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It’s finally here! I’ve been dreaming of this day since December 2015, when I moved into the longest-term fixer-upper ever; we’re installing a mini-split heat pump!! And here it is, about 10 years before I thought it would be and/or minus the broken dinosaur furnace.
Let me explain a little bit, a least what I know of it (#notanexpert). My 1970s house in Western Pennsylvania has a hot-water baseboard heating system that is heated up with a fuel-based boiler system. I don’t know the mechanics of the whole thing or how any of it works with its ignition cycles or anything like that, but what I do know is that my furnace is somewhere close to ancient. Every year the routine-maintenance guy come in October to check the system, and every year they say “Wow, I’ve never seen a system that old.” This makes a lot of sense given that it is approximately 50 years old and furnaces now last about 15-25 years, give or take the type of furnace.
Last year we got some pretty of the coldest temperatures my house had seen under my ownership. With those cold temperatures came a sound akin to banshee screeching from my furnace. We could never replicate the noise when the repairman came to look at the system and they just said the furnace was older and probably needed twice a year maintenance. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the winter praying to the universe that the ancient furnace would kick on and make that horrible screeching noise.
And it did. YAY! Thank you Universe!
We knew that we probably wouldn’t want to go through another winter of that, so we starting doing some research into our options for whole home central heat and air—we currently utilized two very inefficient window AC units during the summer—because we wanted the whole package.
Table of Contents
Heating and Cooling Options:
- New Furnace (Oil or Natural Gas) + New Central Air system (Electric)
- Ducted Heat Pump (Central Heat and Air, all Electric)
- Ductless Mini-Split System (essentially a ductless heat pump, all electric)
Without doing any research, we knew we wanted a fully electric system. This was in part due to the fact that we anticipate switching everything over to solar electric in the next couple years and the fact that both fuel oil and natural gas have a negative impact on the environment by adding to the carbon emissions and creating greenhouse gases.
So, without much research, we basically ruled out option one. There are just too many environmental impacts for us to want to contend with for at least the next 20 years. Oil Drilling is not only disrupting and destroying important ecological environments such as those in the ocean, but the oil extraction process also adds to the greenhouse gases and pollutants in our air. Additionally, the burning of the fuel oil or natural gas emits greenhouse gases as well.
In my research for this post, it seems like the industry has come a long way towards producing cleaner, more efficient burning fuel oil/natural gas. And I’m not here to dispute that; however, being cleaner and more efficient does not negate the environmental impact that drilling has on the wild/marine life nor does it provide a way for me to offset the carbon emissions of my heating source.
Are there Environmental Impacts of Fuel Oil?
That all said, I have very CHEAP fuel oil costs; it has cost me between 300 – 400 dollars to heat my (1400 sq. Foot) home all winter, every winter since I moved in. According to the quotes I received for adding central heat/air, these are some of the cheapest fuel costs the professionals had seen in a long time. So I can understand why a new fuel oil or natural gas furnace is appealing to some. I did not request any quotes from professionals for this option, as it just wasn’t the route we wanted to go.
In the interim of doing our hordes of research for our other options, we did get the entire house insulated (well, the attic as it turns out the external walls did not need it), so that all the hot/cool air stays where it’s supposed to for the maximum amount of time. We had cellulose insulation blown into both our attic spaces for less than two grand. And boy, did it make a big difference almost immediately (we had it done in the summer). The hot attic air was no longer radiating down into our master bedroom and the bedroom temperature stayed in a relatively consistent range. But, I digress….
Are Mini-Split Heat Pumps more Efficient?
The next option was a whole home central heat and air heat pump. Now, heat pumps in western Pennsylvania have not always received the most glowing reviews; this is because heat pumps do not CREATE heat – they move heat from one place to another, from outside to inside in the winter and from inside to outside in the summer. A furnace CREATES heat, but a heat pump utilizes the outside air by absorbing the heat energy (even in cold temperatures) and TRANSFERS it to the indoor air.
Essentially, heat pumps take the thermal energy that’s available in the ambient air and move it into or out of your home. The caveat is, they are not super efficient the colder it gets outside—since there isn’t as much thermal energy to transfer into your home. We get pretty cold here, it definitely got below zero Fahrenheit last year. And I think it is this one little caveat that stokes the fears that keeps people from installing heat pumps in Western Pa. But just because it is not as efficient in the colder temperatures, does not mean that it does not work OR that it’s not still more efficient than an oil/natural gas furnace.
