business community, Gas is not always the best choice anymore. When Producing gas wells in Texas were capped, the price of natural gas soared. (Supply and Demand) Many people that had wells on thier property saw the wells capped. Thousands of wells. Not a few but most of the wells. Sounds kinda stupid for the future energy needs, but very logical for business. I know of one well that produced a royality check of $40K per year (1970-80's) that was capped. The owner retained the mineral rights (Not the property) and is planning to reopen the well. It will be very profitable. Texaco? sealed the well in the 1990's.

david from davidandkasie, forget the effieiency! Your system is 30 years old man, it may be ready for catastrophic breakdown any day now. It's lived long past its normal life expectancy. You know as soon as you let her buy those disgusting new drapes you can't stand and that living room set thats so ugly you wouldn't be caught dead on instead the heating system is gonna go KAPOOT bigtime. Now you have to go with a low end not to efficient model because thats all the budget will handle. Oh you could go to the inlaws and ask to borrow the money but isn't that just what your mother in law has been waiting for? Then she can say to her daughter "I knew he wasn't good enough for you, the good for nothing bum" and your father in law isn't that crazy about you either, not since he saw that good night kiss you gave his daughter making your whole car rocking in the driveway back when you two were still dating! And if you go to your folks they're probably gonna think this lovely little gal you married likes to live to extravagently for yout meager income which we all know of course is a bunch of bunk but you'll never convince them differently. David, push for the new system, if she doesn't budge next week pull into the driveway pulling a brand new bass boat. I hope this helped. :-)

Pjb999:

Nothing can be more than 100% efficient!!!!!

Something can provide 3 times as much heat as something else, or can provide the same amount of heat as something else for 1/3 the cost, but that DOES NOT make it 300% more efficient!!!!!!!!!!

Nothing can be more than the totality of what it is or what it does, and that would make it 100% or the totality of what it is and does.

Boy, at this rate of lack of logic, we better start learning to speak Chinese; at least learn the words, "Yes Boss, right away, chop, chop.

Fairyprincess

Re: davidandkasie

A geothermal heat pump will heat and air-condition your home for about 70% less than what youÂre paying now.

And letÂs see, itÂs presently -6º below 0ºF and our back-up STILL hasnÂt come on with our geothermal heat pump! Still sitting around in just a tee shirt (and pants!) in the Âcoldest room in the house.

If youÂre a/c unit is 4.2 tons then that tell me a geothermal heat pump can save you TONS of money on operating and maintenance costs down through the years; more than enough to pay for the cost differential between geothermal and anything else you may install within 5-7 years.

SR

The other advantage of a geo system is you can also heat your hot water that way, which represents a huge further saving, no matter how you look at it. It may be possible to put geo in, and defer the hot water option if that's more economical, although with the savings, it'd probably be best to do it all at once!

Fairyprincess:

Did you not read my caveat? If you prefer, the heat pump produces three times the heat for the same amount of electricity. (my figure of three times may have referred to geo, maybe somebody can correct me with what the ratio for an airsource heat pump is) People have had this discussion before about % "efficiency" and I consider the term's valid IF YOU APPLY IT TO HEATING - as I said, we're not talking literally - so stop quibbling - I covered myself. You knew what I meant, so don't be petty. There are some quite well-respected people who believe quite strongly an over-unity production of energy is possible, producing over 100% efficiency, it may be a modern form of perpetual motion, but they call it Zero Point Energy or ZPE or "vacuum energy" - however, if those sources do exist, it may just be the energy comes from places we don't yet understand, so your 100% benchmark would be safe. Whatever.

As for your racist-sounding rant about speaking Chinese, I have no idea what you mean.

If you mean we ought to learn to speak Chinese (which dialect, by the way, there are quite a few) in recognition of their growing economic influence in our lives. then, I agree. It's a market and a competitor no-one can afford to ignore.

Please let's get back to the original topic, which is helping David sell his wife on a heat pump, although I like Mr HAVAC's bass boat idea...

From what you have said , this one sounds like a no-brainer....at a minimum you could do something affordable in the line of a 90% plus eff. gas furnace and high eff A/c or step up a little like others said and go the heat pump route with the 90% eff. gas furnace as your emergency heat. IMO the geo thermal route sounds good, BUT you better be ready to PAY big $$$$ for it up front.... Anything else is better than what you got and I think now is the time to look into it.

if i pull up with a bass boat i better have a heater for my workshop, cause that is where i will be sleeping. and i will have to watch her leave in my truck with the boat, cause she has been buggin me to take her fishing for a while!

i understand the 300% comment, 1/3 of the energy used to produce the same heat.

i may go the route of the HP with gas for supplemental. my genny will run the blower motor easily, so worst case i may be able to run the supplemental heat in the event of power loss. if i went back full electric, i would require a LARGE genny to run it!

i know the full electric is the least cost effective way to heat, and i have 2 of them! the system for the rear of the house is newer, mid-late 90's, so it should last a few more years. but this front system needs to be replaced soon.

plus cooling wise the front system just does not keep up anymore. with teh current digital TSTAT set to bump it up to 88 during the day when we are not there, the system still runs close to 21 hours a DAY. i found some air leaks and cleaned the coils and that cut it down to running only 19 hours a day, but still a newer system should be less expensive to run even if it has to run for a while.

