Do Heat Pumps in the Edmonton Winter Work at -30°C in Alberta? Sherwood Park HVAC Expert Explains
Hi there. Welcome back to the YouTube channel for Hinse Brothers Mechanical. I’m here with Adrien Hinse, one of the brothers in Hinse Brothers and one of the owners, of course. The topic for today is, is a heat pump practical in minus 30° C? The real truth for Sherwood Park homeowners.
Okay, so heat pumps, we know they’re pretty efficient. We know they’re pretty good, but we really want to understand how effective they can be in our area. So our area for heat pumps would be Sherwood Park, Sherwood Park, and Beaumont is mainly the areas that you serve. So let’s get started. Question number one, how good are heat pumps in cold weather?
How Heat Pumps Perform in Sherwood Park Winters
So when I think about a heat pump, I think of it as basically an air conditioner with some heating capacity. So, in our climate, as we know, or you may not know, heat pumps usually only work down to about operate down to about minus 20 to minus 25.
But that doesn’t mean they’re running efficiently at that point. So, they run efficiently down to around the area about minus 10. The heat capacity of a heat pump is actually a lot lower than a gas furnace is. So, you never want to use this as your primary heat source. So, you always want to have either a boiler system to go along with that or a gas furnace, some type of primary heat source.
If you’re thinking about putting in solar panels, it’s a great idea to put in a heat pump in that it will do your heating in milder temperatures. So, lowering the amount of gas you’re going to use for heating. They do make a really good air conditioner though.
So, in my mind, the price difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner is almost negligible at this point. So, if you want a really efficient air conditioner, you can get a heat pump that’ll do both. So, it is helpful if you’ve got the solar and you need air conditioning, you get the heat pump option. And now it’s going to produce heat in milder temperatures for you.
What Changes When Adding a Heat Pump to Your HVAC System
All right. So let’s talk about the different options then. Okay. So if you currently have a forced air furnace, you can get a heat pump and what changes in the system?
I know of course you get the outside unit like the condensing unit. Then what do you have inside that changes if you have a forced air furnace currently?
So, inside the home, the difference is you’re probably going to need a new evaporator coil. So, that sits above your furnace and that, if you’re familiar with air conditioning, the refrigerant runs through that coil and provides either heat or cooling and the furnace blows the air through it.
So, you’re going to need a different evaporator coil that’s got a special valve in it that allows the higher efficiency of the heat pump and expansion. So, it’s called an expansion valve, TXV, a thermal expansion valve. You may need to have a larger refrigerant line and a different thermostat that’ll work with dual fuel they call it. So, it’ll switch between electric heat and gas heating.
So there’s different style thermostats we can put in some measured temperature outside and when the temperature comes down to say set it up for minus 10 your heat pump won’t come on any when it’s cooler than that when it becomes warmer than minus 10 then it’ll switch back to your heat pump.
Okay. Now before we were talking about boilers.
How does that play into having a heat pump versus a boiler or a combination system?
So the boiler would act as your primary heat source. You can get fan coils which are basically like a furnace and the heat source is a boiler. So it’s got an internal coil in it as well that it’s called a heating coil. So the boiler is going to actually pump heated fluid through that system and blow air through it when heating and it’ll switch back and forth between the electric or evaporator coil above it to the heating coil. Depends on how you set it up for your thermostat.
Best HVAC System Combinations for Maximum Efficiency in Sherwood Park
Energy is a big deal and energy usage is a big deal in the Sherwood Park area, especially in the winter.
So in your mind what would be the ideal situation for using either heat pump, boiler, central central heating like what’s the best combination for max efficiency?
For max efficiency heating wise the boiler system is typically the best because it recirculates hot fluid. So it just maintains that fluid temperature using the boiler, right? And it also makes it a lot easier to do zoning throughout the home.
So if you’re doing radiant heating, say in floor heating, you can virtually put a thermostat in different rooms and adjust your temperature that way so you can have a more even distribution of heat throughout the home or business, whatever you may be.
But I’m a big fan of combination systems. So we can incorporate air conditioning as well. You can get a fan coil heated by the boiler cooled by the heat pump or air conditioner and we can also apply zoning systems to that as well. So basically we can use high velocity. We can use different damper systems that’ll direct the flow to where it’s needed in the home.
Your thermostats are all connected to that zone panel and it becomes more efficient, too, because you’re only heating or cooling the areas that need it rather than the entire house. So, you notice your house in your basement’s always going to be a lot cooler unless there’s a separate heat source.
The zoning will actually redirect your air to where it’s needed. So, if it’s not needed in the basement, you’re not going to be cooling the basement.
Conventional systems, if they have one furnace, you have air conditioning on. Typically, people are going downstairs and they’re closing all the vents to try to warm it up in the basement because it gets too cold.