A ducted heat pump is what you are probably most likely to associate with central heat and air. This is the system run by a central thermostat that blows the hot/cold air through air ducts, the hot/cold air comes out of the air ducts through the vents/registers that are normally in the most inconvenient spaces on the floor. Although our house is on the smaller side, it is a split-level home that has three floors of living space and we were going to have to put in ductwork in addition to the heat pump. We received no formal ducted heat pump quotes (due to lack of follow through on the professionals part—despite our many phone calls—we will not be utilizing that company’s services in the future), but during the discussion the professional said we were looking at about 8-10 grand in ductwork ALONE and at least 15 grand the heat pump with installation. So…nearly 25,000 dollars—that’s a lot of money for a home improvement, but heat pumps have a 10-15 year warranty and are very efficient. And it was a quote that I had been preparing myself for, for the last five years.
Ducted systems are known to lose some of their efficiency due to the travel of the air through the air ducts. This is mitigated through insulating your ductwork, but some thermal energy (whether heated or cooled air) is lost in the travel through the ductwork to the appropriate room of your house.
Similarly, as our third option, a ductless mini-split system utilizes the same heat pump technology. So, it efficiently TRANSFERS heat from inside/outside the home. But, you guessed it, there are no air ducts. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. So how does the air get into your house? Individual room air handler units and what I’m going to call outdoor ductwork. I would consider this option the least aesthetically pleasing.
A ductless mini-split system has one unit on the outside of your home that is basically your heat pump, used for both your heating and cooling needs. Additionally, each room of your house is equipped with an air handler. These can be mounted on the wall or in the ceiling. The air handlers remind me of window air conditioner units, only larger, and permanently mounted on the wall. Each air handler then has the outdoor ductwork that runs to the heat pump.
The “outdoor ductwork” includes everything that is needed for each air handler to run (electricity, refrigerant, and a condensation tube) and is covered with a line set cover that looks similar to plastic/metal downspouts on a home. The outdoor ductwork does not lose as much of the thermal energy during transfer to each room as a ducted system would.
Each air handler creates individualized climate controlled areas. Because of the way our house is NOT open concept, this would mean we need five air handlers, one for every large room with ambient heating in the bathroom and basement. The boyfriend was excited about the possibility of individual climate controlled areas (he’s always warm and I’m always freezing).
The main advantage to this ductless mini-split system is that some of the brands are DIY-friendly, meaning we would be able to do a lot of the work ourselves to cut down on some of the installation costs. We, of course, watched all the YouTube videos we could find on DIY install and it didn’t look too complicated. However, when you look at ordering your system, it becomes (at least for me) more complicated. You have to know how many feet of all the line sets you need, and then you have to order the correct length of line set cover, and it became way too much for me to try to think through.
Plus, we really don’t have the time to try to install one of these ourselves. So, we decided to get some installation quotes. We called two local, companies for quotes. One of them provided a quote that was very reasonable considering the cost of materials. The second, as discussed above, never provided any additional contact or quote after the initial meeting. We went with the ductless mini-split system due to it being all electric, efficient, and costly—running us somewhere close to 11,000 for full turnkey installation instead of 25,000 for a ducted system.
And it’s being installed THIS WEEK—hopefully tomorrow is the last day of installation and I get to share all the future updates with you. Liiike—what’s my new electric bill, how well does it heat in the cold, is the individual climate control saving my relationship, and everything in between.
But presently, I’m sticking to this is the LEAST attractive option. There is this GIANT unit outside by my back deck and there are 5 sets of gutter looking “outdoor ductwork” just all over the outside of the house (literally on three of the four faces of the house). All of the outdoor ductwork is being run inside to the basement to connect to the electricity boxes, and those things take up a nice chunk of my basement headspace in one corner. Hopefully all of these feelings go away as soon as I feel that sweet, environmentally friendly warm air.
I’ll make sure to update on our energy usage and heating/cooling efficiency once we are able to dive into the data. Comment below if you’ve been thinking about a mini-split system and if you have any reservations or questions.
