Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
Heat pumps work by using refrigerant and a compressor to move energy against a temperature gradient. If you put 1 kWh of energy into a heat pump, you get 3-5 kWh of heating in your home. But this isn’t breaking the laws of physics because heat pumps don’t make heat, they move it around. The extra 2-4kWh gets absorbed from the outdoors, even when it is cold outside. The low pressure refrigerant in the outdoor heat exchanger is colder than the outdoor air, so it has to absorb energy. After the compressor the refrigerant in the indoor heat exchanger is hotter than the indoor air, and energy flows into your home. This happens in a continuous cycle. A great feature in this system is a reversing valve that allows the flow of refrigerant to be flipped and your heat pump becomes an air conditioner.
There’s a big push to end fossil fuel use in US homes by electrifying all end-uses, and heat pumps are a critical part of this. Space heating is 50% of the average homeowners energy consumption, and makes up 10% of overall US energy use. Recognizing the importance of heat pump adoption, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains $4.3B in heat pump rebates for low and middle income families, and a $2000 tax credit that applies to everyone. Heat pumps can also save homeowners on their monthly utility bills vs. heating with natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and electric resistance. And thanks to the popularity of vapor injection systems, heat pumps now work well even in the cold climates of the Northeast.
Quick technical aside on vapor injection systems - this is an improvement to the basic vapor compression cycle. Gas from the condenser outlet is injected halfway into the compression process. This increases the compressor efficiency, increases the mass flow rate of refrigerant through the compressor, and also lowers the discharge temperature. The result is higher system efficiency, higher heating capacity, and the ability to operate across large temperature gradients (say -15F outside temp to 72F in your home) without exceeding the discharge temperature limit and damaging the compressor.
I’ve spent my career building and designing thermal systems—first in aerospace, then at Tesla working on Model 3 and Semi Truck, and most recently in vertical farming. I got really excited about residential heat pumps when I realized that we’re about to go through a huge transition where the 80M single family homes in the US replace their furnaces with heat pumps.
But the products on the market today have a number of shortcomings. The homeowner experience sucks because the integration of thermostat, heat pump equipment and air quality systems is terrible. Nothing works together well, and the best thermostats are not fully compatible with inverter driven heat pumps. In addition the process of getting a heat pump is painful, including finding a trustworthy contractor, sorting out financing, and wading through rebates. And finally contractors struggle with installs because of the difficulty of properly sizing the system, and understanding if your duct work is compatible with a heat pump
I wanted to approach home heating and cooling from a product design approach, improve the end-to-end experience for homeowners and make a product that was compelling beyond its climate motivations. Electric Air is building a thermostat as well as heat pump equipment (air handler and condenser) and a contractor web-app.
Better air quality is achieved through a...
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 309 ms ] thread"The most common heating system in the US is a natural gas furnace connected to ductwork, with the hot air ultimately coming out of vents in each room. This heat pump is a great replacement for the furnace and air conditioner in these ducted systems."
Current air-source heat pumps can't produce hot water at temperatures necessary to drive radiators.
I’m not against ducted systems or anything (Most houses in the US have them). But the laws of physics pretty much guarantee that a mini split will always be more efficient. Air ducts are harder to insulate and not that good at moving heat energy compared to sending refrigerant right to where you need it.
> An optional wall unit heats and cools homes without ducts. Replace your expensive baseboard heaters and radiators with an efficient, ductless unit that blends into your home.
The question is where do you have the exchange. The central / forced air tends to be a furnace in the basement. But its also viable to have a ductless mini-split heat pump ( https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/ductless-mini-split-heat-... ) that just moves the heat carrying fluid to a room and then have that room with an exchange.
> Ductless, mini-split-system heat pumps (mini-splits) make good retrofit add-ons to houses with "non-ducted" heating systems, such as hydronic (hot water heat), radiant panels, and space heaters (wood, kerosene, propane). They can also be a good choice for room additions where extending or installing distribution ductwork is not feasible, and for very efficient new homes that require only a small space conditioning system. Be sure to choose an ENERGY STAR® compliant unit and hire an installer familiar with the product and its installation.
> Like standard air-source heat pumps, mini-splits have two main components -- an outdoor compressor/condenser and an indoor air-handling unit. A conduit, which houses the power cable, refrigerant tubing, suction tubing, and a condensate drain, links the outdoor and indoor units.
