Are you looking for a less cantankerous, more shareable version of this video? The condensed version on Connextras has got you covered! ua-cam.com/video/_hAuKtoRxJI/v-deo.html
Love the idea, but I think short ones should be targeting 15 min or less. At 26min, anyone I might send it to would probably be just as likely to watch the 60 min version.
How fitting that Alec is just about the only UA-camr who puts the long version on the _main_ channel, rather than saying "here's a bite-size video - for the full-length, go to the second channel"
Yep, I'm currently subscribed to close to 120 different channels, it rare to find a upload even close to 20 minutes, closer to 10 ~ 15 minutes is more common.
Normally you don't do that because people get bored and leave early. But because there are so many long videos here, we're used to long videos, and watchtime statistics outweigh early leaving statistics, and the algorithm is happy.
I only saw this comment at the end and now am trying to decide if I go back and watch the whole hour again. You hear that your comment may cost me an hour of my life!
One of my favourite things about heat pumps: My parents regularly used the old cliche line of parents telling their kids to close the doors / windows, "we aren't air conditioning outside". And now they aircondition the outside for half the year.
The line is technically wrong, if you open the doors you aren't air conditioning anything, but you are dehumidifying outside. Because a heat pump where the hot and cold sides are in the same connected space is exactly that, a dehumidifier.
You absolutely hit the nail on the head with your criticism of the separation of sales and technicians. While a tradesperson’s primary job is installation and maintenance, not “closing deals” their technical knowledge is utterly necessary to ensure each customer gets what they need. If you ever, EVER want to know what you need, talk to someone who does the actual work and is clearly passionate about what they do.
I won't bore everyone with the saga, but trying to find an actual pro HVAC installer in a major market that understood this stuff and was willing to work with me took over a year and too much of my life energy.
Brain drain from the trades. If not going to university is seen as failure, then you're going to have a lot of failures doing important jobs that don't require a degree.
As someone in the HVAC Trade, this video is extremely valuable to homeowners and you are empowering my own standards. Not only that, you are calling out the predatorial practices of HVAC Companies. Heat pumps are amazing tech, and I would cite this source 7 days of the week. Fantastic breakdown, thank you!
But even he said Heat Pumps are just ACs working in reverse. Don't get me wrong, ACs in themselves are amazing tech but they're nothing new, and reversing them isn't something that we didn't know we could do for ages.
@@Metallica4Life1995 On the coldest days I have seriously contemplated putting my window AC units back in, but backwards after fiddling with the thermostat. Then I put on a sweater and sit in the fluffy recliner with a book.
@@Metallica4Life1995 This isn't his first video about heat pumps, and just because it's not new, pointing out more efficient systems WITH SCIENTIFIC PROOF is not only refreshing, it's unheard of in 2024.
Fun fact, oversizing was super popular in the 80s-90s in Illinois. Not only that but salesman would often say something along the lines of “ours is the same price as the other guys but in our bid you can see that we are putting in a bigger furnace. Then they put an 80k in a 700sqft home.
Is this the ultimate Technology Connections video? Combining space heaters, with extension leads, with incandescent Christmas lights, with heatpumps and the latent heat of vaporization? Like a call back to every previous video.
HVAC guy here. A lot of the issues I've seen have been lack of adequate training. I've literally googled my way to competency, and that is completely unacceptable. But, they don't care as long as we figure it out eventually because the customer is footing the bill anyways. It's horrifying
I was in HVAC for years, and had to learn so much of the stuff myself. It's a chronic issue with the entire economy... nobody wants to train, but everybody complains about how unqualified people are.
I have found this to be true. If I give real useful information to my hvac installer they will actually use it. I just have to also respect what knowledge they have. Also I had one hvac installer say he enjoyed coming to my place because I stood and watched but not to complain but so I could learn. And we would talk about new hvac technologies. This was a decade ago so my heatpump is only efficient down to 25f. We talked about the idea of stuff that is on the market now. He was not having those conversations many other places.
No kidding. When my new system was installed a few years ago (2-ton, heat pump, 11.5kW aux heat) about the only thing they got right was they put the heat pump outside and the air handler inside. They reused the existing lineset that was too small, which they had to fix. Unfortunately they didn't fix anything else: Reversing valve was left disconnected because they didn't know how to program the thermostat for B vs O. I fixed that. W was wired to W2 at the air handler, but I do not have 2 stage aux heat. Combined with the reversing valve issue that means *I HAD NO HEAT AT ALL* the first time I needed it. HP is a 2-stage unit, wasn't wired that way. I fixed that. Since then I have learned a lot about HVAC, including how to check and adjust charge, find leaks, etc.. and I'm just an IT guy. And yes, they did try to upsell me on the tonnage. I insisted I only needed 2 ton.
@@coyote_den I went over tonnage several years ago when I replaced my unit. The house is a '57 in the desert chaparral which did get hot back in the day but not like today. The walls were thin and the old unit could keep the house at 88 F running 24/7. The new unit was 3.5 tons for 1250 sq ft with a detached garage and a roof too low guys wouldn't install or said it wasn't worth the effort to install a fan. With the new unit in it we kept it at 78 F in the summer and basically kept blackout curtains up during that time. I don't think it could get below 78 F. When I moved the container I was loading ceiling (where I'd be up to do the tie downs) got to 120 F, I'd do 20 minutes then go inside chug water lay down for 20 minutes. Prep for 20 minutes then go out and do another 20 minutes of loading. I worked till past midnight cause that was cooler.
Oversizing a heat pump a bit would make sense if a smart thermostat would track power price and local PV production adjusting temp to the allowed wiggle room in order to save money.
@RisenThe At this point, I'm not pushing anyone towards geothermal. The constant improvements in cold climate air-source heat pumps mean that the returns on going geothermal just keep on diminishing and the added expense takes _forever_ to be recouped. We can move much faster going air-source and get 95% of the improvement.
Oversizing a heat pump really isn't a good idea. It's even more important than with gas furnaces to get the sizing correct so it doesn't short cycle or resort to excessive use of auxiliary heat. You have to balance heating and cooling as well, in most regions the heat vs cool requirement is not symmetrical. @@ArthursHD
The clear problem with the smart Google thermostats is that they are made by Google. You're a smart guy. Get an old laptop running Home Assistant and go open source with your home automation. You'll pay once, you'll pay less, and you'll own your data. Join us. Go down the Linux rabbit hole.
As a HA user, during this video I was thinking... You really need Home Assistant, so I searched for the comment mentioning it and it had 10 likes after 6 months. This dude really needs to start using HA and then tell everyone about it.
I never bothered with that rinse fluid, I vaguely even remembered there was a place for it in my dishwasher. After watching his dishwasher video I bought some and tried it. It works great, the glasses are shiny now and as a bonus it eventually cleaned the calcium deposits off the inside of the dishwasher.
@@os2developerI feel you. The options in my neck of the woods priced my family out of the older townhouses in the town I work in and into a more rural detached single family home. I'll gladly pay the privacy tax, though. I was tired of hearing domestic spats, rough sex, loud music, and home improvement through the walls at all hours of the night when we rented. But to the original comment, my dishes have never been cleaner and, since installing LEDs in all the light fixtures, my power bill has never been lower.
@@os2developer Nice! The house my wife and I bought is a bit older, so is in need of weatherproofing and better insulation but it's otherwise fine. The swamp cooler will probably be the first major HVAC appliance to go. We live in a desert so they work quite well but I'd rather have a central heat pump/air conditioner with an optional furnace instead. Deserts get mighty cold at night (especially in the winter) so some extra on-demand heat is a good thing.
Am HVAC design engineer (floor plan layouts not the actual units), one of the reasons why gas furnaces are always oversized is because that 60k BTU is the smallest many manufacturers make, and they end up being the most common/cheapest because they're used on everything 5 tons and under. To get a smaller heater, you basically have to go electric or heat pump
@@TechnologyConnectionsthey’re definitely not common. Even for a lot of package units, “low” heat specs are 54K btu. That’s also the smallest furnace I can even get from our supplier, and I’m based in Vegas where we hardly need any heat in the winter
Came here to say this too. Down south Furnaces get even more oversized because you may actually need 48kbtu of cooling but only 60kbtu of heat. Well 4 ton drive furnaces start around 80kbtu but most I come across are 120k!
That has been a frequent source of annoyance. I have installed several dual fuel (gas furnace + heat pump) systems and I found a very limited selection of furnaces that could move enough air for the heat pump without being vastly oversized. At least 2 stage and modulating furnaces are affordable now and help to alleviate this, I replaced the originak 100k btu 80% furnace my house came with with a 60k btu 95% modulating furnace and most of the time it runs at its lowest setting.@@averagejoeprojects2885
I haven't bought a dishwasher pod in over a year. I couldn't be happier about knowing how dishwasher detergent works. So i will be watching this entire show from beginning to end.
Thanks to Alec, I stopped buying pods and stuck to generic powder. Because of the tips in that video, my dishes come out clean every time. Technology Connections is one of the most informative channels on UA-cam. It's amazing that a single guy with a lot of passion and dedication can produce higher quality content than anything that corporate media does.
I refuse to pay the stupidity tax on pods of any sort. Thanks to Alex, I know what the other part of the dishwasher degergent dispenser is for. My very old, portable dishwasher works better than ever.
I am a HVACR professional and I now train others in the HVAC industry. This is solid gold. I strive to instill in my trade that we have been constantly oversizing equipment for as long as the trade has been around. I converted to what is called a dual fuel setup about 10 years ago that is a heat pump with gas backup heat (lots of boring details as to why I went with that setup) When I bought my house it had a 120,000 btuh furnace installed. I now heat the house with a 3 ton heat pump which matches the cooling load on the home it is matched with the smallest furnace I could get that can provide airflow for the HP and has the capability to operate at 40% of its rated capacity. I live in a cold weather climate and with some minor help from the furnace on that colder than cold day once In a while it keeps my home very comfortable. Using similar thermostat technology I can track my power and gas usage and typically my furnace runs less than 15 minutes per day most days. And that runtime is almost all when the heat pump is defrosting. My area has incentives from various agencies and organizations will completely if not more hand cover the equipment cost to the contractor for the cost differences in the equipment from AC to HP units. Installation cost differences given modern thermostats is almost $0 A lot of what someone people will call out as flaws in his analysis are not reading between the lines in his data and methodology. You simply cannot give a masterclass on absolutely everything that goes into this stuff in one hour! Some details are left out. Great video Anyone who says otherwise is definitely selling something
You sound like one of those that knows your craft. There are a lot of goobers in the HVAC industry, despite all the talk about manual J calculations, I suspect either very few actually run them, or they are not very accurate (garbage in-> garbage out?) because it is very rare that I encounter a furnace that is not grossly oversized.
I live in Montana, we use a 5 ton equivalent heat punp for heating and cooling, and despite only having 8 inches of fiberglass roof insulation in a valulted ceiling 4000 Sq ft monster. Unless it goes below 0F we don't even need additional heat for it to keep up at 64F at night and 68F during the day. Average cost is $270 a month, for heating, hot water, cooling (we love it cold, so 66F during the summer inside) and the geothermal backed heat pump also makes hot water.
@@MegaLokopo - You must have a noisy one. They aren't all that way. My wife keeps asking me if ours is running because it's quiet enough that we can barely hear it. Sometimes she'll hear something and ask and it's the refrigerator humming instead.
Former HVAC sales rep here. Great video! While attending a hvac training, I was giving a rather shocking Stat, less than 10% of hvac sales in 2022 had a load calculation preformed prior to the sale of a new system. I'm not innocent either, as I was never told what or how to preform one of these and became part of the problem. The more I learned in that role the more shocked I was at how much damage and headache I likely caused for homeowners. Your comments on the lack of communication between departments is actually rather accurate and something that has, as of late become a much bigger focus for the company. (who I still work for under a different position, in another trade department) so atleast at our national company things are changing and loadcalcs are becoming a much larger focus company wide. The issues of system sizing has been a regular cause of issues, callbacks, and heachaces for us and the customer.
I wonder if it'd be possible to semi-automate the load calc. Some kind of equation that you can input the parameters to (shared walls, insulation, basement or slab, attic, etc)
As a technician working on a wide variety of buildings, load calcs are nearly useless: First the customer will not pay for a useful load calculation, so all you get is calculations based on ASSUMED values. Secondly, and because of this, the new load calculation almost always causes problems with callbacks and customer expectations. As long as the customer was happy with the previous unit, no major changes happened to the building and you don't notice obvious issues, just put in a unit with the same capacity, no more than a half a ton increase AT MOST. Where customers are more willing to pay for a good load calculation, and/or you are replacing both the unit and the ductwork, particularly if you are re engineering the ductwork, THEN load calculations are great, and incidentally you NEED to replace and re enginer the ductwork if you move more than a ton of capacity EITHER way. The real problem that I have seen is that technicians are encouraged to upsize units at every turn. That's a problem with management, not load calculations.
@@SoloRenegade it gets complicated. The consumer drives the industry, and they have rewarded an industry structured to rip them off. Literally one company I worked for was structured old school, and in such a way as to benefit the customer. They went out of business and got bought by a new school company structured to rip people off, and they were rewarded by consumers with more money. So as individuals consumers are not at fault, but collectively consumers are too ignorant and short term minded.... But that seems to apply across all industries.
Software engineer here. If someone specs the Manual J Calculation thing, I'm sure I could code it. Thanks for another great and interesting video, Alec!
I'm an aspiring dev with a background in laboratory work, including lots of maths. If I could help provide the specs, would you be willing to teach me a little bit about the development process?
there are already tons of apps for design loads, but ya gotta pay money for em. every major manufacturer puts one out, but generally the only people who need them are the HVAC people and they write it off as an expense. The only time they are needed or used is at the original build or if a big change is being made (new additions, major remodels, etc) because the design will have to pass planning and be approved by the building department in order to get the permit. What happens to the home after is the problem, at that stage time and greed take hold
As a HVAC service tech I have know this for over 50 Years. I was asked to design and install a new furnace and A/C system in a house which was having an addition added. The addition was almost 2000 Sq Ft. The house was built in the 60's had a large furnace 160,000 BTU. I did a precise heat load calculation and added a multi zone damper system to the new furnace. The new furnace was 125,000 BTU 95 percent. The town inspectors said I was wrong and forced me to provide the calculations. They OK'd the system a month later. and it ran great.
Even that seems quite large. I live in Finland and the recommendation is 75W per m² (24 BTU per ft²) so about 50000 BTU for the 2000 ft². My calculations might be wrong and ceiling height might be much larger in your case but it's still a large difference. Edit: I completely missed the part about an addition so it makes a lot more sense now.
When I had mine replaced, I tried to convince the HVAC contractor to drop down in size. Old furnace was 100kBTU, 60% efficient, and on the coldest day of the year (-25f) it ran 60% of the time. I figured that the new 97% efficient furnace could be as small as 60k BTU. They insisted on at least 75k BTU, so that's what I got. Based on cycle time on the coldest day, it could have been one size smaller.
Well you never know what that person's going to use that space for. Sounds to me like a couple of rooms and a new unit for tenants. Which is respectable.
I'm at the 30-ish minute mark and the volunteer firefighter inside me just cringed really hard... Last night, we had a fire call where someone plugged a space heater into a power strip, burned up the strip, and nearly burned up the outlet... Thankfully no actual fire occurred. Thank you for knowing what you did was unsafe and warning others not to attempt it themselves. Science can be fun but dangerous at times. Love the content.
@@sean2074 The reason I elected not to do that was because the wattage from the blower motor (which is higher than you might think - typically 200 watts or more) would skew my results. Plus, it was valuable to know which rooms actually have the greatest heating load. But yes - it was a risky setup. I was checking the temps of cords and connections all through the night and had fire extinguishers handy.
Why is that? Seriously. I don't have a single outlet in my home that can deliver less than 2300w (10A, 230v). I just went through every power strip and extension cord and they are all rated for at least 3600w. The wires in the walls are all girthy enough to not burn before the breaker pops. I combined two circuits (total 32A) and I tried a random cheapo extension cord. I stopped after 5700w (didn't dare to go further) and it didn't even start smelling of plastic. The plug got warm though... Are American standards that bad?
@@pyro1324 No, the American grid runs on 100+ kV transmission, 5+ kV distribution, and 240V split phase to houses. Most outlets in the home are 120V with a couple 240V outlets for dryer and stove. See his video "The US electrical system is not 120V".
This entire video is incredibly impressive. It’s like a combination of all the themes of your previous videos into a giant exposé of consuming electricity in the most inefficient way possible in order to demonstrate something about efficiency.
HVAC technicians and engineers all know proper sizing. HVAC *salescritters* do not care, and in most cases the tech simply have to install whatever the customer was sold.
HVAC installers generally pride themselves in their work. Not always, but generally. The scummy sales people just try and get the biggest paycheck possible
I live a little further north than you and basically got this lecture from the HVAC professional I had out to estimate replacing my furnace and ac. He said their standard is to determine requirements and then double it because if they don't people get bothered when the house doesn't heat up immediately in the morning, but he recommended going with the minimum if I was comfortable with the reality. He also said if I wanted to save money I should have a home energy audit and then act on all those recommendations first. Thank you for spreading the word.