Davidandkasie:

I will use some data from my home heating system plus some from my neighbor's heating system to make some calculations. You can plug in your numbers to get a more accurate picture of your costs.

Electricity: 10 cents per kilowatt
Emergency heat power consumption (from my air handler): 11.54 kilowatts
Heat pump compressor motor running load amps (from my neighbor's 11 SEER, 3.5 ton? heat pump: 15 amps.

So, the cost to run the heat pump = 15 amps x 220 volts x .10 $/kw-hr / 1000 = 33 cents/hour.

The cost to run the electric resistance heat = 11.54 x .10 = $1.15/hr.

A few notes:
1. My 20 year-old heat pump uses 22 amps. A newer heat pump will use less than my neighbor's 15 amps from his 3 year-old 11 SEER depending on the size and SEER.
2. A heat pump will run many more hours than resistance heat based primarily on the outside air temperature. At 20 F outside, I noted that my heat pump ran for 15 hours while my emergency heat would run for 6 hours on a similar day.
3. The cost of auxillary heat is not included and comes into play when outside temps are less than 30 degrees (the typical balance point for an air-source heat pump).

thanks.

i found my notes on teh system i have, the resistive heat is 19.2KW, and our electric runs about 10 per, so you might as well say it costs 2.00 an hour to run the current system for the front of the house.

HP is looking more and more a likely candidate.

Wow....if the heat runs half the time, that's $168 a week, right? That's huge. You could probably borrow money to buy a hp system, and still be ahead.

Where are you located, and what are the winter temps like? I'm thinking when you speak to some reputable dealers who can do a proper cost-benefit analysis, you may find it pays to replace both/all systems! From what you're saying, it'd pay for itself in no time. I suppose maybe you could keep the second electric system as your emergency heat, and fit one gas furnace? You have several options, but go for it :)

The key considerations with a heatpump are:
1) Their operating cost depends on the projected cost of electricity. If you live in CT as I do, the cost, effective in March will be about 21 cents/KWH and even if the HSPF (average ratio of heat from heat pump to elctric heating ) is 7 (an optimistic number) , then the average COP is 7/3.413=2.1,and the effective cost is about 10 cents/KWH. Comparing this with the cost of say oil at $2.50/gal with an 80% efficient furnace is
140,000 BTU*.80/$2.50=44,800BTU/$. For the heat pump I get 3,413BTU/.1=34,130/$, which , oil (or gas) may be the winner here, but not in low electric cost areas.
2)The HSPF depends on the average outside temperature in your area, so you would have to get data from the weather bureau to see what that average is and then do the calculation of cost vs conventional heating as I did.
3)To avoid the problem with augmentation electric heating which is needed for colder days and is included in the HSP rating, the dual system of oil or gas and heatpump could be considered , at a somewhat larger capital cost.

i live in Mississippi, and we are in a cold snap right now. the temps are in the 30's and every one but me is bundled up and freezing to death. my wife swears i was born and raised at the north pole since i am frequently outside with a tshirt and no jacket in 30 degree weather.

as to local climate, we generally only have a few nights where temps are below freezing. maybe 15 or so per winter. and even then it rarely gets below the mid 20's at night, and back inteh upper 30's to 40's the next day.

cooling is a big issue, as we generally start seeing 95+ temps in june until october. even at night it only gets down in the upper 70's most of the time.

electric costs .08 plus the fuel adjust ment which is usually less than 2 cents per kwh. so on avg i would say we pay 9.5-10 cents per.

heating oil is non existant here, it is either NG, LP, or electric.

our electric bill runs 400.00 MINIMUM year round. this is why i am looking to replace the system.

I would say you have a nobrainer there given that you live in Miss. A heatpump with a SEER of say 12 which is pretty modest should do it easily.
Assuming conservatively, your average summer heatload is 3 tons, then the amount of power needed from the heatpump is
12000*3/12 watts =3KW. At your cost of 10cents/KWH, I get for 1 month usage of 3KW*24*30=2200KWH, an estimated cost of power=2200*.1=$220 or almost half of what you are now paying. Your winter requirement should be even less.
I would get a reliable contractor to do a heatload analysis to estimate the right size unit and get at least 3 bids on the job. Good luck.