In Australia, but we just installed these in our house with in-ceiling cassettes and they're incredibly good. Also initially didn't care too much that they had WiFi control, but we ended up never using the remotes and just using the app. (Since you're typically sitting on the couch when you want to change the setting.)
Every ducted system I've seen is incapable of regulating separate rooms properly. Presumably one would need temp sensors in each room to do that, and that isn't done on cheap installs.
> 5) Induction is superior in many ways and air quality points to gas cooking being much worse than previously thought.
If anyone knows some good arguments to use when your partner is an excellent cook and loves gas for the high heat (searing and wok frying), I'm all ears. With the kitchen upgrade I installed a monster extraction rangehood (external fan, 3x the typical extraction) to hopefully deal with the air quality issue.
Other comments had some good suggestions, but I'd be sure to also mention:
Ease of cleanup: Induction units only get warm, none of the food or oil that gets spilled or splattered will burn onto the surface. A damp cloth is all the cleanup necessary.
Comfortable kitchen temperatures: You have a tiny fraction as much heat emitted into the room, so the kitchen remains a far more comfortable temperature.
Found an interesting list here: https://www.bestspy.co.uk/do-professional-chefs-use-inductio...
Then just need to see which appliances i can get to run on it. Seems most kettles, resistance and induction cooktops for the UK (50hz) should work. Anything with a motor is probably out unless it’s an inverter drive.
Flat bottomed woks can work with induction however the round bottomed ones won't sit close enough to the coil to heat up properly. An outdoor wok burner could be a good way for your partner to get their wok hei fix without burning gas in the house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpoSvprBJpE.
The main downsides I'd mention:
When I cook with induction I'm not comfortable shaking the pan to sauté or flip food. The surface of the cooktop is supposed to be quite durable but it looks like glass and I tend to baby it against the (even imagined) possibility of scratching.
Only ferrous-based cookware will be heated by the cooker so any aluminum or copper pans in the house become useless.
My take is that most of them are crap. They usually have 10 power levels, which is too few. Some also have temperature-based settings, but I suspect the sensors are too removed from the food surface to be accurate and they're basically ornamental.
I think you need good cookware that can spread the heat. I don't know what cookware is good, but most cookware just scorches your food in a ring-shaped pattern.
I do have one friend who spent a boatload of money on a gaggenau induction cooktop he loves. it seems to have elements spread out on the surface and adapts to the size and number of pans.
He also dedicated a 220v circuit to the thing, so it can pump out lots of energy, especially compared to ~1200 watts from a 110v countertop one.
This means there are some things possible in europe that are underpowered or impossible in the US. Tools like air compressors or garden equipment like electric mowers are smaller.
The whole kitchen would have a sub-panel _in_ the kitchen; because EVERY OUTLET would be it's own independent 20A capable circuit, run back to that sub-panel.
I don't expect to use 20A from every outlet all the time, but I don't want to be constrained from any mix-and-match of devices I need within the room's power budget.
Also, it heats faster than gas on max power.
(Don’t waste time with the cheap units, 10 or even 20 power levels is not enough)
Then watch your household simply cease to use the gas range
Out of curiosity I checked the two home improvement stores where I live, and the cheapest ones were $1,500+. An old fashioned smooth top electric range/oven starts around $700.
The induction range is coming down in price quickly now, so it may be they’ve made some progress on this issue. Just two years ago the cheapest was $4k.
(Range = cooktop and oven in one freestanding unit)
https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/bosch-pie631fb1e-kochfe...
There again 95% of new houses here have induction, so the price difference you are seeing is probably because market demand is that much lower in the US.
I'm just finishing doing a high performance renovation ( <1 ACH50, all electric, heat pumps, HRV, etc.). For new construction, the difference is more like +5-10% - the materials are marginally more expensive, and the labor doesn't require extremely specialized skills. The HVAC equipment is the very expensive part.
For a renovation, it's more like 20% more expensive but it can vary widely depending on the existing house's condition and the original build quality.
I personally saved a boatload by doing the high performance air sealing work myself - it's not that hard once you get the hang of it, just laborious.
The general contractor applied a secondary bulk water shedding house wrap, a rain screen, and the finish cladding.