Excess capacity is a good thing. It keeps things running longer and with less wear. The small savings of a smaller unit pale in comparison to having to replace it twice as often because it is barely up to the task. A relative had an old house with a 100+ year old coal, later gas, fired boiler. And it still ran like a top.
@@dancooper6002That depends on what it is. Some applications actually experience more wear with constant on/off cycling or cycles of increasing or decreasing heat (computers technically "wear down" worse for being repeatedly turned on and off, and is part of why datacenters can actually maintain insanely high uptimes).
in the US, Home energy audits are also subject to a federal tax credit up to $150 under the Energy efficient home credit. You can also get a $2000 credit for heat pump installation under the same credit.
@@ender25ish Sure, but the first time the stupid thing fails in a deep freeze you have thousands of dollars of damage done to your home that daddy government is not going to pay for.
@@salter1630 Data centers are not home appliances/equipment. The smaller one will have cost cut everything throughout. And it will cycle just as much, if not more, than a proper unit.
I just wanna say, having watched both the long and short version, thank you for making both available! The short version is perfect to send to my family who are curious enough to watch and learn, but not curious enough to click on an hour long video, meanwhile the long version has all the info *I* wanted to learn about in great detail. I know it was probably a ton of extra work for not a lot of payoff, but I hope you'll consider this style again for future projects!
I was loving this video completely the normal amount (which is already a lot, given this channel) but when the holiday lights came out, that was a +3 smile bonus immediately 🎄
@@christo930 you know that you don't have to reply to every single comment on the Internet that you don't like, right? you can just scroll right on by and it won't hurt your web browser or anything. please feel free to use this helpful tip to improve your future Internet experience. 💚👍
Whew, he almost missed the nice on 69 but stopped himself. You are quite literally the Project Farm of the electrical side of youtube. Your tests are always so indepth and well logged and you come up with creative ways of running these tests.
I work in the HVAC industry and appreciate all of the videos you have made on heat pumps. I have always been impressed with the enormous amount of research you have put in as a consumer. I would love to sit down and have a couple hour chat with you on the subject, just because my own hubris makes me believe I could fill in some tiny and I do mean miniscule gaps in your knowledge. But I will say this, there is no reason to wait to install a heat pump, if you currently have a 2 ton A/C, there are units on the market that will allow you to simply change the condensing unit outside and nothing else and have a 20+ SEER heat pump.
Hey, I'm a curious consumer myself! I have a lot of trouble looking through heat pumps because I know the COP depends on outside temperature, but I can't find the graphs with those data shown. If I'm lucky I get 2-3 data points eg: COP at 10°C, 0°C, -20°C. Where should I look then? Edit: as shown in the video at 55:00. Only 3 data points. Or is that really good enough?
@@Sekir80Those graphs are in the manufacturer’s product catalog typically. Sometimes they are in the installation or O&M manuals. If you can’t find them, you can ask a sales rep to provide it or you can ask them to provide kW estimates over a set of datapoints. You can then use linear regression in Excel to uncover the coefficients in the product’s load curve (provided you know the equation). I used to design building energy models in my day and this was something I had to do occasionally.
@@Solarusdude Yeah, these are solid advice, thanks. I only find it a bit offensive that I'm constantly handled as an idiot by the product websites giving me mostly nothing and I find it tiring I need to run several circles to obtain documents. Why can't they provide everything with a click? It's like they try to hide the data of given product.
I’m in Toronto Canada, and we have many of the hot/cold/humidity issues Chicago has… and the furnaces at my moms place (they’ve had two in my lifetime) have always been way too big for the house. The old one was so large it could have filled the whole basement bathroom! The new one is much smaller… but still way too overpowered. Even in the coldest points of winter… it only runs for 10-15mins per hour to keep the house toasty warm all winter. I’m never going to be able to afford my own home… but I still love learning about all this stuff… so thanks for everything you do Alec!
I've been in this trade for 35 years, when I do a manual j, I find the existing heating systems are usually around 33% to big. I have lost several heating system replacements, because the customer say I'm under sizing their system. Because all the other companies said you need to go with the same size. The HVAC industry has its problems, but homeowners like bigger systems in their house. So we either conform, or we die in the wind.
I know as a home owner it would be nice to see two quotes side by side in that case. One with the numbers run and optimized and another with my current system. I would like to think that I as an engineer would follow your advice, but if the cost difference is not that great then I can also understand the paranoia.
@@Taskarnin exactly, the prices are usually within a couple hundred dollars. I have actually seen the bigger ones sell for less than the smaller ones, do the supply and demand. Customers think that if they get a bigger system they're getting more bang for their money.
Well, if you offer them a smaller unit that is more appropriate and they incist on a bigger unit there is no reason to not give it to them. Then it is on them honestly.
@@rogerk6180 exactly, if I refuse to do the job, I will lose the job, and I'll eventually be out of business. So I installed the larger ones. Then I hear from Engineers saying that I'm installing the wrong units. Hvac trade is the problem. It's funny, when I get the new heating system inspected, I point out that the boiler is oversized, I do this to cover my ass from the next homeowner who purchases the house. The inspector points out that oversizing a heating system is grounds for failing inspection. Then they tell me, that they are not going to fight homeowners on this.
Your point on sales being separated from installs and service is so on point. It’s happening to every industry though, HVAC, plumbing/water treatment ,automotive , Electrical, and telecommunications.
So true. A vendor I've worked with for literally decades hired a sales guy a few years ago, and he was really excited to meet with me to tell me about everything they have to offer. I know the industry and his company's offerings better than he does. I told him it was a pleasure to meet him, offered to help him if he had any questions with the nuances of the product line, and if he had any questions on how to help other customers. I really like everyone at the company he works for, and he's a nice guy, so I want them all to be successful. But if I'm gonna spend an hour with him, I'd rather do it helping him instead of pretending he can help me.
I'm so thankful I moved from working at a large internet RSP with separate sales, provisioning, and customer support (my job there) departments to a small one where the same team handles all of it. The old place was so frustrating, because sales reps would overpromise performance or misguide customers on what their current equipment will be capable of (or upsell them on stuff they didn't need), and provisioning was always unavailable because they were so slammed with work, but we didn't have the permissions to do their job when we were free even though it's really quite simple... The new place is great because none of those jobs are too specialized to actually require dedicated teams, and having access to all of it makes everything so much easier. Sometimes we can go from enquiry, to sale, to connection, to router setup all in one call even (which people love hahaha), but most importantly no more "Sorry, this is the wrong department, let me transfer you so you can wait on hold again." or "Yeah, basically someone needs to press a button, but I'm not allowed to, but also that someone isn't available right now." or "The sales rep said WHAT??" 😭 I wish it was more common, particularly with telecommunications because it would be so easy. So much of sales/provisioning is automated already anyway, so those calls don't take much away from tech support availability, and it just really simplifies things when the staff understand every step of the connection process.
I used to work for an industrial automation company... The separation of sales and tech was the bane of my existence, customer satisfaction, and efficiency.
many hvac companies are geared toward sales rather than service, when I got into this field 50 years ago, it was the other way around. it has always been a practice that sales and service was separate. you had the service techs, and the installation crew, I was on the service side for one real good reason, I got paid more, over what the installers got paid, and installation to me is boring, brain dead work.
I got a quote from an actual HVAC technician that was just as messed up as any of those examples he gave in the video. My house needs less than 24,000 btus of cooling on the first floor, and he quoted me a 48,000 btu system for the first floor, and two 24,000 btu systems for the second. I ended up getting a two 36K systems, and then only because I wanted separate head units in every room and couldn't get any with four heads that were smaller than 36K. If I could have gotten two 24K systems with four 6K heads each, I would have. One of the first-floor head units alone was 24,000 btus and would almost certainly have short-cycled constantly. Incidentally, the system he quoted me was almost $45,000 installed because they were charging a 500% markup (to the penny), which I know because he messed up and included the links to the equipment on their supplier's website in the item description. Had he been in sales, he might have known to delete those before printing the quote. My actual system, bought from the manufacturer and installed by a different HVAC company, was under $6500 installed.
As someone with ADHD who struggles to focus on anything for very long, Alec is one of the only UA-camrs who can make a 1+ hour long video on literally anything and keep me hooked the entire way through
The sarcasm goes a LONG way to holding attention; it requires active listening to pick up on the humor. Similar to watching letterkenny & the much more nuanced humor.
Same, severe diagnosed ADHD. I have watched what could be considered very boring topics (why US power strips are unsafe and how they could be much safer, etc.) but I find myself watching all the way through and speaking on it later, lol.
Lots of killawatts, manually configurable thermostats, manually resetting at the start of the measurement period… jeez, dude. Smart plugs with built in measurement sensors, hooked onto ideally zigbee or if necessary WiFi, hooked to a computer (raspi is fine) running Home Assistant and all you need then is a bunch of temperature sensors to log that you should have anyway. It’s like you’re all about making your life easier - as long as it’s not easier than the 80s or 90s.
I just had an HVAC pro come out to do an estimate for a new unit and he said that my furnace running 6 hours on the coldest day is too LONG a run-time. Thank you for your videos, they are awesome! -Fellow midwesterner living in coastal Virginia.
I work at an engineering firm & design HVAC systems every day. You hit the nail on the head! Every time i thought “well what about x” you would say “on the other hand -“ its like you were reading my thoughts. Great video!
What about duty cycle? Often in engineering, we don’t want systems to run 24/7, because it wears parts down with heat, friction, and fatigue stress - reducing the life expectancy of the parts. Systems designed to run 24/7 are typically more expensive to build. Let’s say the fan motor is rated to last 50,000 hours, if it only runs 3 hours a day, it could last 45 years. If it has to run 24/7, it will last less than 6 years. Some parts, like the flame sensor, may do better running continuously - but many do not.
@@123psi8the hardest wear on the compressor is during start up when theres no oil pressure/flow. Since that's by far the hardest moving part to change it dictates the duty cycle. Running a 100% duty cycle at a lower percentage of the capacity(maybe 30% of tonnage) is more efficient than letting the temperature rise of fall and then running at 100% of capacity
@@AGH0STBUSTER5 I was talking about the furnace, not the heat pump, but that is a fair enough answer. The devil is in the details and I would like to hear from an engineer who designs the device itself. If the design engineer expects the system to run at low duty cycle, they will design accordingly to cut cost. Why buy a pump/motor/fan with a 100,000 MTBF that will last 25 years if your boss is telling you to cut costs and design for the 5-year warranty? Why buy a continuous duty motor if you expect a 25% duty cycle or lower? Not that I agree, but that is what happens. And it happens because most people buy quality when it something they want. When it is something they need, they buy cheap 🤷🏻♂️. Again, not an HVAC guys, just my 2-cents.
My thoughts but then my SO and I got a apartment and oh boy did the knowledge kick in, that dishwasher will be performing mint thanks to technology connections videos on dishwasher and the darn pack things
As a (former) licensed HVAC installer and technician, I want to thank you for giving this industry a stern talking to. I did load calculations for my jobs and there was a (short) time where the state required them for every final inspection, but that was abandoned because few of the HVAC people here are intelligent enough too do basic math :(. I'm not not kidding as they also had to seriously dumb down the state licensing test in a desperate attempt to help these idiots pass, despite requiring them to have all applicable code books with them during the test! There was such a shortage of licensed workers that homes could not be built and I imagine this has only gotten worse. Thankfully, I do know of local HVAC companies that are qualified and very good at their job, but I also know of some that are both incompetent and debatably criminal as they'll overcharge their own mother and then brag about it to other contractors. Informing consumers of these issues is very valuable, so thank you. This is perhaps the most important HVAC-related video you've done since the one on stupid portable air conditioners.
You really need to do a whole home model factoring location, sun, insulation, volume, etc, and the cost of doing that model is the half the cost of the system. Just makes more sense to do estimates and caution on the side of error in most cases. Ive run models for larger buildings for energy code reasons and the modeling cost around $6k. No single family home owner is going to pay for that unless it is high end and going for LEED certification, which Ive also done... on a $20 million house.
YES! This is so sadly and absurdly true! I asked all four HVAC contractors that bid the house I was building to show me their manual J's load calculations... two said they didn't do one, they based it off my square footage... and astonishingly the other two DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A MANUAL J WAS! Not surprisingly, they all suggested 2 4 ton or bigger units for my 3200 square foot, 2 story insulated concrete home... but after paying $1200 to an outside engineering firm, the ACTUAL numbers called for a SINGLE 3.5 ton. I've been heating and cooling (heat pump) my house for 7 years now with a single unit. HVAC contractors are a joke.
Goes for most skilled labour these days. There are very few capable people, because if you are able to understand all the code as an electrician or HVAC or plumber, you will either start your own business or be promoted away from the field. Either way you end up in an office. I mean someone who can make master electrician might as wel go for electrical engineer. Pay is better. So the people holding the wrenches and screwdrivers will always be the mid to bottom tier.
I wish I could shove this comment in the face of anyone who ever said "Why do we need to learn this math in school, we'll never use it in the real world." THERE IS TONS OF MATH TO DO IN THE REAL WORLD.
As a Canadian who lives in a city that sees -40 every year (fun fact, -40c and -40f are the same), a furnace anywhere but the lowest floor seems mental. Its the first I've ever heard of it.
Energy auditor here, only 4 minutes into the video but you named off everything on my residental energy audit software. I check everything from the joist spacing to the operating pressures of each register. The Department of Energy are using all the factors you listed in order to weatherize homes. Hope that gives you peace of mind. One of my goals is switching gas furnaces to electric heat pumps. Western Ky here. You hit such a huge point at the 25 minute mark. The software we use has a Windows XP face and I think it came out in 2012 and just had updates. I've got a list of DOE approved audit softwares, and they're all a decade and a half behind us. We need to take some of that weatherization money and use it to design a user friendly app, if not just for the professionals. The current system is frustrating enough to make me find another job. On the ductwork design rant; almost every house I inspect here has the ductwork in the attic. We spend a few hundred on sealing the ducts with mastic on every job. Concerning your garage, is the ductwork in that chase internally lined with insulation? Maybe that could help.
Tasks like this are what people should be using AI for. Anonymize the datasets for a few thousands of homes and train the AI to run a questionnaire for the person doing your job until you think all the special conditions are covered and it can generate a reliable result.
@chrisblake4198 I actually do use ChatGPT to help me with the absurd amount of formulas I have to memorize. Like to find the minimum required ventilation in cubic feet for a combustion appliance zone. It's alot of data input, and they could make it way easier but it's government funded. It's basically a free heat pump and insulation for households under 200% poverty. But the problem is that every house is so different that it would take a while for AI to catch up. AI could handle manufacturered homes no problem.
@@chrisblake4198 Software developer here. This isn't a problem that can be solved by AI. Rather, the things AI is good at aren't the things that are the problem. Adding AI to the existing systems doesn't benefit anyone other than Nvidia. Yes, you could build an AI system to do the estimation. But as the results in this video shows, the existing formulas are plenty good enough to get within 5% of the actual value. We don't need an AI system to do the estimations. What's needed is a UX designer and a front end developer to build a better more usable interface over top of the existing software. Existing AI tools don't magically fix user interfaces built for Windows XP. All that's needed is a small team of developers and a few months to put together a nice website to run the existing published calculations. In fact, a single software developer could build the whole system if they're a highly competent front end developer who also knows how to manage cloud infrastructure, and they have a few thousand dollars each month to pay for server costs.
That hour went by so quickly. I literally thought: What, it's over already? how can one person explaining HVAC be more entertaining than all of Hollywood combined?! Thank you so much Alec! 🤗
Now you need a well sized heat pump, a commercial dishwasher, a defunct Japanese microwave, very specific christmas lights, and a smart heat controller
I've been battling this battle for the past two years regarding my parents home and HVAC companies. 5 ton AC currently every company insists on replacing with the same. I've done the manual J and analyzed their thermostat info and they can 100% downsize to 3.5 ton. But every company tech/sales person goes crazy when I tell them this.
The whole 'Heat pumps are just air conditioners, but they don't want you to know!' part made me chuckle a little. Down here in Aus, they've just been called 'reverse cycle air conditioners' for as long as I can remember, so there is no big mystery.
It was a smart thermostat that led my dad to discover someone was stealing heating oil from his business. A locking cap solved that problem - he has since ditched oil altogether.
A tale from Denmark🇩🇰 Changing from gas to HVAC, I’ve calculated 6 kw needed. Asked for quotes in HW price, extras and man hours. Took me 12 quotes with 8-16 kw pumps, before one supplier, 200 miles away made the right quote with 7 kw HWAC. You’re so spot on the problems, and not alone. 🇩🇰😎
The companies that quoted 16-18kW knew what they were doing. The guy that quoted you 7kW had no clue. A Heat Pump should only operate 1/3 of the day. Not all day. Good luck!
