ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area The end of electric heat?

Steve:

Just for the record, the term 'electric heat' I used within this thread references electric resistance heat. Either baseboard, or fan forced units. 'Heat pumps' are HVAC contractors domain with us sparkies providing the wiring. If my terminology was misleading, for that I have to say...sorry.

Toaster wire heat is the norm here in south Florida but our heating season is measured in days and usually not even all day then. My wife turns it on in the morning while she is getting ready to go to work and turns it off when she leaves.
A heat pump would not do much in that short amount of time.

A heat pump is nothing more than an air conditioning unit with a reversing valve. It's a negligible cost increase over typical AC systems, and will heat just as fast as the AC cools, and just as fast as a resistance heater of similar size. I'm surprised they'd use anything other than heat pumps in Florida.

At 12 cents/kWh, a 1500W electric resistance heater of the type you can get for $15 at Wal-Mart will cost $129/month to run. An electric heat pump would only cost $43/month. Insulating/sealing the room so you don't have to run it 24/7 would help considerably as well

All of that implies that you heat the whole house and that you turn it on and forget it. Here heat is more of a "room you are in" and "only an hour or two, a few times a year" thing.

I don’t see that this takes anything away from the known high efficiency aspect of them, but a split heat pump system without electric heat strips or some other form of auxiliary heat normally wouldn’t be able to be used as a standalone heating system in much of the country.
They are intended to be run at the same time as the second stage aux electric heat strips or other heat source is energized when extra heating capacity is needed. This is not just for defrost mode or emergency heat.
The simultaneous operation is usually accomplished through a 2-stage indoor thermostat and/or duct sensors, but sometimes an outdoor tstat is also used to prevent use of the heat strips or aux heat source until a certain OD temp has been reached.
Even so, I think if I were building a new home today with a gas fired warm air furnace and AC, I would instead install a heat pump as a backup heat source and also to use during mild cold weather.