> The main advantages of mini-splits are their small size and flexibility for zoning or heating and cooling individual rooms. Many models can have as many as four indoor air-handling units (for four zones or rooms) connected to one outdoor unit. The number depends on how much heating or cooling is required for the building or each zone. This can be affected by how well the building is insulated and air sealed). Each of the zones has its own thermostat, so you only need to condition occupied spaces, which can save energy and money.
There are obviously already several major players in the industry (notably, Mitsubishi, but also more "DIY"-focused brands like "Mr. Cool") offering heat pump systems with air handlers, such as this.
But this approach seems to be much more integrated in ways that actually might make a difference.
What if I want to keep using the cloud-based thermostat when your servers get shut off or moved to another system, or if something like Google Nest closing down their API happens after you've exited?
This is an expensive system with an expected long life, and I'd want some guarantees that I can control it entirely myself.
Considering how unstable the residential electrical and internet grid is in the US (instead of being dug in, into the ground all the cables are hanging between the trees and there are constant failures), relying on that AND on the cloud for an essential service is a no-go.
* October 2011 Snow Storm - Lost power for 4 days, didn't end up being that cold
* October 2019 Thunderstorms - Lost power for 3 days, thankfully generator kept the house going
* August 2020 Tropical Storm Isaias - Caused widespread grid damage, but only lost power for 18 hours. Internet was out for 36 hours.
* August 2021 Hurricane Henri - Widespread grid damage, lost power for about 6 hours. By this point I had powerwalls. I didn't even turn down the air conditioner.
That's it - every other outage has been a few hours. And that's living in a rural area that is heavily wooded with most of the power lines above ground and often long runs close to trees. If I lived in a suburb or city those times would be even less.
The grid in the United States, despite some widespread and documented regional failures (2021 Texas, 2003 NE Blackout), is remarkably resilient.
I’ve experienced 4-5 outages last year, a couple were local, a couple were widespread. One lasted 2 days.
Fortunately I do have a small 3.2kWh battery backup power, so I can keep the refrigerator from defrosting. I do think that this is sufficient to power the air furnace as well, but I haven’t tried.
The residential internet outages also are pretty frequent, but we don’t notice these as much as power outages.
If this company has a solution for variable-speed equipment, the best thing they can do is publish an open standard. Suppose the thermostat talks to the equipment over CAN bus, for instance, using a well-documented protocol. If they go out of business, anybody can hack together a compatible aftermarket thermostat.
A lot of solar equipment is already going this way, with batteries talking to inverters over open CAN bus protocols. As one of the biggest energy loads, the HVAC equipment should get in the game too.
https://www.pickhvac.com/thermostat/ (halfway down - "Communicating HVAC System")
https://www.pickhvac.com/central-air-conditioner/extras/comm... (deeper dive into Communicating vs Non-Communicating HVAC systems)
So basically, the premise of this product is that the proprietary system they design will be nicer than the proprietary systems HVAC manufacturer's design. That's probably true, but as an owner of a Carrier proprietary system, it's totally fine.
Only problem, their thermostats and apps really suck.
There are few off the shelf AC thermostats that work with most heatpumps: they are usually the on/off variety.
Remotes coming with heatpumps would do the right thing, though, and there are IR blasters that can replicate those signals and integrate into your home automation system.
I would not even consider buying the hardware that keeps my pipes from freezing if it depends on an internet connection.
I'm happy if there are non-critical OPTIONS available that use the internet (e.g., as another poster mentioned, available optimizations based on real-time elec rates, etc.), but if there is any key function that'll fail without an internet connection, that's immediate disqualification, hard nope, not looking anymore. Period, full stop, even if it is "free" as in beer.
OTOH, if OP can deliver a true stand-alone system and guarantees that it will never require a connection for any core function (as above, optional ok), then he'll have a large market.
[0] any remote-via-internet control function should be able to directly access my IP, static or transient. Not only are non-static home IPs actually quite durable in my experience, there are a variety of easy solutions to keep track of the home IP. Yes, some of those are cloud services, but they are not tied to any hardware.
Edit: That said, I'm ok with requiring wiring beyond the normal thermostat-HVAC wiring.