@@orppranator5230 - yet your refrigerator is designed exactly the same way and you’d never question that engineering. Just as the heating element in my espresso machine cycles on and off many times in an hour - almost no equipment is designed to run continuously. It’s standard engineering practice. He says it himself! Eleven contractors knew what they were doing. Yet he thinks he knows their trade better than them and chose a cowboy that went in with a cheap quote using under rated equipment. Next time he *might* trust the people that know what they are doing. The cheap man always pays twice.
A lot of the high prices are likely related to gov subsidies. I found that if there is a $5000 gov rebate for installation of a more efficient system, magically prices in the area just go up by 5 grand and the companies end up pocketing the rebate
A simple solution would be to make a limit like "$5.000 rebate for systems that cost less than $20.000". It will also have the advantage of affecting poorer people with smaller houses and not subsidizing the rich.
1+ hour Technology Connections episode? Hell yes! I hate it so much when someone tells me we're going to do a 'deep dive' on some subject and then can only muster like 25 minutes of content.
Just wanted to say it's been amazing to watch this channel grow in size, success, and technical polish, without budging a millimeter from its principles, its tone, or its sense of humor. Keep up the excellent work!
My wife and I are currently saving to replace our heat pump out here in the Pacific Northwest so this video was some great information for me to have before we start asking different installers for quotes. Thanks
Michigander here, i LOVED the hard flex on midwesteners having those most common sense for the past 100 years. my house is 100yrs old and guess where my vents run??? THROUGH THE WALLS
Plenty of Michigan houses use the basement for heat ducts, which has the same good result as his garage route or Christmas lights. The basement doesn't have to be as comfortable as the living quarters, but you don't want the pipes near the washing machine to actually freeze. That said, I personally miss the older norm of "It's winter. You can wear long sleeves." so that going outside didn't require such an extreme transition. (Though lately, we mostly solved that by skipping winter.)
My current home turns 100 this year. In around 2021 it had a spaghetti octopus installed in the attic. My oh my how that is working. The only insulation is 2-3 inches of "rock wool" between the ceiling joists, and the attic has open vents on both sides and the top (two whirlys AND a peak gap). The bills are ungodly, and the system heat cannot keep up below 40 F, running nonstop. Its at best 10 F warmer in the attic than outside. It didn't seem too strange, coming from homes in Florida, but the delta-T is at most 30 in Florida at any time of year, and attic venting helps there. The same system here, with tree shade, cools the home very efficiently (cheap). Hopefully I won't be here next winter! Also, the "droop" was NOT set by the installer, and defaulted to zero, the signal for a shared Gas Heat/AC system. Why? With "cold" here being 20 F, and the droop at 5, the "strip heat" still takes over around 50 F indoors! And the bill is still enormous for 55 F interior temps. Its ghastly when these things are done wrong. In my case, the spaghetti octopus in an actual freezer is my problem. Did I mention no ceiling fans and 9'8" ceiling? So you sometimes get a hot forehead walking through the house while your legs are freezing.
@@bellemorelock4924 when it comes to the cold feet and hot head I 100% agree. i have nearly the same insulation factor, we had a stint by me where it was -10 for a good week or so and there was a SERIOUS draft coming from my front door and each room had a different temperature. plaster only does so much to hold heat lol
I'm in Canada, and I've never seen ducts run through the attic. We mostly have basements, so have forced air heat through floor vents, with the ducts run in the basement. All the "waste" heat is lost within the house and helps heat the basement.
@@my3dviews in mid-south Florida, a COLD winter night might hit 40/5 degrees, so cold isn't a thing. In fact, I had GAS heat and estimate 10-20 USD for that gas, per year. So it was just the differential between attic heat (120F) and the Flex ducting (60F) in the attics. Short and simple, attic tubes are fine (not great) for hot places. Now, in mid-atlantic or mid south USA, the attic tubes really suck in the cold weather, with the hot air staying high and COLD floors. My A/C is great, though I hardly use it compared to florida heat. In wall or soffit ducts would be so much better, but floor A/C vents are also bad for distribution.
“avoid complaints”. You finally got there! I design heating systems and you are 100% correct; across the board. You only understate the power of whining, relentlessly unsatisfied and miserable complainers.
Related to your comment - I think we're gonna need to do a _lot_ of working helping people understand how supplemental heat sources factor into all this. Lots and *lots* of comments now are seemingly ignoring that you can (and probably will) have two heat sources with a heat pump. It's a totally different ball game to having a right-sized furnace with no room for error.
@@TechnologyConnections Even with a properly-sized furnace in a 110 year old house, I like to keep the house set cool in the winter and run a space heater in the rooms I'm using for like 30 minutes to an hour to be comfortable in those few times where I'm both awake and inactive. In the really cold snaps, the electric blankets come out for TV night. At that point, who cares if the house is 60 when a 50 watt blanket will keep you warm for the 15 minutes it takes to get all the animals on your lap, and you have all the heat you want without even the blanket on? Talk about extracting heat energy from the pet food you have to pay for anyway.
Not sure what to do about people that are cold from being outside for a few minutes and turn up the thermostat because it's cold outside, and they want to get warmer faster. Even when the heater is already running. Same people that like to run the thermostat at 68 in the summer and 78 in the winter. Sigh
How do I go about finding a HVAC company that knows their stuff? My heat pump goes on for too long and raises the temperature too much above the set point, the company that installed it and then another company I had come in tried telling me this is a feature that it doesn't stop heating as soon as the set point is reached because it is a variable compressor. Waking up in the middle of the night because you are too hot to turn the whole system on and off so that it won't turn on again until it goes below the set point isn't a "feature" though. I have read through the manuals and there are quite a few settings that might help, but I don't want to screw things up. I also wanted to talk to a company about venting outside air in through filters as it takes the house quite a while to cool down at night in summer even with windows open and that isn't possible when there are bushfires, and how to go about that, but I don't know how to go about finding a company that would be good at that as I don't want to pay for someone to give me a quote when I have no idea of their competency, but it does make sense that I would have to pay for coming up with a solution to fit my already existing system.
Just a side note for people: here in the Southeast we use heat pumps all the time, so the "HVAC industry" is very location dependent. This channel is very Midwest (and Northeast) oriented, not that there is anything wrong with that (Seinfeld reference lol)
Fantastic video, super thorough. My take away is heat pumps are great but this idea of getting only exactly as much heat as you need, and then needing to get space heaters or to bundle up? Nope. I want enough heat to stay warm from my central system. If you have young children you don't want to hear "bundle up".
I absolutely admire your commitment and dedication to consistently spelling out "H-V-A-C" every single time instead of just saying "H-Vac" like everybody else does.
To someone who’s watched every video on this channel, this video is like friggin Infinity War. All the old favorite characters make an appearance, all it’s missing is some painted white LED Christmas lights! Edit: Jesus Christ, I was only halfway through and I was joking about the Christmas lights. Touché, Mr. Connections.
Pro tip: share a wall with someone who likes to keep their house _way warmer_ than you prefer. I used to live in an apartment where I shared all my walls and I never turned on my heat.
@@matsl89 There is a reason many apartments where I live provide free heat. They don't want people shutting off the thermostat and letting the pipes burst.
That's one critique I have with his townhome test, how much heat was he getting from the neighbors who were most certainly running their heat? Does he share 1 wall or 2?
HVAC engineer here, first residential is the bottom of the barrel so you get a lot of incompetents. Frankly homeowners are garbage customers who don't want to pay you and are overly needy compared to corporate clients (I've had more flack from a single family home than I did from a 50,000 square foot office renovation - and one of those paid far better). So there's basically no one who is a "respected installer" in your area - all of those are working for corporations. What you can get is "the best of the worst". It's like looking for high end talent in AAA baseball teams. Second, you just said it right at the start - you spent $70 on gas. So it was pretty efficient. Gas furnaces can have as high as a 20:1 turndown ratio, and gas piping can typically accomodate far more therms than the piping is used for (although lousy engineers sometimes don't even spec units with turndown options - idjits). So why not oversize? Larger gas burners and fans are barely more expensive, so it's trivial to design for scenarios like "the power has been out for three days in the coldest week of the year, and now we'd like to bring the house back to temperature in 30 minutes". The homeowner appreciates it when it does happen, and there's no harm in doing it. Obviously you size differently for heat pumps, which is one of the reasons people complain - when the above scenario does happen, the house takes a long, long time to get warm comparatively. Yes, you'll be shivering for a few hours while the heat pump brings your house from 10 degrees to 70 compared to blasting double the BTUs from a gas furnace. But don't assume that every time something is "too large" engineers are dumb. You could maintain 75 mph on the highway with a 40 horsepower engine in most cars. Does that mean you "only need" a 40 hp engine? I'd try driving a car with one of those before assuming all that extra power is simply wasted. You've got a few misconceptions here I'd happily talk to you about (and yes, ACs are Heat Pumps, although that's only 'kind of' for newer ultra low temp models like the HyperHeat, which is a little different). Seriously, fancy systems at two output levels? We can run fancy systems at nigh INFINITE output levels, continuous modulation for continuous operation. Two output levels is bargain basement entry level garbage the IECC might not even let me install in an office environment (and that's what the residential sector consideres high end, see why no one wants to go there?)
I’m a HVAC salesperson in the DC Maryland Area. Old oversized equipment is so prevalent here. And you can take your time explaining to the customer why it’s oversized, but when you have customers who say why change it if it’s worked for all these years and other salespeople just spec what they had. I did that to a customer…had a 3.5 ton ac and a old 150k furnace from the 40s…i put a 70k furnace and 24k heat pump. Row home about 1800sq ft. Customer kept bringing up how this website was saying he needed 4k…we installed it, he loves it. Great video!!
@@andrewsherlock7296 I try, I try. I still lose customers. Right now im in an uphill battle with a customer who has a 3.5 ton unit, with a small return and plenum to branch out, and 1200 sqft home. Complaining that he already struggles cooling the 2nd floor, his unit short cycles, so air doesn't move with what he has now.
i design pottery and glass kilns,and the heat loss computations are complicated, but (TaDa!) I have a friggin coputer, so the calculations are possible. I more or less constantly have arguments with HVAC contractors. You are a breath of fresh air!
Aussie HVAC tech of 40 years! We manufactured them from 1972 - glad to see our American cousins finally catching up! One point you missed out on - a little issue of “duty cycle”you don’t want your gas heater, airconditioner or “reverse cycle airconditoner” (aka Heat Pump) running 24/7. What you are arguing here is that the compressor in your refrigerator is 500% larger than it needs to be - which it probably is. However just try designing a refrigerator with the compressor running 24/7 - and it won’t last very long. Size your heat pump so that it’s “just right” for your home and let me know if your electricity bill is still $70
Where were you 4 years before when "my specialist" suggested me to install a 16 kw heat pump that now runs on short cycles just to find out by myself that actually my home needs maximum 10 to 12 kw.... A really explanatory deep dive that teaches you something !
Then you have a bit of spare headroom in case a particularly cold cold-snap drops by to say hello. With the crazy climate many places have been having over the last decade, you will likely need it at some point.
Doing thee actual math is time consuming, and sometimes beyond the skillset of the salesperson. So the fallback is to assume that if your existing oversized system was enough when it was in good condition, then just replace with a similar-sized unit. Lazy and uninspired, costs the customer more most of the time, and earns the company more.
Todays thermostat and apps should be able to tell you how correct sized your furnace is. Punch in BTU & it should know or then track the runtime and weather history. More to it if the furnace is choked etc but really the info is there for general purpose.
Yeah, it's not just HVAC or home building industries. It's every industry. It's all about job throughput and speed of installation. "Done" isn't always done right, often even if the markup and "overheads" are IMO ridiculously excessive. I install and service audiovisual systems and we're in the middle of some renovations right now, fun times. Thanks for your empirical data approach, and your humourous presentation style Alec! I always appreciate it. Now if only I could convince my apartment building to swap the in wall AC unit with a heat pump, at the least it could supplement the electric baseboards that are all I've got right now!
Just did a manual J calculation for my home, came up with around 36000BTUs, so I bought a 36000BTU heat pump 4 zone system, and will relegate my old 85000BTU oil furnace to the backup. Thanks for the video! the HVAC companies all wanted to do a 4 or 5 ton heat pump system, which 4 companies quoted me over $18000 for it. I bought a DIY system for just over 6k.
You need to be careful here, you need to verify the output BTU of the heat pump at those low temperatures. Especially when you get below freezing many models start to derate. That derated number is what you need to be using for your sizing.
I love it when the DIY crowd "knows more" than the technicians. People like you keep people like me (Hvac tech) up to our eyeballs in service calls. Btw- I charge more to fix a DIY screw up
Depending on the age of your oil furnace it may be as low as 56% efficient. A lot of them varied between 56-65% with only a few newer ones approaching 80%. With natural gas converting from an 80% to a 96% plus normally allows you to go down an input size as the output is nearly the same. But as another poster said, be aware of what your winter temperatures are vs the actual output chart of your heat pump. Properly sized it will save you on your heating bill though.
Thank you for stopping and adding the obligatory "69, nice" as is customary proper internet etiquette. Love all your videos dude, you are inredibly thorough.
6:20. "We see this large spike in the morning when the program raises the set point to 69, but otherwise - sorry, nice - but otherwise the furnace runs for about 10 minutes per hour." Large spike, eh?
HVAC guy is coming out this afternoon to discuss replacing my house's 15 year old AC/Gas Furnace combo. As a fellow midwesterner I was already planning on getting a heat pump specifically due to your previous video, but it was nice for this one to pop up today and give me a reminder.
"But you may have noticed the runtime" *moves mouse over the video and is shocked by the runtime* "Yeah, we're covering a lot" That... was a very nicely timed pause there. At least it was for me. 🙂
Oversized cooling system (as was stated) can create a mold issue. Little to no dehumidifying creates a wet attracting environment to mold and mildew. There were homes in Florida where the oversized systems caused mold in the ducts.
Commercial HVAC guy here. Great video. If it makes you feel any better, water source heat pumps, with hot water injection (usually from a gas boiler) has pretty much become the standard for new commercial buildings. Also, much better control strategies have been being used including setpoint optimization that directly looks at the current loads on the building and adjusts the setpoint and equipment speed accordingly, among other things.
Yes but to be fair the commercial world is a lot more straightforward than residential. Residential companies are professional conmen most times. Not that honest ones don’t exist, but we both know that. A lot of people just never change
@@bradleyscofarm6151 commercial buildings are not straightforward lol. Let me know once it’s the standard for resi to get VFDs on fans, pumps and compressors, central water plants, cooling towers, condenser water loops with heat exchangers for free cooling, actual controls (not just “smart” thermostats,) and air and water balancing. You’re lucky if your average resi technician even knows how to check the static pressure over the fan on your home air handler.
I'm an engineer and have had to run heat loading calculations for control areas in nuclear power plants and I gotta say...the math isn't even all that scary, it's just cumbersome and annoying to do. But if you can copy a few equations from Google and make half decent use of excel, you can definitely do it
HVAC contractor here. We UNDERSIZE always. Here in EU, especially Scandinavia, we recommend to install a heat pump that is 80% of the whole heat load of the house/apartment with 20% as auxiliary. This is a common practice and knowledge of any good professional in this field here. This is because it will lead to; higher efficiency, longer lifespan, cheaper investment cost, cheaper running cost, less start and stops, quieter. This is all because a undersized will do fewer start and stops, running longer intervals and more continuously during the whole year as it have to run longer to keep it warm, as in video "struggle longer" but that is a good thing as it will run as it optimal capacity for the building as long as possible and not shut off and start that take more energy each start cycle and also do more wear and tear on components, it will lead to that an undersized heat pump being more efficient, better SCOP, and as more longevity, less maintenance or replacements. Also The coldest days is few per year. For only couple of days to maybe one week it will be coldest or mostly at night, so you can use auxiliary heat source such as a direct electric boiler/heater. The majority of the year you don't need that much heat, like 90% of the year you need only 80% or less of the whole target heat load (80% of the heat losses that the house has). We all here in Scandinavia know here from 50 years of experience of heat pumps that a heat pump that is not having too much start stops and use aux electric heat for the coldest nights will have a life of 25-30 years if you are lucky, average 18-25 years. An oversized heat pump will last only 10 years. So 80% is our best recommendation for your wallet. And remember 1 degree colder heating will save you 5-10% of your electric bill and will get you some more years of the heat pump, also keep you more active and healthy :) But need to be said as last thing, now all heat pumps here are inverters with frequency variable speed controlled, so now the heat pump tries to never shut off the compressor and goes down in speed and up in speed depending on the load is needed and the outdoor temp, So now we just buy one size almost that fits all, but still you don't want to over size here, as it will remove the benefits then that it cant go down in enough low frequency speeds, so it will act if oversized more like a on-off heat pump and then you loose the whole point why you bought a inverter variable speed heat pump. So don't oversize, always better to undersize with 80-90% of the whole heat load, even if inverter aim for as close to 100% as possible, the lower speeds will be active all spring, summer, fall, only coldest winter will need full heat capacity. UNDERSIZE IS KING!
