Another approach, in my rich fantasy life, is to just go solar and keep wasting energy all over the place!! Ha.

But there is math with that too. Le sigh...

What's wrong with the existing gas furnace? They tend to be pretty efficient. Has it been serviced recently? I imagine in Southern Cal, you could do just fine with heat pumps. I've known people who put them in for the A/C and use them for heat, too.

There are certainly sites you can find that will tell you how your house compares to comparable houses around you or nationally. You could start there. That might point out some obvious areas for improvement or reassure you that the house is typical.

If you find the manufacturer and model of the furnace, you can look it up for efficiency. Hot water heaters use a lot of energy. I'd look there. Mine are old, but still quite efficient. You can get a heat gun pretty cheaply and find out where there are leaks.

Insulation is always a good choice, pays back for many decades if not longer both winter and summer. The heating load in SoCal is so low I can't imagine it matters much one way or the other. If the hardware needs to be replaced I'd almost certanly go with a heat pump for both heating and cooling, there's no advantage to anything else for efficiency.

To be sure, the optimal choice of HVAC system depends both on the climate zone and the properties of the home's thermal envelope. In the case where the thermal envelope is tight and well insulated, the choice of HVAC doesn't matter much. In the case where the thermal envelope is poorly sealed and poorly insulated, the HVAC system with the least expensive energy source and/or highest COP wins. If the climate zone is one with little temperature swing hot/cold, the ventilation system may be more important than the heating/cooling system.

If the electricity supplier is Southern California Edison, whether the house is drafty or newly sealed with beefed up insulation, heating of the structure and the pool will be cheaper using gas UNLESS the home has a substantial solar panel system adequate to cover HVAC usage.

I'm a California resident with homes in both NorCal and SoCal. Unfortunately, both served by investor owned utilities (PG&E and SCE). With electric rates starting at over 40 cents per kwh, heat pumps are DOA if all electricity is purchased from such suppliers. Gas, even though our rates in both places are higher than in much of the country, is far and away a cheaper heating source for space heating and water heating.

Is there such a thing as a reliable, independent energy consultant?

Where I live it is difficult to find someone who will do an honest energy audit of your home and is also knowledgeable about the latest residential HVAC equipment. Most of the people doing this work have to supplement their income by selling a product or service and may try to sell you what they offer and not necessarily what is in your best interest.

If you can provide the peak and off peak rates electricity and natural gas rate, the costs for operating a heat pump and gas furnace for with varying efficiencies can be calculated. It would also help if you provide the age of the home, if you know how much insulation the walls and the attic contains, and a more precise location.

You should be able to find a HERS rater in your area to perform an audit and advise you with respect to energy-saving improvements and HVAC https://www.hersindex.com/

HERS services are readily available throughout California. HERS involvement is required for all new and remodel construction projects as well has any properly permitted HVAC equipment replacement. So the person concerned could likely get contact info from the HVAC contractor chosen to do the work.

"HERS involvement is required for all new and remodel construction projects as well has any properly permitted HVAC equipment replacement." That's a big step in the right direction. It no doubt protects California homeowners from hacks. I hope other states will follow CA's lead.

" If the climate zone is one with little temperature swing hot/cold, the ventilation system may be more important than the heating/cooling system. "

I meant to comment on this ^.

Coastal and near-coastal regions tend to have moderate temperatures without much in the way of daily or seasonal extremes. Moving inland, both higher and lower daily and seasonal temperatures are to be expected. Not just the obvious, as in mountain or desert areas, but also in inland valleys away from or blocked from the relatively cold water ocean.

The ventilation systems most people use and can use for much of the year are windows.

If you read things online, you see lots of scary things about refrigerants being possibly banned, or about a 10 year life of these things (??!! 10 years is just not acceptable.)

Refrigerants are being banned, new refrigerant bans are taking form. HVAC is changing and living in California market is going to be quite the traversal based on refrigerant sales bans etc.

For those reasons probably not a good idea to choose a heat pump at this junction. OR start cleaning house at the little booth you step into and pull a lever.

It's only scary if you are broke, or financially challenged. Those from the fine dining and fine accommodations box car might be a little miffed about it but for the most part while lighting their after diner cigar with a benny J min.

The refrigerants that don't get fully banned *may* develop a black market of sorts? So this only truly effects you if you are broke. (most of these areas don't have a police force, so what rules matter? I don't know?)

The refrigerant people stayed up into the wee hours of the morning on this one, got help with new ways to destroy the environment, not only to make the new refrigerant, but also to actually use it while proclaiming it's better for the environment. R454b may go down as the biggest hoodwink the HVAC industry has ever known.

Want to buy another new air conditioner / heat pump?

Those condoning this will tell you I am fear mongering. If you have a fat wallet, you have nothing to fear... other than a flat wallet. If you want theme music? Love me for the Money, by A/C ~ D/C ironically enough.