If the app wasn't updated for ${latest phone OS}, would you be be unable to upgrade the phone OS?
I'm a former diamond certified Mitsubishi installer
It has to translate a 2-stage signal into a fully modulating output, and it still seems to do a lot more on & off with high fan speeds than I would like or would be most efficient (as an aside, yes I have verified that the dip switches are in the correct position on the converters).
On the other hand, the unit at my in-laws tends to blow gently but consistently which is both more comfortable and more efficient.
Second of all, you aren't forced to use Kumo Cloud. Even though I have it, I still have a remote that operates the Split. No network or cloud required.
Why? a real smart thermostat can just use the existing wiring for power and then use IP over Wifi or Matter/Thread to communicate. Way better than the crappy wiring in most people's houses for thermostat control.
Surely we could come up with a device that might require an electrician to run a few extra wires (or maybe even larger wires or something) and still run perfectly fine offline, for as long as the hardware functions, with some type of integrated manual controller. And of course this device could also have an internet option and an app and wifi for all of the fancy stuff.
If i want HomeAssistant integration, ill buy an HA-compatible thermostat.
I dont want an expensive HVAC system to be in a walled garden of its own.
This company is going to wait a few years and then charge you a shit ton for subscription to keep using your device.
No thanks, and honestly whoever goes with this is going to regret it if they don't make changes to their software.
Pick one:
- Sell the device
- Sell the software
If you do both, you're going to alienate your customers and get regulatory wrath on you. Don't emulate Apple. They're going to get their ass handed to them in the near future.
Take it even a step further and make the code AGPL. That way you know you're protected if a company decides to steal from you.
I don't think you're getting it, and a lot of us around here want you to. If I were actively researching heat pumps (a thing most homeowners do before dropping 4-5 figures on ANY hardware), if you are locking me into your ecosystem -- or even have the appearance of locking me into your ecosystem -- your product is not getting onto any short list from me or likely anyone else around here.
All of us -- every tech person who has ever gotten into home automation in a real way -- has thrown out some hardware rendered useless by a company. We've already seen this play out. You're an unknown and so are the riskiest kind of company to buy into.
You need to get this -- deeply -- if you want to sell to this market. The pull quote above makes me want to run for the hills.
I’d honestly just try to market to heat pump believers first who actively are looking for what they are selling. First, it’s an easier sales pitch. Second, they will be more forgiving of growing pains. Go through the 1-3 years trying to get the manufacturing, maintenance, and installation locked in before trying to sell in bulk to a larger market.
As it is, it’s just too risky for many to buy. (And for my house, it would be impossible to install).
Wonderful option to have: "Subscribe, and we'll improve your efficiency by 10%++"
OPTION
Another option would be "we'll send you a download with the latest weightings for our optimizing AI firmware for $14.95, or every month for a subscription of $49/year" whatever.
I, and most other sharp people will happily ignore you and buy a system that is 50% less efficient and twice the cost to avoid your lock-in.
I'll also happily buy and subscribe to your reasonably-priced optimization service as long as it is OPTIONAL.
Just look at the nearly violent reaction that BMW got when they suggested that their heated seats would be a subscription option.
If you want your company to die before it even gets started, keep making excuses for why you need to lock us in.
If you want a growth giant, architect it from scratch so someone can happily use it where Starlink doesn't even service, and offer extra-efficiency OPTIONS that OPTIONALLY use internet service.
And yes, open-sourcing the code would be a huge step in giving people confidence that you are serious, and that their investment has a future that is not a brick.
Provide an open API with the option to use a cloud service. Some cloud services are great, and have way better UIs than the self hosted stuff which I would gladly pay for. But take away the option to go self hosted and I lose all interest. If a device can’t be controlled locally you don’t really “own” it, you’re just renting it from someone else.
My first guess would be more like 99.98% don't know about APIs
But yes, that 2% or whatever is an important set of leaders
Mr. Cool has a 2-Ton heat pump (Designed to work with existing ducting) that can operate off of a normal non-communicating thermostat. It still hits 19 SEER and does a lot of that optimization on the controller side. And when it comes to mini splits there are lots of them that will work with a normal thermostat.
I know this, well, because I’ve spent many countless hours trying to find something that will work with Z-Wave and not a proprietary communicating system. Granted it might be less efficient but efficiency is way less important than having the ability to do that. The only exception I would consider is if the communicating thermostat was fully open and had a decent API that worked without Internet access.