I was going to ask about VFD's on another comment, but yours pretty much answered it. Where I am, power outages are fairly rare but happen enough that I'd be inclined to keep my gas furnace just for those occasions where I could run it on battery or generator power and still have heat. Every time our local power has gone out we've still had gas pressure, and it wouldn't take much power draw to keep the place warm.
My parents are getting quotes these days and the list of considerations is similar in Germany (the insulation significantly improved since installing the previous heat)
You're so right about the price gouging that goes on, they assume we don't know enough to know when we're being ripped off. Recently my 74 year old Mom was sent an estimate from her HVAC company to replace the thermostats in her house, they estimated $2,000. From a bit of googling I learned that the thermostats cost $500 in total and I estimated 2 hours in labor, which is extremely generous for changing thermostats. They effectively tried to sneak in a labor charge of $750 per hour because they assumed my elderly Mom wouldn't know better.
Did they have to run new thermostat wire? if not then that would be a crazy estimate. depending on the location of the thermostat running new wires to the AHU and the Cond through the walls would take a lot more effort and longer then 2 hours.
I presume more than one thermostat because it's zone heat? I just replaced my three year old dead Honeywell thermostat with a China's Best from Amazon for $33. I even like it better, 1/3rd the cost. Both have the aux heat connection for heat strips.
@gleb.salmanov "Why does everything need to be a scam these days?" Short answer? Capitalism. The profit motive is the dominant force in our economy, and by extension our lives. Capitalism necessitates scamming, price gouge, and vicious exploitation because if Company A want to run an honest, more business, and Comkamy B is ruthless and unethical, they will put Company A out of business. Thus, over time, all the honest business die out overtime, and all businesses end up competing within the amplified scheme of exploitation. Company's that were reasonably ethical all got put out of business, and we're left with the bad guys competing with each other, making them behave even worse. It's an inevitable result of Capitalism.
12:52 is what's also happening in hospitals, and different, departments, only focused on one part of the human body, and why general/family medicine is so important, because if you are in one part of the body with a problem, you can get something done for that part, but it will domino effect itself in other parts of the body, if not properly managed, and it is why we need a board of general managers that understand all the parts of the body, but we can't forget the psychological (mind/soul/feeling/placebo) part of the humans, because that is also a major factor, yes the body is a machine/hardware, but you need a good soul/software engineer as well.
I'm only a minute in, but i am already getting annoyed that I'm not giving the info i care about. When the house was built, size of furnace, how cold it got. Most engineers in the artic actually undersize the HVAC system for heating during the winter. Where the furnace can't heat the house on the coldest days, but we only expect those temperatures a few days out of the year. This has became even less of an issue with all the electronics people run and house insulation improving. But the tight house saving your energy bills may also be creating health problems by lack of air circulation.
Don't place all egg in same basket. Especially when their service goes down... Lock out of everything. Use other companies to promote companies market gain.
Indeed. If you're giving them all that data about you that they really don't need and shouldn't have (because it's google. It absolutely phones home and tells them everything it can at every opportunity, that information is where they make their actual money, making you pay to give it to them is just a bonus), the least they can do is actually provide the promised service properly.
I'm an HVAC/R tech who used to work for a resi company, now back in commercial and industrial, and I can say you are spot on with the abundance of oversized systems. Unfortunately, lot of sales guys do perform poor practices using a rule of thumb to size (generally based on sq ft) or just slapping in the same size that was there before, no actual heat load calculation. Many of my calls were due to high limits tripping from oversized systems and these were on a lot of the company's installs. I was basically told to lie to the customer and not mention the sales dude quoting over sized systems and to blame the duct work size was too small. Long story short, I started to spill the beans and spread the truth and this didn't turn out well with the office and sales boys.
Not a knock on the resi guys but in my experience there’s a severe lack of good techs, all the good ones who are interested in any sort of calculations and whatnot generally speaking end up jumping ship to commercial/industrial eventually like you did. Dealing with the customer bs just isn’t worth it for somebody with skills so much of the time.
Had to stop and laugh at the quick joke at 46:54 about "you're so vain". You're really a master at weaving in little jokes and moving right past them, it really elevates your work
As soon as you said your heating needs were just under six kW my first thought was "huh, you could probably do that with four space heaters and a few control circuits." To see that exact thing happen later was extremely satisfying.
I have ended up doing most installs these days myself because of similar situations. The “pros” these days only want to install what puts the most money in their pocket
I had an opposite experience. I was about to replace my 3 ton AC because it was old (24 years old at the time) and was having problems keeping up on very hot days. The HVAC contractor wanted to install a smaller AC unit. He said that he a bad experience with the coil freezing up because the AC was oversized for the ducts. He pointed out that my home (built in 1965) has small ducts designed for heating, not cooling. Even though my 3 ton unit had no history of the coil freezing up, he wanted to replace it with a smaller 2.5 ton unit, likely making the situation worse as far as keeping up with the load on those very hot summer days. I decided not to replace my old AC, which is now 29 years old and still going.
going through the aussie immigration process was fascinating: they give you all this cultural background, like "tall poppy syndrome", "mateship" and other things i never heard anyone say in conversation. but one thing that stuck with me, and i'm pretty sure it didn't come from immigration but i once heard aussie english and the culture described as: "why call a spade a spade when you can just call it a shovel" so i dunno what tasmanians call a reverse cycle air conditioner, but i'll bet it's got far fewer syllables.
@@herzogsbuick well most people refer to them as "aircons" regardless. Tasmanians, though, are the only ones that call them heat pumps. I seriously thought it was a weird regional thing when I moved there.
To measure the amount of time a furnace runs you can wire an analogue clock in parallel with the fan. You can set it to 12:00 and see where it is after 24 hours.
As a hvac tech. We do load calcs on every single sale (except mobile homes). We fit to the home but upsize the coil a half ton to dehumidify a little more. We're also trying to get into insulation to help our installs work more efficiently so this video was awesome to listen to
You deliberately mismatch the air handler to "dehumidify a little more"? That is genius, if you are in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc, but reverse if Arizona Colorado etc. At first I misread this as "we upsize... a half-ton" (typically implying the comp or whole split unit) which dehumidifies _less_ not more. Also, just from experience, most homes are too dry 90% of the time. It can help some elderly and allergy sufferers as long as they drink an extra 2-3 quarts of water daily to compensate (almost none do).
@austin2725 a number of reasons. Mostly the ductwork in mobile homes isn't the best and we can only push so much CFM through them so we go off the length of the home. Aside from the cheap windows and low to no insulation, theirs really no point because of the ductwork
When my parents had their furnace replaced, I'm guessing that the company did something similar, because the unit is absolutely tiny compared with the old one. Granted the old one was pretty old, so some of that is probably efficiency But, that being said, natural gas is being banned here for new installs and I'm sure that over time it will be a choice of base board heaters, heat pumps and IR. Personally, I've got baseboard heaters and an portable IR heater and that seems to work just fine. Sure, it does take a while for the place to warm, but I can program the thermostat to start heating it a bit before I get home.
@SmallSpoonBrigade yea. Most furnaces are 34 inches tall by 17.5 inches wide. We're in kansas so gas heat hear actually raises humidity in the home quite a bit
I live in Ontario, Canada, and I just installed a Gree GUD36 3-ton heat pump for free under the government's incentives. It's a heat pump replacing the A/C while keeping the old furnace in place as the blower and backup heater. It worked quite well. But two things I want to comment: 1. It makes more sense to run the heat pump rather than gas when the temperature is not that cold and when the electricity is cheaper. No one did this math. I did a brief calculation (in CAD): assuming -7C and gas price 0.5/m3, COP=2, it would break even when your electricity rate is 0.1/kwh. So it would save you a lot of money by running heat pump during the night (my overnight rate is 0.03/kwh). However, it's a shame that no "smart" thermostat on the market supports switching between normal and AUX modes in the schedule. I ended up using Home Assitant to do the trick. 2. The contractors here will only advertise it as a free better A/C. They said the heat pump was not powerful enough for the cold and set the AUX cutoff temperature to 4C or even higher. Despite the government's paid to lower carbon emissions and save people some utility bills, people are not well educated on how to use heat pumps and get the most out of them (like smart thermostat manufacturers implementing the ability to switch between AUX and heat pump automatically based on outdoor temperature, COP at the temperature, gas rate and electricity rate during the time) I hope you can cover the cost analysis on the heat pump vs gas next time. It's gonna be fun and super useful!
Most people struggle to set up or even understand why they'd save mpmey with a programable thermostat in the first place. Cheap people mostly just turn it down when they leave and back up when they get home. Those who have money for a new hvac and thermostat generally won't put up with any discomfort anyway. Learning is uncomfortable for most people. Therefore, nobody actually would use those settings.
30 years ago I was installing temperature control panels by Paragon that had many of these functions. The annoying part was that I had to run a thermocouple to the shaded outside wall of the building to anticipate heating demand. But they worked well.
It wasn't free my friend. In fact, your new heatpump was paid for by taking money earned by your fellow citizens forcibly redistributed to the companies that then produce, install, and maintain these heatpumps. People need to stop saying that government funded programs provided them something for free. That is such an ignorant lie because governments only obtain money through taxation which comes from the forced taking from its citizens.
they are better than a furnace until you start getting into the -15c range, then you start risking a cold house. the idea that you then require a backup Nat Gas heater ruins the cost analysis. when I did research on a heat pumps as a replacement, I found that they only guaranteed full heat down to -20c best case. not good enough for me. its also a case where the likelihood that the electrification boom causes a huge spike in electricity costs and black outs is quite high in Canada given that any attempt at building powerplants, regardless of their needs is protested heavily. its alot easier to run a generator to power a blower than it is to power a whole heater. just seems like a single point of failure to me to run everything off the electrical grid.
man, I wish i had those power costs. i pay roughly 0.50CAD per kWh at night and ~0.66CAD during the day. I would love to have a heat pump, just to have A/C in the summer, but gas is just that much cheaper to run. For now that is. Sooner or later the balance will flip. I hope at least...
Minnesota here. My large single family home's furnace needed replacing. I hired a one man local HVAC company to perform the swap. The furnace he installed is a high efficiency one like the one in the video with ½ the capacity of the previous one. He said it isn't good for the thing to only run 10 min at a time, plus it's stupid wasting money on capacity I didn't need. He was correct. No complaints.
The difference is probably that the new one is on for longer periods of the day than the older one was. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it is probably on the whole better all around for doing that. I know I probably would have had fewer trips to the emergency room with cat hair/dust related allergy attacks with the more modern furnaces.
lol i appreciate that the bulk of this video is confirming that a single number is correct in three increasingly loony ways; the christmas lights were a great touch. but also great info about HVAC stuff, 10/10
My co-workers think I’m crazy because I kept laughing out loud during the portion of the video where you were describing the test, but I’m the one that does the fire and safety inspections at work. Plus I’ve had to do a real-world test under duress, because the furnace chose to fail at -67F, and I had to keep the place from freezing long enough that my talented furnace repairman could machine some replacement parts out of brass bar stock and other materials, due to the extreme age of the unit and a lack of parts available for a unit of said age. Thankfully it has since been replaced by a newer, much more more efficient furnace that uses standard parts that are more easily sourced. Someday I dream of getting a heat pump system, but that probably won’t happen while I live where I do.
Are you looking for a less cantankerous, more shareable version of this video? The condensed version on Connextras has got you covered!
ua-cam.com/video/_hAuKtoRxJI/v-deo.html
Kool 👍
Another video about something interesting in technology and electronic
Love the idea, but I think short ones should be targeting 15 min or less. At 26min, anyone I might send it to would probably be just as likely to watch the 60 min version.
No, more cantankery!!
"Baked beans."
How fitting that Alec is just about the only UA-camr who puts the long version on the _main_ channel, rather than saying "here's a bite-size video - for the full-length, go to the second channel"
Yep, I'm currently subscribed to close to 120 different channels, it rare to find a upload even close to 20 minutes, closer to 10 ~ 15 minutes is more common.
Cuz he knows his fans love this stuff 😂😂😂
*makes rude gesture at best practices for channel growth*
Did have a moment of "wait why did I get two almost identical notifs for this video in different lengths" before noticing one was connextras hah
Normally you don't do that because people get bored and leave early. But because there are so many long videos here, we're used to long videos, and watchtime statistics outweigh early leaving statistics, and the algorithm is happy.
I like to imagine Alec is talking to an HVAC rep who's sitting tied up across from him. It makes the video so much funnier
I only saw this comment at the end and now am trying to decide if I go back and watch the whole hour again.
You hear that your comment may cost me an hour of my life!
Well since he used terms like "some of you" it's probably more than one.
What does one call a group of HVAC salesmen?
@@stalincat2457 The plural of thief is thieves 🤣😂🤣😂
@@ohnonomorenamesuse the 26 min version for that
@@stalincat2457 A Sweat?
One of my favourite things about heat pumps:
My parents regularly used the old cliche line of parents telling their kids to close the doors / windows, "we aren't air conditioning outside".
And now they aircondition the outside for half the year.
Dang it, you mean as a Dad if I go for a heat pump I won't be able to use that line?! Aww man!
@andrebaron1387 Yes you still can.
The line is technically wrong, if you open the doors you aren't air conditioning anything, but you are dehumidifying outside. Because a heat pump where the hot and cold sides are in the same connected space is exactly that, a dehumidifier.
@@andrebaron1387 Just replace it with, "Close the door, I just paid to move that heat!"
What were you, born in a barn?
You absolutely hit the nail on the head with your criticism of the separation of sales and technicians. While a tradesperson’s primary job is installation and maintenance, not “closing deals” their technical knowledge is utterly necessary to ensure each customer gets what they need. If you ever, EVER want to know what you need, talk to someone who does the actual work and is clearly passionate about what they do.
I won't bore everyone with the saga, but trying to find an actual pro HVAC installer in a major market that understood this stuff and was willing to work with me took over a year and too much of my life energy.
This is too true
Brain drain from the trades.
If not going to university is seen as failure, then you're going to have a lot of failures doing important jobs that don't require a degree.
How were you all here 3 days ago when it was only uploaded 7 mins ago!?
Tell me about it...
@@the_darkgamerytthese are usually paying members who get to watch the video early
As someone in the HVAC Trade, this video is extremely valuable to homeowners and you are empowering my own standards. Not only that, you are calling out the predatorial practices of HVAC Companies. Heat pumps are amazing tech, and I would cite this source 7 days of the week. Fantastic breakdown, thank you!
But even he said Heat Pumps are just ACs working in reverse. Don't get me wrong, ACs in themselves are amazing tech but they're nothing new, and reversing them isn't something that we didn't know we could do for ages.
@@Metallica4Life1995 On the coldest days I have seriously contemplated putting my window AC units back in, but backwards after fiddling with the thermostat.
Then I put on a sweater and sit in the fluffy recliner with a book.
@@Metallica4Life1995 This isn't his first video about heat pumps, and just because it's not new, pointing out more efficient systems WITH SCIENTIFIC PROOF is not only refreshing, it's unheard of in 2024.
The problem with refrigerate is the oil breaks down with heat you really don't want to over run it
Fun fact, oversizing was super popular in the 80s-90s in Illinois. Not only that but salesman would often say something along the lines of “ours is the same price as the other guys but in our bid you can see that we are putting in a bigger furnace.
Then they put an 80k in a 700sqft home.
Is this the ultimate Technology Connections video? Combining space heaters, with extension leads, with incandescent Christmas lights, with heatpumps and the latent heat of vaporization? Like a call back to every previous video.
It can't be. I watched the whole thing and there was no dishwasher detergent powder anywhere...
@@winrawrisyou Except in 35:32
Might need some more antiquated photography methods. Oh and more relays!
Don't forget obsolete media formats!
One or two turn signals wouldn't have been out of place...
6:27 - My man corrected himself. Good job bro
HVAC guy here. A lot of the issues I've seen have been lack of adequate training. I've literally googled my way to competency, and that is completely unacceptable. But, they don't care as long as we figure it out eventually because the customer is footing the bill anyways. It's horrifying
I was in HVAC for years, and had to learn so much of the stuff myself.
It's a chronic issue with the entire economy... nobody wants to train, but everybody complains about how unqualified people are.
I have found this to be true. If I give real useful information to my hvac installer they will actually use it. I just have to also respect what knowledge they have.
Also I had one hvac installer say he enjoyed coming to my place because I stood and watched but not to complain but so I could learn. And we would talk about new hvac technologies. This was a decade ago so my heatpump is only efficient down to 25f. We talked about the idea of stuff that is on the market now. He was not having those conversations many other places.
No kidding. When my new system was installed a few years ago (2-ton, heat pump, 11.5kW aux heat) about the only thing they got right was they put the heat pump outside and the air handler inside.
They reused the existing lineset that was too small, which they had to fix. Unfortunately they didn't fix anything else:
Reversing valve was left disconnected because they didn't know how to program the thermostat for B vs O. I fixed that.