Fun times in HVAC. By 2032 we may learn what the end game actually is in the USA.

And there are enough other examples for a reasonable person to conclude there is little risk of a ban on R454B anytime soon in the U.S.

AND... you said the same thing about R410a in 2021...about it being a classic "Red Herring" my how time flies.

(click to enlarge for a memory refresher, Charles.)

Reasonable examples, yeah look what they did before? If they did it once, if they did it twice... 3 times a lady? LOL. Pretty good chance they'll be doing it again?

We're only talking reasonable examples here folks. Past history only.

Does it matter to me? NO, (not really other than it being a pain). I am certified to handle any refrigerant they dream up. EPA Universal Certification. HVAC Business is considered an essential service. PUHLEASE.

Does it matter to you? It should, it's going to *cost* you, in more ways than even I can imagine right now.

I use moments like these to paint pictures for you (not really for Charles, he's just an easy object to bounce his own rhetoric off of. He's not an HVAC contractor, he's a builder once the build is over he's onto the next build project.

I have a repeat HVAC business model, customers that have used my services for more than 14 years in many instances.

If you're rich, have a fat wallet -- none of this matters, you'll be able to just buy a new HVAC system anytime day or night the reaper comes for your poor AC or Heat Pump. But reasonable examples suggest most people are not rich, nor have a fat wallet. That is where things get sticky.

Ray,

As I recall, the "red herring" comment was because you injected your fear-mongering "Freon Wars" video into a thread for which is wasn't relevant. The phase down of R-410A and replacement with lower GWP refrigerants was well known at the time throughout the homebuilding industry including me.

While R-454B is currently subject to phase out in Europe, there is no similar regulation in place in the U.S. Such regulation may be in our future, but projecting it will be a product of the current administration defies logic.

You'll do well to keep in mind that the people who research, develop, produce, and sell chemical refrigerants live on our same planet you and I do; I submit none have a mission to destroy the environment or to destroy human health. .Your conspiracy theories and fear mongering add zero value for houzzers.

Start with the beginning. You mention a gas furnace, and you mention that electric bills are high even in winter, so I suppose they are high in summer too? This makes me think their high electric bill might not necessarily caused by household heating.

A pool pump, unless they have an olympic sized pool wouldn't make much of a difference on the electric bill, maybe $10 or less monthly.

The largest electric loads in a household are mostly heating loads. What do they use for cooking? What do they use for domestic hot water? Dryer is gas or electric? Do they have an electric car charger? A bad element in an electric water heater can cause it to draw current constantly, even though when that's the case people usually feel a mild shock or tingle while showering or while using hot water.

Is there any electric baseboard heaters in the house? I once had a friend who bought a house and was wondering why his electric bill was so high, it turned out there was a baseboard heater in a detached garage the previous owner was using as a greenhouse, that heater was constantly on, no thermostat.

Are they on a well? A bad pump or bad pump wiring can also increase power usage significantly. Any outbuildings with electrical service?

Heat pumps are great, but they use electricity, and much more of it than a gas furnace (a gas furnace uses electricity only to power its controls and the blower motors), and depending where they are located they will likely need supplemental heat strips for the coldest days of the year when the heat pump can't keep up on its own, and that's really expensive to run.

Thanks, everyone. (I'm sorry for the late reply, some times I can't sign into Houzz for some reason.)

The HERS suggestions were very helpful. I have been able to find a couple raters online and I am hoping to maybe get someone to come out. It's not exactly what I need - we aren't going to sell any time soon - but maybe they can help me understand all this a bit better.

Just in case anyone's interested, the rates as of this last month or so for SCE were:

$.73 for on peak per kWh

$.54 for mid peak

$.36 for off peak

Ay caramba.

But otoh, I guess these are problems that are good to have. In the scheme of things. It's not like I can ever move. All my people live here. Anyway. Cheers!

The gas charges appear to be "per Therm." So that will mean more math.

But otoh, I guess these are problems that are good to have. In the scheme of things. It's not like I can ever move. All my people live here.

In Texas things aren't what I would consider cheap... unless you compare it to California. Then it would be considered dirt cheap. (with a few exceptions here and there)

For Harris County: without any gimmicks like free nights this an that... around 14 cents per KWH, that includes all fees with every fee included most months are around that 14 to maybe 14.5 cents per KWH. This is a fixed rate, typically for a year sometimes longer. It's actually cheaper than what it was a year ago, but not by much, maybe 3/4 of a cent per KWH if that.

There is no peak, mid peak or on peak that I am aware of here, unless someone signs up for some crazy unfixed plan, there was some crazy variable plan several years ago that virtually went bankrupt here the year the grid went down in February a few years ago. No power for no one for what seemed like an eternity, but I think it was at most 2 days -- at least for me anyway.

It's not like I could ever move? I could if I really wanted to (eventually), but it won't be to California.