And if you build this, you can also sell the same hardware plus a BacNET or MODBUS gateway for a bunch of money to the commercial building management types :)
Or you could support existing commercial 0-10V thermostats.
BACnet already exists as an ISO standard: https://www.iso.org/standard/37298.html https://bacnetinternational.org/
The example application in the Ethernet Alliance one-pager on single pair Ethernet is HVAC: https://ethernetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/EA_T...
This could be prototyped on a BeaglePlay :)
BACnet allows multiple PHY implementations, including 802.3
I suspect that 802.3.cg is also kosher, but haven't looked in detail. It's been 5 years since I looked seriously at whether BACnet was the correct solution for a product family.
Single pair Ethernet is indeed cool tech.
1. 99.99999% will never care about code, open sourcing it etc. All consumers need is to have a guarantee it will work in case company is out of business or there is no internet. It doesn't matter how that guarantee will look like.
2. Sell device OR software is the exact reason most tech is so bad. Doing one of two is 10x easier than doing both, and results are 10x worse. If you do both you actually have a chance to do something nice.
If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps
Honywell missed the mark on the importance of thermostats on the economy.
edit - The current plan has been Matter/thread Homekit + Google Home integration. We can expose at least temperature control via this to everyone.
An API that is public, well-documented, and easy for other systems to securely integrate with would mean that customers get the integration they want. If someone builds a better way to utilize your system, then you just got value-add on your product at basically zero cost.
Amazon can hook Alexa into it. Google can hook their Home thing into it. And whatever comes next, whatever doesn't even exist today, should have an easy time integrating, continuing to add value.
What also can't be underestimated is the tinker community. Many people in the smart home business are tinkerers themselfs; create a great product for them and they will inevitably try to use it at their job. But this really isn't only applicable to integrators, really.
The important bit is to have an open API that can be connected to from the local network (or via Matter + Thread, etc), and via a cloud. Then anyone can develop a client. This also has benefits in UX: the latency to update is much lower than cloud based polling, since that's almost always rate limited.
The closer anything is to the bottom of the chart here, the better. When buying something as expensive as a heat pump, I wouldn't even consider something that isn't at least local polling:
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...
That being said, I'm not opposed to value add things via cloud services. Want to get the weather via a cloud service, even if that changes the schedule? Totally fine! But ultimate control must be local.
Your specs are in kbtu, but at least for cooling I'm used to tons; I have 2x4.5ton units, and I think that's ~120kbtu, so I wouldn't be able to get just two of your biggest units?
Re the sizing question - this is a part of the site that needs improvement. 12kbtu is 1 ton. The 48kbtu system is a 4ton system, but rated at 5F, if you're in a more temperate climate, two of these will likely have plenty of capacity for you. It's also likely that your current system is oversized.
/2¢
The hackers will do what they want to anyway, and they'll implement cool interfaces/HA plugins/controllers on RPis or ESP32s for free. Someone will get enterprising and package a pre-built/programmed ESP32 unit that makes it plug-and-play for nerdy, but less capable users, and your company can avoid any liability from users using an 'unsupported' add-on.
You would still be able to do more with your own app as matter will probably mainly support the lowest common denominator across your category.
Look at it this way, it saves you money in server costs and performs much better.
Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want to know power consumption? I want to know power consumption. Do you have a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump.
Context: Full-Stack Software Engineer (worked at a few start ups including Bird Rides). Active Home Assistant user and community-run integration creator (Linked Lovelace)
The incredible part about a company like yours is the ability to do hardware at scale. There's no reality in which I'm safely and cost-effectively building my own Electric Heat Pump, or television, or [cool product here].
Companies that make it easier for me to do my own things stand out.
If you don't want that for the standard customer, fine. Provide some way to open up the device and trigger dev mode, or manually upload firmware, or OTA update firmware.