W was wired to W2 at the air handler, but I do not have 2 stage aux heat. Combined with the reversing valve issue that means *I HAD NO HEAT AT ALL* the first time I needed it.
HP is a 2-stage unit, wasn't wired that way. I fixed that.
Since then I have learned a lot about HVAC, including how to check and adjust charge, find leaks, etc.. and I'm just an IT guy.
And yes, they did try to upsell me on the tonnage. I insisted I only needed 2 ton.
@@coyote_den I went over tonnage several years ago when I replaced my unit. The house is a '57 in the desert chaparral which did get hot back in the day but not like today. The walls were thin and the old unit could keep the house at 88 F running 24/7. The new unit was 3.5 tons for 1250 sq ft with a detached garage and a roof too low guys wouldn't install or said it wasn't worth the effort to install a fan. With the new unit in it we kept it at 78 F in the summer and basically kept blackout curtains up during that time. I don't think it could get below 78 F. When I moved the container I was loading ceiling (where I'd be up to do the tie downs) got to 120 F, I'd do 20 minutes then go inside chug water lay down for 20 minutes. Prep for 20 minutes then go out and do another 20 minutes of loading. I worked till past midnight cause that was cooler.
@@hhiippiittyy yup this is the problem with outsourcing all training to schools.
"Maybe you think that's strange, but I think I'm strange too." ...This encapsulates part of the reason I like this channel.
As a 45 year veteran HVAC company owner, you made a GREAT episode! Also, the pith was outstanding!
Preach those heat pumps to your customers.
Oversizing a heat pump a bit would make sense if a smart thermostat would track power price and local PV production adjusting temp to the allowed wiggle room in order to save money.
When will we all have geothermal heat pumps? Cold water goes into the ground, 59F water comes up, goes into heat pump. Repeat.
@RisenThe At this point, I'm not pushing anyone towards geothermal. The constant improvements in cold climate air-source heat pumps mean that the returns on going geothermal just keep on diminishing and the added expense takes _forever_ to be recouped. We can move much faster going air-source and get 95% of the improvement.
Oversizing a heat pump really isn't a good idea. It's even more important than with gas furnaces to get the sizing correct so it doesn't short cycle or resort to excessive use of auxiliary heat. You have to balance heating and cooling as well, in most regions the heat vs cool requirement is not symmetrical. @@ArthursHD
The clear problem with the smart Google thermostats is that they are made by Google. You're a smart guy. Get an old laptop running Home Assistant and go open source with your home automation. You'll pay once, you'll pay less, and you'll own your data. Join us. Go down the Linux rabbit hole.
As a HA user, during this video I was thinking... You really need Home Assistant, so I searched for the comment mentioning it and it had 10 likes after 6 months. This dude really needs to start using HA and then tell everyone about it.
I love this dude, he's one of those youtubers where after you watch one video you're hooked.
Also thanks to him my dishes are cleaner than ever.
I never bothered with that rinse fluid, I vaguely even remembered there was a place for it in my dishwasher. After watching his dishwasher video I bought some and tried it. It works great, the glasses are shiny now and as a bonus it eventually cleaned the calcium deposits off the inside of the dishwasher.
He even cleaned your dishes. What a guy xD
@@os2developerI feel you. The options in my neck of the woods priced my family out of the older townhouses in the town I work in and into a more rural detached single family home. I'll gladly pay the privacy tax, though. I was tired of hearing domestic spats, rough sex, loud music, and home improvement through the walls at all hours of the night when we rented.
But to the original comment, my dishes have never been cleaner and, since installing LEDs in all the light fixtures, my power bill has never been lower.
@@os2developer Nice! The house my wife and I bought is a bit older, so is in need of weatherproofing and better insulation but it's otherwise fine.
The swamp cooler will probably be the first major HVAC appliance to go. We live in a desert so they work quite well but I'd rather have a central heat pump/air conditioner with an optional furnace instead. Deserts get mighty cold at night (especially in the winter) so some extra on-demand heat is a good thing.
Am HVAC design engineer (floor plan layouts not the actual units), one of the reasons why gas furnaces are always oversized is because that 60k BTU is the smallest many manufacturers make, and they end up being the most common/cheapest because they're used on everything 5 tons and under. To get a smaller heater, you basically have to go electric or heat pump
I _almost_ made this point but I did find some 30k BTU furnaces on the market so it was a damned-if-do-don't type situation.
@@TechnologyConnections What about maintenance concerns over time with wear and tear?
@@TechnologyConnectionsthey’re definitely not common. Even for a lot of package units, “low” heat specs are 54K btu. That’s also the smallest furnace I can even get from our supplier, and I’m based in Vegas where we hardly need any heat in the winter
Came here to say this too. Down south Furnaces get even more oversized because you may actually need 48kbtu of cooling but only 60kbtu of heat. Well 4 ton drive furnaces start around 80kbtu but most I come across are 120k!
That has been a frequent source of annoyance. I have installed several dual fuel (gas furnace + heat pump) systems and I found a very limited selection of furnaces that could move enough air for the heat pump without being vastly oversized. At least 2 stage and modulating furnaces are affordable now and help to alleviate this, I replaced the originak 100k btu 80% furnace my house came with with a 60k btu 95% modulating furnace and most of the time it runs at its lowest setting.@@averagejoeprojects2885
I haven't bought a dishwasher pod in over a year. I couldn't be happier about knowing how dishwasher detergent works. So i will be watching this entire show from beginning to end.
Thanks to Alec, I stopped buying pods and stuck to generic powder. Because of the tips in that video, my dishes come out clean every time.
Technology Connections is one of the most informative channels on UA-cam. It's amazing that a single guy with a lot of passion and dedication can produce higher quality content than anything that corporate media does.
That's the video that showed up in my feed one day and caused me to subscribe.
It was the toaster for me. Oh to be young again and experience the thrill for the first time.
Same!
I refuse to pay the stupidity tax on pods of any sort. Thanks to Alex, I know what the other part of the dishwasher degergent dispenser is for. My very old, portable dishwasher works better than ever.
To watch the shortened version would feel wrong on so many levels, I love the in depth analysis you provide. Never change Alex, never change.
Alec
I am a HVACR professional and I now train others in the HVAC industry. This is solid gold. I strive to instill in my trade that we have been constantly oversizing equipment for as long as the trade has been around.
I converted to what is called a dual fuel setup about 10 years ago that is a heat pump with gas backup heat (lots of boring details as to why I went with that setup)
When I bought my house it had a 120,000 btuh furnace installed. I now heat the house with a 3 ton heat pump which matches the cooling load on the home it is matched with the smallest furnace I could get that can provide airflow for the HP and has the capability to operate at 40% of its rated capacity. I live in a cold weather climate and with some minor help from the furnace on that colder than cold day once In a while it keeps my home very comfortable.
Using similar thermostat technology I can track my power and gas usage and typically my furnace runs less than
15 minutes per day most days. And that runtime is almost all when the heat pump is defrosting.
My area has incentives from various agencies and organizations will completely if not more hand cover the equipment cost to the contractor for the cost differences in the equipment from AC to HP units. Installation cost differences given modern thermostats is almost $0
A lot of what someone people will call out as flaws in his analysis are not reading between the lines in his data and methodology. You simply cannot give a masterclass on absolutely everything that goes into this stuff in one hour! Some details are left out.
Great video
Anyone who says otherwise is definitely selling something
You sound like one of those that knows your craft. There are a lot of goobers in the HVAC industry, despite all the talk about manual J calculations, I suspect either very few actually run them, or they are not very accurate (garbage in-> garbage out?) because it is very rare that I encounter a furnace that is not grossly oversized.
I live in Montana, we use a 5 ton equivalent heat punp for heating and cooling, and despite only having 8 inches of fiberglass roof insulation in a valulted ceiling 4000 Sq ft monster. Unless it goes below 0F we don't even need additional heat for it to keep up at 64F at night and 68F during the day.
Average cost is $270 a month, for heating, hot water, cooling (we love it cold, so 66F during the summer inside) and the geothermal backed heat pump also makes hot water.
What if I don't want my furnace or ac running 24 hours a day? Having a house that is comfortable in temperature and noise is a feature not a bug.
Everyone should know a guy or two like you. I don't know any!
@@MegaLokopo - You must have a noisy one. They aren't all that way. My wife keeps asking me if ours is running because it's quiet enough that we can barely hear it. Sometimes she'll hear something and ask and it's the refrigerator humming instead.
Former HVAC sales rep here. Great video! While attending a hvac training, I was giving a rather shocking Stat, less than 10% of hvac sales in 2022 had a load calculation preformed prior to the sale of a new system.
I'm not innocent either, as I was never told what or how to preform one of these and became part of the problem. The more I learned in that role the more shocked I was at how much damage and headache I likely caused for homeowners.
Your comments on the lack of communication between departments is actually rather accurate and something that has, as of late become a much bigger focus for the company. (who I still work for under a different position, in another trade department) so atleast at our national company things are changing and loadcalcs are becoming a much larger focus company wide. The issues of system sizing has been a regular cause of issues, callbacks, and heachaces for us and the customer.
I wonder if it'd be possible to semi-automate the load calc. Some kind of equation that you can input the parameters to (shared walls, insulation, basement or slab, attic, etc)
As a technician working on a wide variety of buildings, load calcs are nearly useless:
First the customer will not pay for a useful load calculation, so all you get is calculations based on ASSUMED values.
Secondly, and because of this, the new load calculation almost always causes problems with callbacks and customer expectations. As long as the customer was happy with the previous unit, no major changes happened to the building and you don't notice obvious issues, just put in a unit with the same capacity, no more than a half a ton increase AT MOST.
Where customers are more willing to pay for a good load calculation, and/or you are replacing both the unit and the ductwork, particularly if you are re engineering the ductwork, THEN load calculations are great, and incidentally you NEED to replace and re enginer the ductwork if you move more than a ton of capacity EITHER way.
The real problem that I have seen is that technicians are encouraged to upsize units at every turn. That's a problem with management, not load calculations.
@@Timeward76they do that, it's industry standard, unfortunately however the results are based on the accuracy of the assumptions...
so, it's not the consumer at fault, but rather the HVAC industry, good to know.
@@SoloRenegade it gets complicated. The consumer drives the industry, and they have rewarded an industry structured to rip them off. Literally one company I worked for was structured old school, and in such a way as to benefit the customer. They went out of business and got bought by a new school company structured to rip people off, and they were rewarded by consumers with more money.
So as individuals consumers are not at fault, but collectively consumers are too ignorant and short term minded.... But that seems to apply across all industries.
Software engineer here. If someone specs the Manual J Calculation thing, I'm sure I could code it. Thanks for another great and interesting video, Alec!
I'm an aspiring dev with a background in laboratory work, including lots of maths. If I could help provide the specs, would you be willing to teach me a little bit about the development process?
there are already tons of apps for design loads, but ya gotta pay money for em. every major manufacturer puts one out, but generally the only people who need them are the HVAC people and they write it off as an expense. The only time they are needed or used is at the original build or if a big change is being made (new additions, major remodels, etc) because the design will have to pass planning and be approved by the building department in order to get the permit. What happens to the home after is the problem, at that stage time and greed take hold
"Do you know where MY ducts are!?"
... um, in a row?
As a HVAC service tech I have know this for over 50 Years. I was asked to design and install a new furnace and A/C system in a house which was having an addition added. The addition was almost 2000 Sq Ft. The house was built in the 60's had a large furnace 160,000 BTU. I did a precise heat load calculation and added a multi zone damper system to the new furnace. The new furnace was 125,000 BTU 95 percent. The town inspectors said I was wrong and forced me to provide the calculations. They OK'd the system a month later. and it ran great.
You’re adding dampers so you’re already ahead of MOST home builders that cheap out on those.
Even that seems quite large. I live in Finland and the recommendation is 75W per m² (24 BTU per ft²) so about 50000 BTU for the 2000 ft². My calculations might be wrong and ceiling height might be much larger in your case but it's still a large difference.
Edit: I completely missed the part about an addition so it makes a lot more sense now.
When I had mine replaced, I tried to convince the HVAC contractor to drop down in size. Old furnace was 100kBTU, 60% efficient, and on the coldest day of the year (-25f) it ran 60% of the time. I figured that the new 97% efficient furnace could be as small as 60k BTU. They insisted on at least 75k BTU, so that's what I got. Based on cycle time on the coldest day, it could have been one size smaller.
A 2000 sf ADDITION? Welcome to America, where more than enough is never enough.
Well you never know what that person's going to use that space for. Sounds to me like a couple of rooms and a new unit for tenants. Which is respectable.
Hearing you talk about Manual J calculations warmed this old HVAC guy’s heart. Thanks for a great video.
how many J of warmth tho
@@NickiRusinDepends on the size and insulation of his heart. Probably between 20-40K btu. ;) It warmed, not maintained temperature, after all.
Think about that heat pump in below freezing ambient air.. I wonder what he will think about his power bill using electric strips…
I'm at the 30-ish minute mark and the volunteer firefighter inside me just cringed really hard... Last night, we had a fire call where someone plugged a space heater into a power strip, burned up the strip, and nearly burned up the outlet... Thankfully no actual fire occurred. Thank you for knowing what you did was unsafe and warning others not to attempt it themselves. Science can be fun but dangerous at times. Love the content.
A less dangerous method would be to turn the furnace on fan only mode, and plug one space heater into every circuit.
@@sean2074 The reason I elected not to do that was because the wattage from the blower motor (which is higher than you might think - typically 200 watts or more) would skew my results. Plus, it was valuable to know which rooms actually have the greatest heating load. But yes - it was a risky setup. I was checking the temps of cords and connections all through the night and had fire extinguishers handy.
Why is that? Seriously. I don't have a single outlet in my home that can deliver less than 2300w (10A, 230v). I just went through every power strip and extension cord and they are all rated for at least 3600w.
The wires in the walls are all girthy enough to not burn before the breaker pops.
I combined two circuits (total 32A) and I tried a random cheapo extension cord. I stopped after 5700w (didn't dare to go further) and it didn't even start smelling of plastic. The plug got warm though...
Are American standards that bad?
@@LinusBerglundIt's because the American grid runs on 120V instead of 230V so 10A is 1200W instead of 2300W.
@@pyro1324 No, the American grid runs on 100+ kV transmission, 5+ kV distribution, and 240V split phase to houses. Most outlets in the home are 120V with a couple 240V outlets for dryer and stove. See his video "The US electrical system is not 120V".
This entire video is incredibly impressive. It’s like a combination of all the themes of your previous videos into a giant exposé of consuming electricity in the most inefficient way possible in order to demonstrate something about efficiency.
1 hour video from Technology Connections? It just became movie night! Always a treat.
It's my sleepover, and I get to choose the movie
@@ubermenschen01 Opposite of a sleepover for me. Wife was out to watch basketball, so this was my bachelor's night in!!!
And it's about American issues almost totally irrelevant to my Australian arse? I'm in.
@@AgentTasmania
I’m from the Middle East, we have no heaters here, I’m in a damn desert AND I have exams coming up, but I still watch this. Let’s go
Yeah, if Alec had an hour of stuff to say this is gonna be good.
You got a mention on HVAC overtime over this video, HVAC professionals agreed with you by and large. Good point well made Alec
I don't know anything about the HMAC industry, but I see you are one of the most active commenters on that podcast. 🙂
HVAC technicians and engineers all know proper sizing.
HVAC *salescritters* do not care, and in most cases the tech simply have to install whatever the customer was sold.
HVAC installers generally pride themselves in their work. Not always, but generally.
The scummy sales people just try and get the biggest paycheck possible
🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺
@@Squat5000 Oh aren't you original... RU yes... russia is a good country. Shame about it's government and military
I live a little further north than you and basically got this lecture from the HVAC professional I had out to estimate replacing my furnace and ac. He said their standard is to determine requirements and then double it because if they don't people get bothered when the house doesn't heat up immediately in the morning, but he recommended going with the minimum if I was comfortable with the reality. He also said if I wanted to save money I should have a home energy audit and then act on all those recommendations first. Thank you for spreading the word.
Excess capacity is a good thing. It keeps things running longer and with less wear. The small savings of a smaller unit pale in comparison to having to replace it twice as often because it is barely up to the task.
A relative had an old house with a 100+ year old coal, later gas, fired boiler. And it still ran like a top.
@@dancooper6002That depends on what it is. Some applications actually experience more wear with constant on/off cycling or cycles of increasing or decreasing heat (computers technically "wear down" worse for being repeatedly turned on and off, and is part of why datacenters can actually maintain insanely high uptimes).
in the US, Home energy audits are also subject to a federal tax credit up to $150 under the Energy efficient home credit. You can also get a $2000 credit for heat pump installation under the same credit.
@@ender25ish Sure, but the first time the stupid thing fails in a deep freeze you have thousands of dollars of damage done to your home that daddy government is not going to pay for.
@@salter1630 Data centers are not home appliances/equipment. The smaller one will have cost cut everything throughout. And it will cycle just as much, if not more, than a proper unit.