And so, you’re constantly playing around with it that way. Right from the design stage of the home, it’s great to incorporate a combination system, whether it be radiant, forced air, radiant and forced air, cooling heat pumps. If you’re doing solar, you can run the heat pump off of that.
There’s all sorts of different scenarios. And we like to work with homeowners in the designing process so you can consider that stuff as a part of the build rather than just trying to add it on after the fact.
So if it’s planned, you can plan for maximum efficiency and use of the system.
HRVs, Ventilation, and Indoor Air Quality in Sherwood Park Homes
Now let’s talk about other options. So you can put it like an HRV, when would that be the wise choice?
Like in all of these scenarios with a boiler and a heat pump scenario, you’ve got your liquid cooling and you’ve also got your heat pump which is providing cooling as well.
When do you implement using an HRV or an ERV to help with fresh air as well as circulating air and recapturing some of that heat?
So HRVs are actually a really common equipment to use in homes today because you do need to introduce so much fresh air to your home. An HRV actually captures some of the air like it’s providing an air turnover in your home. So it’s expelling exhausting stale air and bringing in fresh air from outside.
It’ll use that stale air to warm up the incoming air. It’ll cool off air as it’s exhausting it and bring in the fresh air from outside. So, if it’s hot outside, it’ll cool the air coming in. And so, that just gives you a more efficient way of introducing ventilation in your home.
Previously, you’d have to interlock your furnace, which has a fresh air port on it, with your bath fans. So, you’d have a central ventilation switch in the home.
So, you flick that switch on, it turns on your furnace, brings in a small amount of fresh air, and it turns on your bath fans, so you’ve got some air movement throughout the home.
With an HRV, you can actually use the HRV to exhaust your bathrooms and supply fresh air into your duct work. So, instead of having to turn on your bath fans and your furnace, the HRV will do the work.
Gotcha. So, what have you seen most commonly or what do you recommend to your clients who are in, let’s say, Sherwood Park or St. Albert?
More of the higher end homes?
Well, basically, we pretty much put an HRV in every new home that we built today. Homes are built super tight, so you need to have that ventilation. They work well for exhaustion, but they have to run for a longer period of time.
So, anytime you have a bathroom, say that’s got multiple showers and a tub and a larger space, sometimes we’ll actually introduce an exhaust fan as well as the HRV just to make sure there’s enough ventilation for that bathroom.
Okay. But it’s standard operating procedure nowadays to have an HRV in the home.
Okay. Is that something that someone with a large older home, would it be wise for them to have an HRV or would that be when they’re kind of redoing their system?
Personally I put an HRV in my home. I don’t have it ducted to specific rooms. I just ducted into the existing return air and supply plenum.
I didn’t like having ice build up on my fresh air intake, and I didn’t want just straight cold air coming in. So, I introduced the HRV to warm that air coming up.
Gives me a bit better efficiency. And my thermostat can just run the HRV to help ventilate the home and keep the air quality higher.
I also put in an air quality monitor. Tests the air periodically in the home as needed. It turns on.
It sees if there’s contaminants in the air and brings in some fresh air.
That brings me to another question. In the summertime when it’s not minus 30, there are forest fires. So how does the HRV function when we’ve got poor air quality outside?
So when there’s poor air quality outside, it does rely on the fresh air from outside. So typically the HRV will run less.
But that being said, there’s different filter systems we can put in the combination with your furnace to capture a lot of those higher MERV air filters with carbon, different air purification systems.
Is there anything else that homeowners should know about heat pumps, their efficiency and where they can go to learn more about this?
Well, with the newer technology nowadays, they’re a lot quieter operating, so space saving requirements, too. There’s slimmer models that can go outside that are side discharge, so they save space outside. They’re not as intrusive.
They’re about 20 dB quieter than a standard air conditioner would be. So, that helps add comfort that way.
Some people I’ve had, I don’t know if I want to put an air conditioner on the side of my house because my neighbor’s bedroom window is right there. My neighbor doesn’t even hear mine operate anymore.
That’s awesome.
So, it’s quite a good thing. And they’re higher efficiency, so they’re not using as much power.
Right. And that’s tremendous because traditional air conditioning units like they usually draw a lot of power, 30 amps or more when they’re initially starting up and over a summer that can be quite a bit of electricity that you’re using.
So if any way people can reduce their utility bills, I think that’s a welcome choice.
All right, Adrian, thanks so much for that. We really appreciate it. If you are a homeowner in the Sherwood Park area can be Sherwood Park, Beaumont or any of the areas in between and you’re looking for high quality HVAC, air conditioning, furnace, plumbing, sheet metal work, these are the guys to call. Hinse Brothers Mechanical.
Call Adrian. He’ll be happy to come out and give you guys a quote. Thanks so much and we’ll see you on the next video.