Side notes:
- a failed kickstarter I joined shipped out their original product with bad firmware and no way to do a physical firmware update without destroying the product, so they tanked instantly despite having a great hardware setup. Despite their failure, I and a few others opened up our products and manually flashed custom firmware onto it to make use of the product we bought
- I exclusively buy LG Televisions now due to their usage of Web OS (has a local-first [HA Integration](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/webostv/)) which used to be hackable with https://rootmy.tv. With that, my TV runs custom Linux software that controls lights just like [Phillips Hue Sync](https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us/explore-hue/propositions/e...) but free/open-source and no additional hardware. Compare that to Samsung which is like 40% ads now?
- I don't mind using a voice assistant, steal my ideas Tim Apple. I hate the part where the request goes (phone -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server -> light bulb) instead of (phone -> router -> local server -> light bulb) or worse (phone -> router -> local server -> router -> cloud server -> router -> local server -> light bulb).
EDIT: my markdown is showing, I should stick to lurking
1) Detailed diagnostics i.e. RPMs, feeds, speeds, currents, temps etc can be read from the high voltage signal line between the indoor and outdoor unit - there is an official tool (search "Dr. Smart Midea" on YouTube) that does this. If you look in the right places, there is a PowerPoint with a schematic of the PHY that you need to interface with this using a LV isolated controller
2) The outdoor unit can be driven manually using the same tool using an i2c port that is on the PCB on the outdoor unit
I have the new generation of their Dr. Smart tool, which I haven't had the time to thoroughly test or document. If there is interest I will likely try to reverse engineer and document these protocols properly.
> "I want to be my own mechanic, and if I'm not that mechanic I want to be able to have anyone be that mechanic."
> "Do you want to know what the active airflow rate is? I want to know what the active airflow rate is. Do you want to know power consumption? I want to know power consumption. Do you have a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump? I want a way to write unique schedules/programs that get executed on the heat pump."
There's one feature of this diagnostic interface that I really really like. It allows you to "drive" the hardware of the unit manually, like Program Auto mode on a camera. You can manually set the frequency of the compressor and fan, and the control board will continue to enforce safeties.
I haven't tried yet, but something I really want to try to implement myself is "frequency lockout". This is a common feature on commercial variable frequency drives. I noticed that under some operating conditions, the unit vibrations resonate with the building and create unpleasant sounds - I'd like to program it to never dwell on that frequency and skip over it.
> The desire is to have any control/knowledge you'd want to have as the creator/developer.
While I was exploring this, I had this in mind constantly. I definitely had this diag interface in mind when I was selecting a unit.
I found some sparse documentation on Midea's (and rebadged units) Modbus-esque protocol over RS485 (aka XYE connectors), and I control it via an ESP32 on HA. From the indoor unit, the diagnostic data I could reverse engineer is limited to temp sensors (intake, indoor coil, outdoor ambient) and basic running modes. I believe the outdoor unit also has a modbus/485 that has more info, and obviously the signal wire passes some comms between the two, but Midea doesn't make this stuff public.
I'm a VC since recently, but have been a tech guy for a long time. Feel free to ping me if you'd like to discuss it further. $HN_username at gmail.
I guess I can sum it up like this: I only want to deal with my own problems in my free time in my own home.
You should consider this a huge marketing opportunity- the home assistant people are obsessed with perfecting HVAC (half of these people have their own weather stations) and are also the kind of geeky first adopter who will push useful tech on all their friends. It's also not a small community, as the subreddit alone has over 222k people on it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/
On track to replace my gas furnace in the next few years, this sounds awesome, but HA integration would be very highly desired.
The simplest example I can think of is MIME (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME). It can be embedded in basically any transport type. It can encode anything you want (binary, UTF8, etc). It is very old, stable and well-tested. It is fairly trivial to implement a limited instruction set of.
Transport security, authentication, authorization, etc, are nice, but not nearly as important to me as a future-proof interface to my heat pump. Give me the option to enable an admin port and just run a single unsecured connection with a basic dumb text protocol, and I can hack together a client in 30 minutes in any programming language. It's not fancy but it will work forever.
I've seen an oil furnace still running after 50 years with just basic maintenance. Did it cost 2-5 times as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as a heat pump does now? No.
I don't see why a heat pump wouldn't run for a long time. I imagine many people want to replace old heat pumps because newer ones are more efficient.
But otherwise this is quite old and widely available tech, it should be possible to replace individual components that break down.
If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.
No, you haven't understood. It will be cloud-capable. They're asking that it's not cloud-only.
And there is no they, the commenter is a single individual.
"Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone?" - daredoes
"Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no openness, about these aspects. I think this could become a really important part of your go-to market, but also a differentiator vs other products." - simonebrunozzi
"I would like to be able to add it to HomeKit without it ever phoning home once. Matter + Thread help make that a possibility." - X-Istence
They.
For a system that absolutely doesn’t need a “cloud” to operate?
But this is my second concern.
First is availability of replacement parts after the get bought out and they shut off the servers.
Lastly, a partial refund does fuck all to compensate for the fact that you have a multi-tonne brick in your house that has perfectly functioning hardware but broken software (because the server it used to talk to is gone). It also doesn't compensate for the wasted resources.
I'd also be concerned about dealing with "cannot find server" alerts popping up every time I use it.
I know smoke detectors and a couple other crappy home goods have been fixed by scrappy upstarts, sold to the losers for <100M, and then shuttered to avoid pivoting the existing business. Heartbreaking lost progress every time it happens.
2. The thermostat should support at least as much local control as the REST-ish API on the Venstar ColorTouch series.
Pressure plates in the streets which are pressed when cars drive over them - pushing fluids through your coils, but connected to multiple units on either side.
Harvest the kinetic energy of cars passing through the streets to apply pressure to pumps that feed fluids through the system, capturing that energy in a dynamo way?
Put these plates in every high trafficked area. Piping the pumping action from parking garages to freeway exits and shipping ports which roll off weight from water to street and pump a f-ton of fluid based on vehicle traffick and weight.
Make smaller installations... make an adapter interface to railway. heavy as cars on trains constantly hitting the pump valves. (yes we still need to deal with the bureau assholes in that industry... Im talking engineering)
It's like the usual analogy I used to use for content mills or adtech: it's like setting up wind farms along the interstates. The wind from the trucks creates free energy! Awesome, right? Except that those trucks are no longer drafting off each other quite as much...
(And I say "used to use" because it used to be a small tax, a bit of an extra nuisance here and there, and people largely felt like it didn't really cost anyone anything. Now it's more obviously expensive, like making the entire roadbed out of little rolling wheels that charge generators, so you have to "drive" 80mph in order to progress at 50mph...)
I'd go starting with it and let a community build by itself around it, tho.
I'd want the code handed over to a third party to guarantee this (so the company can't walk back on their promise).
I'm in a temperate climate so there's little actual danger, but the idea of freezing/roasting my butt off for multiple days to wait for parts/labor is deeply unattractive.
My hesitancy is in the ongoing service. I’ve looked into geo-coupled heat pumps but the lack of qualified contractors locally deterred me.
So I had to fight with a contractor to get them to install our fancy new heat pump in "traditional dumb thermostat" mode, and then handed them the Nest box (which doesn't speak Carrier-ese) and put it in the contract that it had to work. It took them several hours extra to do things the "portable" way. They were absolutely not prepared even though the manufacturer claims this works just fine.
So... I think there's absolutely a spot in the market for an Electric Air that can make this work cleanly. The existing HVAC players are really, really bad at this.
They are generally contractor only as homeowners generally can't DIY the 240v electrical and lineset hookup. What exactly is being improved upon by your startup?
1 - I already have a local contractor and financing shouldn't be a reason it costs more. 2 - This is ~$500 and I already own a air purifier. 3 - This is ~$200 and I already own a thermostat. 4 - I can't speak to the value in this but in my case I don't have central ducts.
As a VC-backed startup, it's worth checking out their business model.
This is a big deal because if you can beat the rates of your competitors and guarantee a quality workmanship, then that takes away the 100+ hours we spend on sourcing quotes and negotiating better prices.
Here’s a story about what happens when you DON’T spend 100+ hours sourcing multiple quotes. You end up with a $36,000 heater + air conditioning unit where the installer caused a leak to occur on on the second floor. We were so desperate for cold air that we didn’t have time to get 20 quotes, but the 5 other quotes we did get ranged from $48k to $64k.
If you can save us that 100+ hours of time and give us a cheaper deal while guaranteeing workmanship, then I’m sold.
We’re getting really really really tired of overly inflated prices and the negotiation process.
> Purchasing experience, we'll connect you with a local contractor, arrange financing and help with rebates.