I just wanna say, having watched both the long and short version, thank you for making both available! The short version is perfect to send to my family who are curious enough to watch and learn, but not curious enough to click on an hour long video, meanwhile the long version has all the info *I* wanted to learn about in great detail. I know it was probably a ton of extra work for not a lot of payoff, but I hope you'll consider this style again for future projects!
I was loving this video completely the normal amount (which is already a lot, given this channel) but when the holiday lights came out, that was a +3 smile bonus immediately 🎄
The twinkling really makes it special
a wild Deviant appears!
There is no such thing as a holiday light. It CHRISTMAS lights.
@@christo930So what are lights sold in India for Dwiali?
@@christo930 you know that you don't have to reply to every single comment on the Internet that you don't like, right? you can just scroll right on by and it won't hurt your web browser or anything. please feel free to use this helpful tip to improve your future Internet experience. 💚👍
Whew, he almost missed the nice on 69 but stopped himself.
You are quite literally the Project Farm of the electrical side of youtube. Your tests are always so indepth and well logged and you come up with creative ways of running these tests.
Now that’s impressive!
hmmm we're gonna test that!
That farm guy has a far too irritating voice
Not at all@@DJNoMask
I work in the HVAC industry and appreciate all of the videos you have made on heat pumps. I have always been impressed with the enormous amount of research you have put in as a consumer. I would love to sit down and have a couple hour chat with you on the subject, just because my own hubris makes me believe I could fill in some tiny and I do mean miniscule gaps in your knowledge.
But I will say this, there is no reason to wait to install a heat pump, if you currently have a 2 ton A/C, there are units on the market that will allow you to simply change the condensing unit outside and nothing else and have a 20+ SEER heat pump.
Can I join in? I'd love to learn and I'll buy the first round (and probably more)...
kinda there is a reason if your furnace is under warranty and breaks 😅
Hey, I'm a curious consumer myself! I have a lot of trouble looking through heat pumps because I know the COP depends on outside temperature, but I can't find the graphs with those data shown. If I'm lucky I get 2-3 data points eg: COP at 10°C, 0°C, -20°C. Where should I look then?
Edit: as shown in the video at 55:00. Only 3 data points. Or is that really good enough?
@@Sekir80Those graphs are in the manufacturer’s product catalog typically. Sometimes they are in the installation or O&M manuals. If you can’t find them, you can ask a sales rep to provide it or you can ask them to provide kW estimates over a set of datapoints. You can then use linear regression in Excel to uncover the coefficients in the product’s load curve (provided you know the equation). I used to design building energy models in my day and this was something I had to do occasionally.
@@Solarusdude Yeah, these are solid advice, thanks. I only find it a bit offensive that I'm constantly handled as an idiot by the product websites giving me mostly nothing and I find it tiring I need to run several circles to obtain documents. Why can't they provide everything with a click? It's like they try to hide the data of given product.
I’m in Toronto Canada, and we have many of the hot/cold/humidity issues Chicago has… and the furnaces at my moms place (they’ve had two in my lifetime) have always been way too big for the house. The old one was so large it could have filled the whole basement bathroom! The new one is much smaller… but still way too overpowered. Even in the coldest points of winter… it only runs for 10-15mins per hour to keep the house toasty warm all winter.
I’m never going to be able to afford my own home… but I still love learning about all this stuff… so thanks for everything you do Alec!
I've been in this trade for 35 years, when I do a manual j, I find the existing heating systems are usually around 33% to big. I have lost several heating system replacements, because the customer say I'm under sizing their system. Because all the other companies said you need to go with the same size. The HVAC industry has its problems, but homeowners like bigger systems in their house. So we either conform, or we die in the wind.
Most people are afraid of math, and it's incredibly frustrating to show them data and have them dismiss it
I know as a home owner it would be nice to see two quotes side by side in that case. One with the numbers run and optimized and another with my current system.
I would like to think that I as an engineer would follow your advice, but if the cost difference is not that great then I can also understand the paranoia.
@@Taskarnin exactly, the prices are usually within a couple hundred dollars. I have actually seen the bigger ones sell for less than the smaller ones, do the supply and demand. Customers think that if they get a bigger system they're getting more bang for their money.
Well, if you offer them a smaller unit that is more appropriate and they incist on a bigger unit there is no reason to not give it to them.
Then it is on them honestly.
@@rogerk6180 exactly, if I refuse to do the job, I will lose the job, and I'll eventually be out of business.
So I installed the larger ones. Then I hear from Engineers saying that I'm installing the wrong units. Hvac trade is the problem. It's funny, when I get the new heating system inspected, I point out that the boiler is oversized, I do this to cover my ass from the next homeowner who purchases the house.
The inspector points out that oversizing a heating system is grounds for failing inspection. Then they tell me, that they are not going to fight homeowners on this.
Your point on sales being separated from installs and service is so on point. It’s happening to every industry though, HVAC, plumbing/water treatment ,automotive , Electrical, and telecommunications.
So true. A vendor I've worked with for literally decades hired a sales guy a few years ago, and he was really excited to meet with me to tell me about everything they have to offer. I know the industry and his company's offerings better than he does. I told him it was a pleasure to meet him, offered to help him if he had any questions with the nuances of the product line, and if he had any questions on how to help other customers. I really like everyone at the company he works for, and he's a nice guy, so I want them all to be successful. But if I'm gonna spend an hour with him, I'd rather do it helping him instead of pretending he can help me.
I'm so thankful I moved from working at a large internet RSP with separate sales, provisioning, and customer support (my job there) departments to a small one where the same team handles all of it. The old place was so frustrating, because sales reps would overpromise performance or misguide customers on what their current equipment will be capable of (or upsell them on stuff they didn't need), and provisioning was always unavailable because they were so slammed with work, but we didn't have the permissions to do their job when we were free even though it's really quite simple...
The new place is great because none of those jobs are too specialized to actually require dedicated teams, and having access to all of it makes everything so much easier. Sometimes we can go from enquiry, to sale, to connection, to router setup all in one call even (which people love hahaha), but most importantly no more "Sorry, this is the wrong department, let me transfer you so you can wait on hold again." or "Yeah, basically someone needs to press a button, but I'm not allowed to, but also that someone isn't available right now." or "The sales rep said WHAT??" 😭
I wish it was more common, particularly with telecommunications because it would be so easy. So much of sales/provisioning is automated already anyway, so those calls don't take much away from tech support availability, and it just really simplifies things when the staff understand every step of the connection process.
I used to work for an industrial automation company... The separation of sales and tech was the bane of my existence, customer satisfaction, and efficiency.
many hvac companies are geared toward sales rather than service, when I got into this field 50 years ago, it was the other way around. it has always been a practice that sales and service was separate. you had the service techs, and the installation crew, I was on the service side for one real good reason, I got paid more, over what the installers got paid, and installation to me is boring, brain dead work.
I got a quote from an actual HVAC technician that was just as messed up as any of those examples he gave in the video. My house needs less than 24,000 btus of cooling on the first floor, and he quoted me a 48,000 btu system for the first floor, and two 24,000 btu systems for the second. I ended up getting a two 36K systems, and then only because I wanted separate head units in every room and couldn't get any with four heads that were smaller than 36K. If I could have gotten two 24K systems with four 6K heads each, I would have. One of the first-floor head units alone was 24,000 btus and would almost certainly have short-cycled constantly.
Incidentally, the system he quoted me was almost $45,000 installed because they were charging a 500% markup (to the penny), which I know because he messed up and included the links to the equipment on their supplier's website in the item description. Had he been in sales, he might have known to delete those before printing the quote. My actual system, bought from the manufacturer and installed by a different HVAC company, was under $6500 installed.
As someone with ADHD who struggles to focus on anything for very long, Alec is one of the only UA-camrs who can make a 1+ hour long video on literally anything and keep me hooked the entire way through
The sarcasm goes a LONG way to holding attention; it requires active listening to pick up on the humor. Similar to watching letterkenny & the much more nuanced humor.
Same, severe diagnosed ADHD. I have watched what could be considered very boring topics (why US power strips are unsafe and how they could be much safer, etc.) but I find myself watching all the way through and speaking on it later, lol.
109%
It's his voice, and the volume is very even throughout the video. Other Channels, you might have to adjust the volume 20 times in an hour.
Lots of killawatts, manually configurable thermostats, manually resetting at the start of the measurement period… jeez, dude. Smart plugs with built in measurement sensors, hooked onto ideally zigbee or if necessary WiFi, hooked to a computer (raspi is fine) running Home Assistant and all you need then is a bunch of temperature sensors to log that you should have anyway.
It’s like you’re all about making your life easier - as long as it’s not easier than the 80s or 90s.
I just had an HVAC pro come out to do an estimate for a new unit and he said that my furnace running 6 hours on the coldest day is too LONG a run-time. Thank you for your videos, they are awesome! -Fellow midwesterner living in coastal Virginia.
I work at an engineering firm & design HVAC systems every day. You hit the nail on the head! Every time i thought “well what about x” you would say “on the other hand -“ its like you were reading my thoughts. Great video!
What about duty cycle? Often in engineering, we don’t want systems to run 24/7, because it wears parts down with heat, friction, and fatigue stress - reducing the life expectancy of the parts. Systems designed to run 24/7 are typically more expensive to build. Let’s say the fan motor is rated to last 50,000 hours, if it only runs 3 hours a day, it could last 45 years. If it has to run 24/7, it will last less than 6 years. Some parts, like the flame sensor, may do better running continuously - but many do not.
@@123psi8the hardest wear on the compressor is during start up when theres no oil pressure/flow. Since that's by far the hardest moving part to change it dictates the duty cycle. Running a 100% duty cycle at a lower percentage of the capacity(maybe 30% of tonnage) is more efficient than letting the temperature rise of fall and then running at 100% of capacity
@@AGH0STBUSTER5 I was talking about the furnace, not the heat pump, but that is a fair enough answer. The devil is in the details and I would like to hear from an engineer who designs the device itself. If the design engineer expects the system to run at low duty cycle, they will design accordingly to cut cost. Why buy a pump/motor/fan with a 100,000 MTBF that will last 25 years if your boss is telling you to cut costs and design for the 5-year warranty? Why buy a continuous duty motor if you expect a 25% duty cycle or lower? Not that I agree, but that is what happens. And it happens because most people buy quality when it something they want. When it is something they need, they buy cheap 🤷🏻♂️. Again, not an HVAC guys, just my 2-cents.
this channel has armed me with all the knowledge i could ever need for the house i will never own
Yeah, me too ⚰️
My thoughts but then my SO and I got a apartment and oh boy did the knowledge kick in, that dishwasher will be performing mint thanks to technology connections videos on dishwasher and the darn pack things
As a (former) licensed HVAC installer and technician, I want to thank you for giving this industry a stern talking to. I did load calculations for my jobs and there was a (short) time where the state required them for every final inspection, but that was abandoned because few of the HVAC people here are intelligent enough too do basic math :(.
I'm not not kidding as they also had to seriously dumb down the state licensing test in a desperate attempt to help these idiots pass, despite requiring them to have all applicable code books with them during the test! There was such a shortage of licensed workers that homes could not be built and I imagine this has only gotten worse.
Thankfully, I do know of local HVAC companies that are qualified and very good at their job, but I also know of some that are both incompetent and debatably criminal as they'll overcharge their own mother and then brag about it to other contractors.
Informing consumers of these issues is very valuable, so thank you. This is perhaps the most important HVAC-related video you've done since the one on stupid portable air conditioners.
You really need to do a whole home model factoring location, sun, insulation, volume, etc, and the cost of doing that model is the half the cost of the system. Just makes more sense to do estimates and caution on the side of error in most cases. Ive run models for larger buildings for energy code reasons and the modeling cost around $6k. No single family home owner is going to pay for that unless it is high end and going for LEED certification, which Ive also done... on a $20 million house.
YES! This is so sadly and absurdly true! I asked all four HVAC contractors that bid the house I was building to show me their manual J's load calculations... two said they didn't do one, they based it off my square footage... and astonishingly the other two DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A MANUAL J WAS!
Not surprisingly, they all suggested 2 4 ton or bigger units for my 3200 square foot, 2 story insulated concrete home... but after paying $1200 to an outside engineering firm, the ACTUAL numbers called for a SINGLE 3.5 ton. I've been heating and cooling (heat pump) my house for 7 years now with a single unit.
HVAC contractors are a joke.
Goes for most skilled labour these days. There are very few capable people, because if you are able to understand all the code as an electrician or HVAC or plumber, you will either start your own business or be promoted away from the field. Either way you end up in an office. I mean someone who can make master electrician might as wel go for electrical engineer. Pay is better. So the people holding the wrenches and screwdrivers will always be the mid to bottom tier.
I wish I could shove this comment in the face of anyone who ever said "Why do we need to learn this math in school, we'll never use it in the real world." THERE IS TONS OF MATH TO DO IN THE REAL WORLD.
But all they need to do is make an excel sheet once and it's good for forever. Ugh.
As a Canadian who lives in a city that sees -40 every year (fun fact, -40c and -40f are the same), a furnace anywhere but the lowest floor seems mental. Its the first I've ever heard of it.
The delayed "nice" absolutely took me out with laughter. Was not expecting that, but I am absolutely here for it
He forgot to mention the LTT Store though.
@@jeremyjedynakthe 69 nice joke isn't a linus tech tips reference though
Internet rules, you say 69 you have to say "nice", you can also say it after 420 but it's not required
Quality humor prevails
@@jeremyjedynakSinus didn't start "69-nice."
Energy auditor here, only 4 minutes into the video but you named off everything on my residental energy audit software. I check everything from the joist spacing to the operating pressures of each register. The Department of Energy are using all the factors you listed in order to weatherize homes. Hope that gives you peace of mind. One of my goals is switching gas furnaces to electric heat pumps. Western Ky here.
You hit such a huge point at the 25 minute mark. The software we use has a Windows XP face and I think it came out in 2012 and just had updates. I've got a list of DOE approved audit softwares, and they're all a decade and a half behind us. We need to take some of that weatherization money and use it to design a user friendly app, if not just for the professionals. The current system is frustrating enough to make me find another job.
On the ductwork design rant; almost every house I inspect here has the ductwork in the attic. We spend a few hundred on sealing the ducts with mastic on every job.
Concerning your garage, is the ductwork in that chase internally lined with insulation? Maybe that could help.
Tasks like this are what people should be using AI for. Anonymize the datasets for a few thousands of homes and train the AI to run a questionnaire for the person doing your job until you think all the special conditions are covered and it can generate a reliable result.
@chrisblake4198 I actually do use ChatGPT to help me with the absurd amount of formulas I have to memorize. Like to find the minimum required ventilation in cubic feet for a combustion appliance zone.
It's alot of data input, and they could make it way easier but it's government funded. It's basically a free heat pump and insulation for households under 200% poverty. But the problem is that every house is so different that it would take a while for AI to catch up. AI could handle manufacturered homes no problem.
@@chrisblake4198 Software developer here. This isn't a problem that can be solved by AI. Rather, the things AI is good at aren't the things that are the problem. Adding AI to the existing systems doesn't benefit anyone other than Nvidia. Yes, you could build an AI system to do the estimation. But as the results in this video shows, the existing formulas are plenty good enough to get within 5% of the actual value. We don't need an AI system to do the estimations.
What's needed is a UX designer and a front end developer to build a better more usable interface over top of the existing software. Existing AI tools don't magically fix user interfaces built for Windows XP. All that's needed is a small team of developers and a few months to put together a nice website to run the existing published calculations. In fact, a single software developer could build the whole system if they're a highly competent front end developer who also knows how to manage cloud infrastructure, and they have a few thousand dollars each month to pay for server costs.
@@alexlowe2054 also Microsoft doesn't help when they keep breaking software and how not user friendly it is..
@@chrisblake4198 Maybe what we should be using AI for is finding a way to properly educate people on what AI should be used for...
That hour went by so quickly. I literally thought: What, it's over already?
how can one person explaining HVAC be more entertaining than all of Hollywood combined?!
Thank you so much Alec! 🤗
I feel like 29:37 "Through the magic of buying..." was the payoff of one of the longest setups in history. Well done.
Christmas lights, HVAC AND Space Heaters in an hour long video. This is truly peak Technology Connections
@@raelone55 it's even related to the latent heat of vaporization!
I laughed IRL at that part. Just the way it pans to all the heaters lol. It was perfect.
It doesn't quite beat "Through the magic of buying way too much fucking dishwasher detergent" for me but it's close.
All
This UA-cam channel has made my plans for a mega-mansion _really_ weird.
Mansions are overrated. Better to have a house just big enough to have all your friends over.
Now you need a well sized heat pump, a commercial dishwasher, a defunct Japanese microwave, very specific christmas lights, and a smart heat controller
Any ideas for any special rooms in your mansion? Like an arcade room and stuff like that.
@@hasmond6808 A music studio is definitely on the table.
@thunderusnight Don't forget a 1950's toaster!
