Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
Heat pump with backup electric resistant heating.
Last year's wasn't a really cold winter but it seemed like it just wouldn't go away.
And my wife would fire up a little space heater in the living room on the opposite end of the house that's not connected to the central heat and air.
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How old is your heat pump? I saw a huge reduction in consumption when I switched my house in Alabama from the old contractor grade heat pump (10 SEER / 6.8 HSPF) to an Energy Star Trane (17.9 SEER / 9 HSPF). My electricity use for heating dropped 52% and my A/C 25%. It likely would have been even better if the contractor hadn’t oversized the unit.
My Lennox ductless unit in Oregon is 24 SEER / 11 HSPF and provides 100% BTU’s down to 0F and continues to work down to -22F. It doesn’t even have backup electric heating.
However, looking at my power consumption spreadsheets today makes it clear I need to do something about my house. I’m using as much electricity in my 1000 sq ft housing in Oregon as I did in the 1500 sq ft house in Alabama! The Oregon house is older (1976) and doesn’t have any insulation in the crawl space and only 5 inches of insulation in the attic. The Alabama house was on a slab and had 10 inches of blown insulation in the attic to which I added another 10 inches of fiberglass batt.