Hopefully constructive feedback: I replaced 2 of our residential furnaces within the last few years, in two separate transactions with two different vendors. I can say that this pitch doesn't resonate as an improvement because vendors already make this turnkey.
You call a furnace/air conditioning company, they come out and recommend a unit. You sign their financing thing, they come out the next day and install. I interacted with a single primary person (on-site) at each company. Cost aside, it's actually one of the more pleasant buying experiences of any major home improvement.
Finally, I can tell you who installed the ($$$$$) units but I definitely could not tell you who made them. Branding might be tough unless you do the installs yourself.
I'm in Florida. We got our A/C replaced a few years ago. Got quotes from three companies with varying ranges and the one we chose knocked it out in a (long) day. Including various "side-jobs" such as running a new electric line with a larger gauge, installing a hurricane pad, removing the loopback with the water heater, and lifting the air handler into the attic.
Total cost was under $8k. None of the quotes, including for name-brand units, were above $12k. $18k for an unknown name seems just right out to me.
How would maintenance be handled? There are a large number of contractors in my area that can service the major brands. Would maintenance come from the company itself, or via third party partners? If third parties, what if they prove unreliable? Will there be enough diversity in providers to give me choice?
More importantly, what happens if the startup is acquired or shuts down? This is an expensive kit that, depending on system sizing, costs as much as a car. I need this type of system to work for years, with high availability of parts and labor, and replacement as-required.
Going with a new company in this space seems deeply risky. And yeah, the existing manufacturers don't play super nicely with smarthomes and cloud-based control and whatnot, but it's far from enough of a pain to offset the risk IMO.
Is the plan for it to be cloud driven (both app and thermostat connect to a remote server) or will there be a local network API? Zigbee/Thread?
I can see some real value in a system that is fully accessible to a home automation platform.
I'm betting that your biggest hurdle will be post-purchase. If I remember correctly, Tony Fadell talks about how hard it was to disrupt the contractor model when building Nest. People often just bought whatever thermostat their contractor recommended, and those contractors were incentivized to push them towards specific brands. They beat this by just making the product super easy to install by the consumer and cutting out the contractor all together (something I doubt is feasible with a heat pump).
Maybe that won't be a problem with the DTC model considering the contractor is only brought in post-purchase, but I wonder if this really takes hold if competitors start trying to corner local installers. Good luck!
I think it was more than that, I cannot possibly overstate how stupidly better the design/UX was compared to alternatives. In my home I spent years looking for a replacement for the ancient, round thermostat with a mercury switch. That thermostat is a marvel: you spin the dial with instant visual feedback, and there is an off/heat/ac switch. That's it! The Nest just added networking.
I just replaced radiators with a heat pump install. I had a few questions about your units: What are "backup heating strips?" They're mentioned in passing when talking about cold weather, but I imagine there is some meat here. Also, even though many heat pumps work in cold weather, their efficiency drops. Where is the break even point? Also, what is the sound level of the condenser unit? It looks like you only list sound levels for the air handler.
Big resistive elements sitting in the air handler. Think big toaster oven coils that are used when the outdoor temperature drops too low for the heat pump to handle the load.
More detail at https://carolinacomfortsc.com/hvac/what-are-heat-strips/ (no affiliation, they were the first authoritative return from my web search).
Just for context, my heat pumps cut over around 40-45 degrees to gas-based heat.
Good ways to upgrade homes that use radiators to use heat pump heating seems like a big gap in the market right now (though, not sure if this is just a market problem or a gap in the technology, since my understanding is that radiators need higher temperatures than forced air systems).
Trying to bust into the HVAC company cartel will be the death of this idea. Most HVAC companies are highly local and have built their business around partnerships with supply houses and the US big-boy manufacturers (e.g. Carrier, Trane, Lennox). The Asian brands (Mitsubishi, Midea, Gree) have taken years to start penetrating the US market, and even then, many have done so through partnerships with the above US brands.
No reputable HVAC company is going to install a 'no name' dotcom branded unit that they won't be able to service with parts from their local supply house. They, and their suppliers, won't be getting the typical kickbacks or be able to mark up the unit costs and they likely won't offer any kind of warranty (at least on labor). To them, this is no different from Joe Homeowner ordering his MrCool/Goodman unit online and expecting them to install and service it for a low hourly fee. It's not worth their time or potential risk when the customer raises a stink a year later when that company reminds them they have zero warranty and parts aren't readily available.