Of all the kitchen appliances he's talked about, that's one of the few I actually want.
"The house didn't burn down" - now that's a motto I can live by.
I need that on a shirt.
"It didn't kill me or burn the house down" 😎
An "extreme heating" event.
Hmm, how many BTU's are released by burning a house down?
I've been battling this battle for the past two years regarding my parents home and HVAC companies. 5 ton AC currently every company insists on replacing with the same. I've done the manual J and analyzed their thermostat info and they can 100% downsize to 3.5 ton. But every company tech/sales person goes crazy when I tell them this.
The whole 'Heat pumps are just air conditioners, but they don't want you to know!' part made me chuckle a little. Down here in Aus, they've just been called 'reverse cycle air conditioners' for as long as I can remember, so there is no big mystery.
It was a smart thermostat that led my dad to discover someone was stealing heating oil from his business. A locking cap solved that problem - he has since ditched oil altogether.
thank GOD he ditched fuel oil
A tale from Denmark🇩🇰 Changing from gas to HVAC, I’ve calculated 6 kw needed. Asked for quotes in HW price, extras and man hours. Took me 12 quotes with 8-16 kw pumps, before one supplier, 200 miles away made the right quote with 7 kw HWAC. You’re so spot on the problems, and not alone. 🇩🇰😎
The companies that quoted 16-18kW knew what they were doing. The guy that quoted you 7kW had no clue. A Heat Pump should only operate 1/3 of the day. Not all day. Good luck!
@@SeanAlcornWhy? It is designed to have only a 30% duty cycle? That doesn’t seem right.
@@orppranator5230 - yet your refrigerator is designed exactly the same way and you’d never question that engineering. Just as the heating element in my espresso machine cycles on and off many times in an hour - almost no equipment is designed to run continuously. It’s standard engineering practice. He says it himself! Eleven contractors knew what they were doing. Yet he thinks he knows their trade better than them and chose a cowboy that went in with a cheap quote using under rated equipment. Next time he *might* trust the people that know what they are doing. The cheap man always pays twice.
@@SeanAlcorn Where's your evidence for this? I'm not seeing any recommendations like this from cursory google searches.
Disagree. Most heat pump systems run with an inverter, and don't do the old-fashioned on/off cycling.
him putting the long video on his main channel is exactly the shit i subcribed for
A lot of the high prices are likely related to gov subsidies. I found that if there is a $5000 gov rebate for installation of a more efficient system, magically prices in the area just go up by 5 grand and the companies end up pocketing the rebate
This is the same reason colleges suddenly started to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, cobra effect moment.
Same with Solar
Yep. Ford did right after the announcement for the EV tax credit and then it blew up in their face since technically their EV vehicles don’t qualify.
Given that the rebate has been 5 to 10% of the quotes I'm seeing it's kinda like rebate...what rebate lol
A simple solution would be to make a limit like "$5.000 rebate for systems that cost less than $20.000".
It will also have the advantage of affecting poorer people with smaller houses and not subsidizing the rich.
1+ hour Technology Connections episode? Hell yes!
I hate it so much when someone tells me we're going to do a 'deep dive' on some subject and then can only muster like 25 minutes of content.
An Alec deep dive requires a dry suit, multiple bottles of Nitrox and a substantial period of decompression afterwards. But you were warned fairly 😂
Just wanted to say it's been amazing to watch this channel grow in size, success, and technical polish, without budging a millimeter from its principles, its tone, or its sense of humor. Keep up the excellent work!
My wife and I are currently saving to replace our heat pump out here in the Pacific Northwest so this video was some great information for me to have before we start asking different installers for quotes. Thanks
Michigander here, i LOVED the hard flex on midwesteners having those most common sense for the past 100 years. my house is 100yrs old and guess where my vents run??? THROUGH THE WALLS
Plenty of Michigan houses use the basement for heat ducts, which has the same good result as his garage route or Christmas lights. The basement doesn't have to be as comfortable as the living quarters, but you don't want the pipes near the washing machine to actually freeze. That said, I personally miss the older norm of "It's winter. You can wear long sleeves." so that going outside didn't require such an extreme transition. (Though lately, we mostly solved that by skipping winter.)
My current home turns 100 this year. In around 2021 it had a spaghetti octopus installed in the attic. My oh my how that is working. The only insulation is 2-3 inches of "rock wool" between the ceiling joists, and the attic has open vents on both sides and the top (two whirlys AND a peak gap). The bills are ungodly, and the system heat cannot keep up below 40 F, running nonstop. Its at best 10 F warmer in the attic than outside. It didn't seem too strange, coming from homes in Florida, but the delta-T is at most 30 in Florida at any time of year, and attic venting helps there. The same system here, with tree shade, cools the home very efficiently (cheap). Hopefully I won't be here next winter!
Also, the "droop" was NOT set by the installer, and defaulted to zero, the signal for a shared Gas Heat/AC system. Why? With "cold" here being 20 F, and the droop at 5, the "strip heat" still takes over around 50 F indoors! And the bill is still enormous for 55 F interior temps. Its ghastly when these things are done wrong. In my case, the spaghetti octopus in an actual freezer is my problem. Did I mention no ceiling fans and 9'8" ceiling? So you sometimes get a hot forehead walking through the house while your legs are freezing.
@@bellemorelock4924 when it comes to the cold feet and hot head I 100% agree. i have nearly the same insulation factor, we had a stint by me where it was -10 for a good week or so and there was a SERIOUS draft coming from my front door and each room had a different temperature. plaster only does so much to hold heat lol
I'm in Canada, and I've never seen ducts run through the attic. We mostly have basements, so have forced air heat through floor vents, with the ducts run in the basement. All the "waste" heat is lost within the house and helps heat the basement.
@@my3dviews in mid-south Florida, a COLD winter night might hit 40/5 degrees, so cold isn't a thing. In fact, I had GAS heat and estimate 10-20 USD for that gas, per year. So it was just the differential between attic heat (120F) and the Flex ducting (60F) in the attics. Short and simple, attic tubes are fine (not great) for hot places. Now, in mid-atlantic or mid south USA, the attic tubes really suck in the cold weather, with the hot air staying high and COLD floors. My A/C is great, though I hardly use it compared to florida heat. In wall or soffit ducts would be so much better, but floor A/C vents are also bad for distribution.
“avoid complaints”. You finally got there! I design heating systems and you are 100% correct; across the board. You only understate the power of whining, relentlessly unsatisfied and miserable complainers.
So true the amount of times we do things that are technically “incorrect” so we dont get dumb service calls and emails and complaints
Related to your comment - I think we're gonna need to do a _lot_ of working helping people understand how supplemental heat sources factor into all this. Lots and *lots* of comments now are seemingly ignoring that you can (and probably will) have two heat sources with a heat pump. It's a totally different ball game to having a right-sized furnace with no room for error.
@@TechnologyConnections Even with a properly-sized furnace in a 110 year old house, I like to keep the house set cool in the winter and run a space heater in the rooms I'm using for like 30 minutes to an hour to be comfortable in those few times where I'm both awake and inactive. In the really cold snaps, the electric blankets come out for TV night. At that point, who cares if the house is 60 when a 50 watt blanket will keep you warm for the 15 minutes it takes to get all the animals on your lap, and you have all the heat you want without even the blanket on? Talk about extracting heat energy from the pet food you have to pay for anyway.
Not sure what to do about people that are cold from being outside for a few minutes and turn up the thermostat because it's cold outside, and they want to get warmer faster. Even when the heater is already running. Same people that like to run the thermostat at 68 in the summer and 78 in the winter. Sigh
How do I go about finding a HVAC company that knows their stuff? My heat pump goes on for too long and raises the temperature too much above the set point, the company that installed it and then another company I had come in tried telling me this is a feature that it doesn't stop heating as soon as the set point is reached because it is a variable compressor. Waking up in the middle of the night because you are too hot to turn the whole system on and off so that it won't turn on again until it goes below the set point isn't a "feature" though. I have read through the manuals and there are quite a few settings that might help, but I don't want to screw things up.
I also wanted to talk to a company about venting outside air in through filters as it takes the house quite a while to cool down at night in summer even with windows open and that isn't possible when there are bushfires, and how to go about that, but I don't know how to go about finding a company that would be good at that as I don't want to pay for someone to give me a quote when I have no idea of their competency, but it does make sense that I would have to pay for coming up with a solution to fit my already existing system.
Just a side note for people: here in the Southeast we use heat pumps all the time, so the "HVAC industry" is very location dependent. This channel is very Midwest (and Northeast) oriented, not that there is anything wrong with that (Seinfeld reference lol)
True. I’m pretty sure my old house in Virginia had one because the outside HVAC unit would run during the winter while cranking out warmth inside.
Fantastic video, super thorough. My take away is heat pumps are great but this idea of getting only exactly as much heat as you need, and then needing to get space heaters or to bundle up? Nope. I want enough heat to stay warm from my central system. If you have young children you don't want to hear "bundle up".
I absolutely admire your commitment and dedication to consistently spelling out "H-V-A-C" every single time instead of just saying "H-Vac" like everybody else does.
Imagine him saying the words "heating, ventilation, and air conditioning" every time.
autism?
Why?
Then theres H-Vacr with refrigeration added on
@@PunkrockNoir-ss2pq what
To someone who’s watched every video on this channel, this video is like friggin Infinity War. All the old favorite characters make an appearance, all it’s missing is some painted white LED Christmas lights!
Edit: Jesus Christ, I was only halfway through and I was joking about the Christmas lights. Touché, Mr. Connections.
Pro tip: share a wall with someone who likes to keep their house _way warmer_ than you prefer. I used to live in an apartment where I shared all my walls and I never turned on my heat.
No windows to the outside at all?🫨😁
@@matsl89 There is a reason many apartments where I live provide free heat. They don't want people shutting off the thermostat and letting the pipes burst.
That's one critique I have with his townhome test, how much heat was he getting from the neighbors who were most certainly running their heat? Does he share 1 wall or 2?
@@extragoode I had that same concern: until he revealed 7 space heaters.
As long as the temperature is close, it won't affect the results much.
I lived in a basement apartment that had the building’s furnace on the other side of my wall. Score!
HVAC engineer here, first residential is the bottom of the barrel so you get a lot of incompetents. Frankly homeowners are garbage customers who don't want to pay you and are overly needy compared to corporate clients (I've had more flack from a single family home than I did from a 50,000 square foot office renovation - and one of those paid far better). So there's basically no one who is a "respected installer" in your area - all of those are working for corporations. What you can get is "the best of the worst". It's like looking for high end talent in AAA baseball teams.
Second, you just said it right at the start - you spent $70 on gas. So it was pretty efficient. Gas furnaces can have as high as a 20:1 turndown ratio, and gas piping can typically accomodate far more therms than the piping is used for (although lousy engineers sometimes don't even spec units with turndown options - idjits). So why not oversize? Larger gas burners and fans are barely more expensive, so it's trivial to design for scenarios like "the power has been out for three days in the coldest week of the year, and now we'd like to bring the house back to temperature in 30 minutes". The homeowner appreciates it when it does happen, and there's no harm in doing it.
Obviously you size differently for heat pumps, which is one of the reasons people complain - when the above scenario does happen, the house takes a long, long time to get warm comparatively. Yes, you'll be shivering for a few hours while the heat pump brings your house from 10 degrees to 70 compared to blasting double the BTUs from a gas furnace.
But don't assume that every time something is "too large" engineers are dumb. You could maintain 75 mph on the highway with a 40 horsepower engine in most cars. Does that mean you "only need" a 40 hp engine? I'd try driving a car with one of those before assuming all that extra power is simply wasted.
You've got a few misconceptions here I'd happily talk to you about (and yes, ACs are Heat Pumps, although that's only 'kind of' for newer ultra low temp models like the HyperHeat, which is a little different). Seriously, fancy systems at two output levels? We can run fancy systems at nigh INFINITE output levels, continuous modulation for continuous operation. Two output levels is bargain basement entry level garbage the IECC might not even let me install in an office environment (and that's what the residential sector consideres high end, see why no one wants to go there?)
I’m a HVAC salesperson in the DC Maryland Area. Old oversized equipment is so prevalent here. And you can take your time explaining to the customer why it’s oversized, but when you have customers who say why change it if it’s worked for all these years and other salespeople just spec what they had. I did that to a customer…had a 3.5 ton ac and a old 150k furnace from the 40s…i put a 70k furnace and 24k heat pump. Row home about 1800sq ft. Customer kept bringing up how this website was saying he needed 4k…we installed it, he loves it. Great video!!
Glad to hear there's someone else in the DC/MD area trying to educate customers! We need more salesmen like you around.
@@andrewsherlock7296
I try, I try. I still lose customers. Right now im in an uphill battle with a customer who has a 3.5 ton unit, with a small return and plenum to branch out, and 1200 sqft home. Complaining that he already struggles cooling the 2nd floor, his unit short cycles, so air doesn't move with what he has now.
i design pottery and glass kilns,and the heat loss computations are complicated, but (TaDa!) I have a friggin coputer, so the calculations are possible. I more or less constantly have arguments with HVAC contractors. You are a breath of fresh air!
Ah yes, an hour long video full of dry humor and technical information, my favorite!
Aussie HVAC tech of 40 years! We manufactured them from 1972 - glad to see our American cousins finally catching up! One point you missed out on - a little issue of “duty cycle”you don’t want your gas heater, airconditioner or “reverse cycle airconditoner” (aka Heat Pump) running 24/7. What you are arguing here is that the compressor in your refrigerator is 500% larger than it needs to be - which it probably is. However just try designing a refrigerator with the compressor running 24/7 - and it won’t last very long. Size your heat pump so that it’s “just right” for your home and let me know if your electricity bill is still $70
Where were you 4 years before when "my specialist" suggested me to install a 16 kw heat pump that now runs on short cycles just to find out by myself that actually my home needs maximum 10 to 12 kw.... A really explanatory deep dive that teaches you something !
16kw vs 12kw is acceptable. The issue here is installing 16kw where 4kw was needed.
Then you have a bit of spare headroom in case a particularly cold cold-snap drops by to say hello. With the crazy climate many places have been having over the last decade, you will likely need it at some point.
Doing thee actual math is time consuming, and sometimes beyond the skillset of the salesperson.
So the fallback is to assume that if your existing oversized system was enough when it was in good condition, then just replace with a similar-sized unit.
Lazy and uninspired, costs the customer more most of the time, and earns the company more.
Yeah, It feels like… if car sales-people could dictate what car you should buy: “You need a dump truck, just to be safe.”
Todays thermostat and apps should be able to tell you how correct sized your furnace is.
Punch in BTU & it should know or then track the runtime and weather history.
More to it if the furnace is choked etc but really the info is there for general purpose.
Yeah, it's not just HVAC or home building industries. It's every industry. It's all about job throughput and speed of installation. "Done" isn't always done right, often even if the markup and "overheads" are IMO ridiculously excessive. I install and service audiovisual systems and we're in the middle of some renovations right now, fun times.
Thanks for your empirical data approach, and your humourous presentation style Alec! I always appreciate it. Now if only I could convince my apartment building to swap the in wall AC unit with a heat pump, at the least it could supplement the electric baseboards that are all I've got right now!
Just did a manual J calculation for my home, came up with around 36000BTUs, so I bought a 36000BTU heat pump 4 zone system, and will relegate my old 85000BTU oil furnace to the backup. Thanks for the video! the HVAC companies all wanted to do a 4 or 5 ton heat pump system, which 4 companies quoted me over $18000 for it. I bought a DIY system for just over 6k.
You need to be careful here, you need to verify the output BTU of the heat pump at those low temperatures. Especially when you get below freezing many models start to derate. That derated number is what you need to be using for your sizing.
I love it when the DIY crowd "knows more" than the technicians. People like you keep people like me (Hvac tech) up to our eyeballs in service calls. Btw- I charge more to fix a DIY screw up
Depending on the age of your oil furnace it may be as low as 56% efficient. A lot of them varied between 56-65% with only a few newer ones approaching 80%. With natural gas converting from an 80% to a 96% plus normally allows you to go down an input size as the output is nearly the same.
But as another poster said, be aware of what your winter temperatures are vs the actual output chart of your heat pump. Properly sized it will save you on your heating bill though.
@@theelite1x721987 Imagine thinking that such a simple trade is that difficult. It goes to show why you're an HVAC guy.
@MiniDevilDF simple. Sure thing. Go and work on a 250 ton chiller system with a 20 year old BAS. Let me know how simple it is. Go on. I'll wait.
When you say "the coldest weather we ever get" I'd be careful with that... when I lived in Chicago we had the polar vortex and it got down to -40F.
Thank you for stopping and adding the obligatory "69, nice" as is customary proper internet etiquette.
Love all your videos dude, you are inredibly thorough.
6:20. "We see this large spike in the morning when the program raises the set point to 69, but otherwise - sorry, nice - but otherwise the furnace runs for about 10 minutes per hour." Large spike, eh?
