Asklemmy

43962 readers

1242 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

121

Do you have a Heat Pump in a cold climate? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 10 months ago by spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Looking to get some anecdotal experiences from someone living in a cold climate using a heat pump as their main source of heat.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have a heat pump heating and cooling my basement in Atlantic Canada.

Temperatures in the winter hold steady around -20C with some dips a few times in the -40c range when accounting for windchill.

Works just fine. I keep my basement a nice 21C. Heating works well. I see lots of disinfo posted online about heat pumps not working in the cold and it’s all horseshit. Make sure you’re buying a heat pump that’s built for colder temperatures and you’re golden.

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Windchill isn't relevant when it comes to how heat pumps work. It only effects how humans perceive the cold. Technically, I think wind would actually boost heating performance during winter, but I don't know by how much.

Does you place require much cooling in the summer? I bet your system is probably sized for the winter more than the summer

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. below -20 C thermometer temperature the cold-climate ones start to crap out. To be fair, that's pretty cold, and is probably only regularly relevant on the prairies and in the north.

There's work ongoing to commercialise an electrocaloric heat pump. You could use normal methanol as the fluid, then, and it would work all the way down to -90. I'm holding out for that, because I'm on the prairies.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This just isn’t true. I’ve used my heat pump beyond -20 up until -40 and it still worked and heated the air. I don’t know why this is so hard to grasp for some people. I know my house, I’ve experienced the heat pump functioning without any issue in -30 range cold.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago

Really? Thermometer temperature, not windchill? Interesting. They're only marketed as working down to that cold (with some variation). I'd be worried about damage any lower.

[–] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 0 points 10 months ago

Really? Thermometer temperature, not windchill? Interesting. They’re only marketed as working down to that cold (with some variation) according to everything I've read. I’d be worried about damage any lower.