You're insinuating that doing the work yourself means you'll have poor air quality, poor thermostat integration etc. That's not true at all. If you've gone to the trouble to do a DIY install then you're now already experienced enough to install a heat-recovery ventilator to get fresh air into your home via an independent system. I installed my own ecobee thermostat with my heat pump and electric furnace and it works with HomeKit so is integrated with my entire ecosystem.
Also, it should be modular so it is easy to repair. Nibe sucks from this aspect and I would love a different heat pump that has better parts prices and was repairable.
As a final must have: Silence. The NIBE is way too noisy and we have it placed next to a bedroom which causes a lot of frustration. When the compressor starts it travels through the walls. I'm currently building extra walls to isolate it and reduce the noise.
@Chris, I guess that you would say that heat pumps vary in quality and ability. What sort of metrics should I use to assess the quality of the pump that I am buying to avoid buying a dud?
I've installed a few mini splits, understand load calcs (basically) and have plenty of experience with ducting systems and electrical and control systems.
If you increase the time of operation you can earn greater return on the costs invested. Commercial water heating is storing heat cheaply now to avoid storing water warm that will be used as that causes biofilms and disease.
Healthy sleep in room you want to work in upon rising creates a challenge for live pumping of heat. A sudden heat is best and that means storing from day before. We thrive sleeping in cold being woken by warmth.
$20,000 on a four ton heating load is compromised by this design tragically.
If every home that could use your heat pumps year-round installed one and used it exclusively, what's the upper bound on energy saved? If every home across the country installed one and used it primarily (whenever it was warm enough outside), what would be the energy savings? Not to disparage, I'm certain it's still significant, but I'm curious to quantify it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/United_S...
The difference between "Can use a heat pump" and "can't" is only maybe 10º or 15º. The coldest places are only ~20% colder than much more populated areas with millions of more residents.
Metro Boston has around 5 million people -- that's more than 3x as many as who live in North Dakota and South Dakota combined. Their climate is cold and they get around 6,000 HDD every winter compared to the frigid upper plains who average something like 8,000 or 8,500. So 1.3x more heat requirement per person but spread out across 1/3 as many people.
Not to mention all of e.g. Chicago, Denver, Des Moines, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, the rest of New England, etc. etc. where heat pumps do just fine.
I imagine anything sold in areas where it actually gets cold will as well.
Heat pumps can handle things by themselves down to around -10F to -15F, if correctly sized and installed.
Most of the low temperature ones I’ve seen include resistive heating. At some point the COP of the heat pump approaches 1.
Also, having heat to -15, then switching to no heat isn’t ideal.
You can't lower the temperature across a gradient lower than the fluid temperature, no matter how fast that fluid is moving. You can cool things down faster, but you can't go lower.
So if it's 10F, a 5F heat pump will work equally well at 0mph wind and 30mph.
You say 5f but I dont see any reference to that on your site.
The unit linked in the post you're replying to states that it can operate as low as -13F.
When heating, it pulls it from the outside air. As it gets colder, there is less heat to pull out. Typically heat pumps will still keep pulling heat at >100% efficiency nearly into the negatives, but the amount they're extracting isn't enough to keep up with the heat loss of the house.
Heat lost of the house is a factor of insulation, surface area and heat gradient. It's a lot harder to keep a house at 68F when it's 5F outside than it is when it is 50F.
So when it's cold out, you need more heat generation, and there's less heat to pull from the air. That's why heat pumps have backup auxiliary heat.
Second - yes, significantly better communication on the website is going to help. Some economic analysis (the section of savings is ambiguous) with specifics, specifics on how it would look with financing, for different house sizes etc would get a lot of people across the hump. It's quite unclear to me if this thing makes sense financially.
Third - nice going, this really is awesome.
I think you have a big problem with selling direct to homeowners. Most HVAC companies will not touch a homeowner-purchased system. So if you’re selling direct, then you’re going to need DIY quick connect line sets like Mr. Cool.
In our case, we need some duct work to fit a 2-ton Mr. Cool system to our existing ducts. Every licensed HVAC contractor/company we've contacted has refused to touch any part of consumer purchased system, citing liability issues (context: Bay Area, CA).