HVAC guy is coming out this afternoon to discuss replacing my house's 15 year old AC/Gas Furnace combo. As a fellow midwesterner I was already planning on getting a heat pump specifically due to your previous video, but it was nice for this one to pop up today and give me a reminder.
"But you may have noticed the runtime"
*moves mouse over the video and is shocked by the runtime*
"Yeah, we're covering a lot"
That... was a very nicely timed pause there. At least it was for me. 🙂
Indeed
Oversized cooling system (as was stated) can create a mold issue. Little to no dehumidifying creates a wet attracting environment to mold and mildew.
There were homes in Florida where the oversized systems caused mold in the ducts.
The subtle “you’re so vain” joke at 46:54 is one of my favorite from you… great video. As usual.
"Gotchu on that one, philosophers!" (around 48m)
"joke"
"These allowed me to control the space heaters, and Christmas lights, with precision" - great phrases of our time.
Commercial HVAC guy here. Great video. If it makes you feel any better, water source heat pumps, with hot water injection (usually from a gas boiler) has pretty much become the standard for new commercial buildings. Also, much better control strategies have been being used including setpoint optimization that directly looks at the current loads on the building and adjusts the setpoint and equipment speed accordingly, among other things.
Yes but to be fair the commercial world is a lot more straightforward than residential. Residential companies are professional conmen most times. Not that honest ones don’t exist, but we both know that. A lot of people just never change
@@bradleyscofarm6151 commercial buildings are not straightforward lol. Let me know once it’s the standard for resi to get VFDs on fans, pumps and compressors, central water plants, cooling towers, condenser water loops with heat exchangers for free cooling, actual controls (not just “smart” thermostats,) and air and water balancing. You’re lucky if your average resi technician even knows how to check the static pressure over the fan on your home air handler.
I'm an engineer and have had to run heat loading calculations for control areas in nuclear power plants and I gotta say...the math isn't even all that scary, it's just cumbersome and annoying to do. But if you can copy a few equations from Google and make half decent use of excel, you can definitely do it
HVAC contractor here. We UNDERSIZE always. Here in EU, especially Scandinavia, we recommend to install a heat pump that is 80% of the whole heat load of the house/apartment with 20% as auxiliary. This is a common practice and knowledge of any good professional in this field here. This is because it will lead to; higher efficiency, longer lifespan, cheaper investment cost, cheaper running cost, less start and stops, quieter. This is all because a undersized will do fewer start and stops, running longer intervals and more continuously during the whole year as it have to run longer to keep it warm, as in video "struggle longer" but that is a good thing as it will run as it optimal capacity for the building as long as possible and not shut off and start that take more energy each start cycle and also do more wear and tear on components, it will lead to that an undersized heat pump being more efficient, better SCOP, and as more longevity, less maintenance or replacements. Also The coldest days is few per year. For only couple of days to maybe one week it will be coldest or mostly at night, so you can use auxiliary heat source such as a direct electric boiler/heater. The majority of the year you don't need that much heat, like 90% of the year you need only 80% or less of the whole target heat load (80% of the heat losses that the house has). We all here in Scandinavia know here from 50 years of experience of heat pumps that a heat pump that is not having too much start stops and use aux electric heat for the coldest nights will have a life of 25-30 years if you are lucky, average 18-25 years. An oversized heat pump will last only 10 years. So 80% is our best recommendation for your wallet. And remember 1 degree colder heating will save you 5-10% of your electric bill and will get you some more years of the heat pump, also keep you more active and healthy :) But need to be said as last thing, now all heat pumps here are inverters with frequency variable speed controlled, so now the heat pump tries to never shut off the compressor and goes down in speed and up in speed depending on the load is needed and the outdoor temp, So now we just buy one size almost that fits all, but still you don't want to over size here, as it will remove the benefits then that it cant go down in enough low frequency speeds, so it will act if oversized more like a on-off heat pump and then you loose the whole point why you bought a inverter variable speed heat pump. So don't oversize, always better to undersize with 80-90% of the whole heat load, even if inverter aim for as close to 100% as possible, the lower speeds will be active all spring, summer, fall, only coldest winter will need full heat capacity. UNDERSIZE IS KING!
Undersize is king! I have to show this to my girlfriend!
@TechnologyConnections should talk about this, I didn't know this
I will show that to my installer
I was going to ask about VFD's on another comment, but yours pretty much answered it. Where I am, power outages are fairly rare but happen enough that I'd be inclined to keep my gas furnace just for those occasions where I could run it on battery or generator power and still have heat. Every time our local power has gone out we've still had gas pressure, and it wouldn't take much power draw to keep the place warm.
My parents are getting quotes these days and the list of considerations is similar in Germany (the insulation significantly improved since installing the previous heat)
"OH, I'm sorry...Nice!"
I said it out loud, was disappointed momentarily, then laughed out loud 😂
@@timothymiller6426Are you Americans? I feel like only Americans do the 69 joke past their teenage years.
And as I am typing this, my initial comment is at 69 likes 🤣
You're so right about the price gouging that goes on, they assume we don't know enough to know when we're being ripped off. Recently my 74 year old Mom was sent an estimate from her HVAC company to replace the thermostats in her house, they estimated $2,000. From a bit of googling I learned that the thermostats cost $500 in total and I estimated 2 hours in labor, which is extremely generous for changing thermostats. They effectively tried to sneak in a labor charge of $750 per hour because they assumed my elderly Mom wouldn't know better.
Why does everything need to be a scam now?
Did they have to run new thermostat wire? if not then that would be a crazy estimate. depending on the location of the thermostat running new wires to the AHU and the Cond through the walls would take a lot more effort and longer then 2 hours.
I presume more than one thermostat because it's zone heat? I just replaced my three year old dead Honeywell thermostat with a China's Best from Amazon for $33. I even like it better, 1/3rd the cost. Both have the aux heat connection for heat strips.
@gleb.salmanov "Why does everything need to be a scam these days?"
Short answer? Capitalism. The profit motive is the dominant force in our economy, and by extension our lives.
Capitalism necessitates scamming, price gouge, and vicious exploitation because if Company A want to run an honest, more business, and Comkamy B is ruthless and unethical, they will put Company A out of business.
Thus, over time, all the honest business die out overtime, and all businesses end up competing within the amplified scheme of exploitation.
Company's that were reasonably ethical all got put out of business, and we're left with the bad guys competing with each other, making them behave even worse.
It's an inevitable result of Capitalism.
12:52 is what's also happening in hospitals, and different, departments, only focused on one part of the human body, and why general/family medicine is so important, because if you are in one part of the body with a problem, you can get something done for that part, but it will domino effect itself in other parts of the body, if not properly managed, and it is why we need a board of general managers that understand all the parts of the body, but we can't forget the psychological (mind/soul/feeling/placebo) part of the humans, because that is also a major factor, yes the body is a machine/hardware, but you need a good soul/software engineer as well.
I'm only a minute in, but i am already getting annoyed that I'm not giving the info i care about. When the house was built, size of furnace, how cold it got.
Most engineers in the artic actually undersize the HVAC system for heating during the winter. Where the furnace can't heat the house on the coldest days, but we only expect those temperatures a few days out of the year.
This has became even less of an issue with all the electronics people run and house insulation improving. But the tight house saving your energy bills may also be creating health problems by lack of air circulation.
That Google rant is painfully relatable
All hail the Garggler our lord and savior
Same! I even have Google WiFi routers in addition to phone, Chromecast, and thermostat.
YES
Don't place all egg in same basket. Especially when their service goes down... Lock out of everything. Use other companies to promote companies market gain.
Indeed. If you're giving them all that data about you that they really don't need and shouldn't have (because it's google. It absolutely phones home and tells them everything it can at every opportunity, that information is where they make their actual money, making you pay to give it to them is just a bonus), the least they can do is actually provide the promised service properly.
The backdrop changes haven't gone unnoticed
I'm an HVAC/R tech who used to work for a resi company, now back in commercial and industrial, and I can say you are spot on with the abundance of oversized systems. Unfortunately, lot of sales guys do perform poor practices using a rule of thumb to size (generally based on sq ft) or just slapping in the same size that was there before, no actual heat load calculation. Many of my calls were due to high limits tripping from oversized systems and these were on a lot of the company's installs. I was basically told to lie to the customer and not mention the sales dude quoting over sized systems and to blame the duct work size was too small. Long story short, I started to spill the beans and spread the truth and this didn't turn out well with the office and sales boys.
Not a knock on the resi guys but in my experience there’s a severe lack of good techs, all the good ones who are interested in any sort of calculations and whatnot generally speaking end up jumping ship to commercial/industrial eventually like you did.
Dealing with the customer bs just isn’t worth it for somebody with skills so much of the time.
Had to stop and laugh at the quick joke at 46:54 about "you're so vain". You're really a master at weaving in little jokes and moving right past them, it really elevates your work
I'd like to take a moment to note that I really enjoyed the "you're so vain" joke, it was delightful.
This should be the top rated comment 😂
I paused the video to make a comment on that and had to scroll way too far down to see if anyone else had commented on it too.
As soon as you said your heating needs were just under six kW my first thought was "huh, you could probably do that with four space heaters and a few control circuits." To see that exact thing happen later was extremely satisfying.
I gave up trying to find an HVAC company that wasn't going to lie straight to my face about heat pumps, so I installed it myself.
This was my attitude about solar and well, almost every other service industry anymore.
Tradesmen lie to you about literally everything. The trades, but *especially* HVAC, plumbing, and electrical, are just wall to wall scammers.
Why do think they're lying, rather than simply being misinformed themselves?
I have ended up doing most installs these days myself because of similar situations. The “pros” these days only want to install what puts the most money in their pocket
@@JD-xz1mx The alternative is worse. Profit motive is one thing, but do you want to hire a "professional" that doesn't know their craft?
I had an opposite experience. I was about to replace my 3 ton AC because it was old (24 years old at the time) and was having problems keeping up on very hot days. The HVAC contractor wanted to install a smaller AC unit. He said that he a bad experience with the coil freezing up because the AC was oversized for the ducts. He pointed out that my home (built in 1965) has small ducts designed for heating, not cooling. Even though my 3 ton unit had no history of the coil freezing up, he wanted to replace it with a smaller 2.5 ton unit, likely making the situation worse as far as keeping up with the load on those very hot summer days. I decided not to replace my old AC, which is now 29 years old and still going.
Fun fact: in Australia we call them "reverse cycle air conditioners"
Except Tasmanians.
*splits, techs commonly say we are gonna bash in some splits
going through the aussie immigration process was fascinating: they give you all this cultural background, like "tall poppy syndrome", "mateship" and other things i never heard anyone say in conversation. but one thing that stuck with me, and i'm pretty sure it didn't come from immigration but i once heard aussie english and the culture described as: "why call a spade a spade when you can just call it a shovel"
so i dunno what tasmanians call a reverse cycle air conditioner, but i'll bet it's got far fewer syllables.
@@browntea5843 in tas?
@@herzogsbuick well most people refer to them as "aircons" regardless.
Tasmanians, though, are the only ones that call them heat pumps. I seriously thought it was a weird regional thing when I moved there.
in TC's heat pump video, he say that most american call heat pump RCAC too
To measure the amount of time a furnace runs you can wire an analogue clock in parallel with the fan. You can set it to 12:00 and see where it is after 24 hours.
As a hvac tech. We do load calcs on every single sale (except mobile homes). We fit to the home but upsize the coil a half ton to dehumidify a little more. We're also trying to get into insulation to help our installs work more efficiently so this video was awesome to listen to
You deliberately mismatch the air handler to "dehumidify a little more"? That is genius, if you are in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc, but reverse if Arizona Colorado etc. At first I misread this as "we upsize... a half-ton" (typically implying the comp or whole split unit) which dehumidifies _less_ not more. Also, just from experience, most homes are too dry 90% of the time. It can help some elderly and allergy sufferers as long as they drink an extra 2-3 quarts of water daily to compensate (almost none do).
Why not mobile homes?
@austin2725 a number of reasons. Mostly the ductwork in mobile homes isn't the best and we can only push so much CFM through them so we go off the length of the home. Aside from the cheap windows and low to no insulation, theirs really no point because of the ductwork
When my parents had their furnace replaced, I'm guessing that the company did something similar, because the unit is absolutely tiny compared with the old one. Granted the old one was pretty old, so some of that is probably efficiency
But, that being said, natural gas is being banned here for new installs and I'm sure that over time it will be a choice of base board heaters, heat pumps and IR. Personally, I've got baseboard heaters and an portable IR heater and that seems to work just fine. Sure, it does take a while for the place to warm, but I can program the thermostat to start heating it a bit before I get home.
@SmallSpoonBrigade yea. Most furnaces are 34 inches tall by 17.5 inches wide. We're in kansas so gas heat hear actually raises humidity in the home quite a bit
A watt is a watt.
That's lots of watts.
Thank u so much for investing so much time into the creation of this video. This was super informative.
I live in Ontario, Canada, and I just installed a Gree GUD36 3-ton heat pump for free under the government's incentives. It's a heat pump replacing the A/C while keeping the old furnace in place as the blower and backup heater. It worked quite well. But two things I want to comment:
1. It makes more sense to run the heat pump rather than gas when the temperature is not that cold and when the electricity is cheaper. No one did this math. I did a brief calculation (in CAD): assuming -7C and gas price 0.5/m3, COP=2, it would break even when your electricity rate is 0.1/kwh. So it would save you a lot of money by running heat pump during the night (my overnight rate is 0.03/kwh). However, it's a shame that no "smart" thermostat on the market supports switching between normal and AUX modes in the schedule. I ended up using Home Assitant to do the trick.
2. The contractors here will only advertise it as a free better A/C. They said the heat pump was not powerful enough for the cold and set the AUX cutoff temperature to 4C or even higher. Despite the government's paid to lower carbon emissions and save people some utility bills, people are not well educated on how to use heat pumps and get the most out of them (like smart thermostat manufacturers implementing the ability to switch between AUX and heat pump automatically based on outdoor temperature, COP at the temperature, gas rate and electricity rate during the time)
I hope you can cover the cost analysis on the heat pump vs gas next time. It's gonna be fun and super useful!
Most people struggle to set up or even understand why they'd save mpmey with a programable thermostat in the first place. Cheap people mostly just turn it down when they leave and back up when they get home. Those who have money for a new hvac and thermostat generally won't put up with any discomfort anyway. Learning is uncomfortable for most people. Therefore, nobody actually would use those settings.
30 years ago I was installing temperature control panels by Paragon that had many of these functions. The annoying part was that I had to run a thermocouple to the shaded outside wall of the building to anticipate heating demand. But they worked well.
It wasn't free my friend. In fact, your new heatpump was paid for by taking money earned by your fellow citizens forcibly redistributed to the companies that then produce, install, and maintain these heatpumps. People need to stop saying that government funded programs provided them something for free. That is such an ignorant lie because governments only obtain money through taxation which comes from the forced taking from its citizens.
they are better than a furnace until you start getting into the -15c range, then you start risking a cold house. the idea that you then require a backup Nat Gas heater ruins the cost analysis.
when I did research on a heat pumps as a replacement, I found that they only guaranteed full heat down to -20c best case. not good enough for me. its also a case where the likelihood that the electrification boom causes a huge spike in electricity costs and black outs is quite high in Canada given that any attempt at building powerplants, regardless of their needs is protested heavily. its alot easier to run a generator to power a blower than it is to power a whole heater. just seems like a single point of failure to me to run everything off the electrical grid.
man, I wish i had those power costs.
i pay roughly 0.50CAD per kWh at night and ~0.66CAD during the day.
I would love to have a heat pump, just to have A/C in the summer, but gas is just that much cheaper to run.
For now that is. Sooner or later the balance will flip. I hope at least...
Minnesota here. My large single family home's furnace needed replacing. I hired a one man local HVAC company to perform the swap.
The furnace he installed is a high efficiency one like the one in the video with ½ the capacity of the previous one.
He said it isn't good for the thing to only run 10 min at a time, plus it's stupid wasting money on capacity I didn't need.
He was correct. No complaints.
The difference is probably that the new one is on for longer periods of the day than the older one was. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it is probably on the whole better all around for doing that. I know I probably would have had fewer trips to the emergency room with cat hair/dust related allergy attacks with the more modern furnaces.
lol i appreciate that the bulk of this video is confirming that a single number is correct in three increasingly loony ways; the christmas lights were a great touch. but also great info about HVAC stuff, 10/10
My co-workers think I’m crazy because I kept laughing out loud during the portion of the video where you were describing the test, but I’m the one that does the fire and safety inspections at work.
Plus I’ve had to do a real-world test under duress, because the furnace chose to fail at -67F, and I had to keep the place from freezing long enough that my talented furnace repairman could machine some replacement parts out of brass bar stock and other materials, due to the extreme age of the unit and a lack of parts available for a unit of said age.
Thankfully it has since been replaced by a newer, much more more efficient furnace that uses standard parts that are more easily sourced.
Someday I dream of getting a heat pump system, but that probably won’t happen while I live where I do.