There were other things I did internally during the drywall/plasterboard stage also to minimize air movement through walls and ceilings.
We have a a very large cottage in Northern Ontario (3000 sq/ft +) that has been sprayed foamed (Demilic Heatlok) and has in floor radiant heating and forced air AC all supplied by Geo Thermal. The electric bills a year are less than what some people spend at Starbucks. The comfort is incredible in -30F/-34c or +100f/38c and a bomb could go off outside and I doubt you would hear it. The costs to insulate the whole house and to install the Geothermal (including AC) was 55k, less than what some folks spend on kitchen cabinets and counter tops.
Maybe a 30% higher price, but likely a lower cost when you factor in externalities.
The house will need around 2000W[0] of heat in the middle of winter. For that usage, the most expensive part of gas would be the network fee, not the gas itself. An electric heat pump is a bit more expensive that a gas boiler, but considering we'd need to have a gas connection introduced to the property, the overall upfront cost is the same. The lifetime of both units is the same (10-15 years).
Someone here mentioned a gas absorption heat pump before, but those units are much more expensive than an electric heat pump in my country, and it still has the same issue of the gas network fee being expensive. We'll also have solar PV, so that will cut the electricity running costs even lower once it's paid off (~7 years).
It's interesting that once you have an efficient building envelope, technologies that you would think would be more efficient such as solar water heaters or ground source heat pumps don't actually make sense financially in the long term. I also ran the numbers for underfloor infrared heating vs electric heat pump + hydronic underfloor heating. Taking into account the higher installation costs, and expected life of the heat pump unit, the infrared heating - which is must less efficient - actually works out costing around the same. The unit we have will also provide DHW and cooling in the summer, so it's apples and oranges, but for a pure heating perspective it's worth considering that option, espeically if you want a lower upfront cost.
[0] For a 160m2 / 1700sqft house. This doesn't take into account 'waste' heat from appliances, so our primary heat source demand will actually be less.
The installation cost is vastly lower than heat-pump based units, they fit in a cabinet under a sink much better, are easier to wire up to an on-demand on/off button, is even cheaper to operate during summer months, etc. Would work even better with a solar thermal panel for preheating the cold water.
The button in question being a 30-minute auto-shut-off switch, actually.
Looking at prices for the unit, the difference between Ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps is around 15%. This assume we want heated water. AC-only units are naturally much much cheaper, but since there does not exist ground source AC-only units it is not a very fair comparison.
When it comes to extracting heat from the environment there are a few different choices. Air, solar, borehole, ground, and water. As I understand it, which one is the most cost efficient choice depend more on the environment which it is getting installed than the actually unit.
Not cheap though.
But they're not less efficient, ducted systems are more efficient. Mini-splits multiply your refrigerant lines, compressors, heat exchanger, condensing coils, etc., so you're multiplying your inefficiencies. A single variable rate, zoned, ducted heat pump is the most efficient, but they definitely cost more.
2) Ground source heat pumps are complex and very expensive and probably best suited for large installs like schools.
"
This is not really accurate on the complexity/etc side. Expense we'll get to later.
A. The GSHP is not complex at all, and often much easier to understand than the equivalent air source machinery. I could repair my GSHP.
B. The efficiency of air source heat pumps vary a ton in the field. This is not conjecture. This is backed up by years of research. Of course, unlike ground source heat pump (which usually contain tons of sensors and can tell you exactly how well they are operating in a lot of ways), air source heat pumps rarely contain any of the performance measurement sensors necessary to validate their efficiency in practice for your install, and they are rarely accessible. So you are limited to a small number of studies that bother to test them in the field by adding that kind of metering. Oh and manufacturer "self-reporting" about how good they are.
EER or COP of air source heat pumps in-situ can be easily 50% or less of claimed efficiency depending on real climate and how well designed they were for the situation.
GSHP are 85-99% of designed performance over a much wider climate range (again backed up by research, and with much larger sample sizes, since most GSHP have the monitoring sensors built in).
That's on top of usually much higher efficiency of GSHP over ASHP.
C. GSHP not amenable to the random "don't want to have to care about real engineering" HVAC contractors that most people deal with.
IE not even willing to do basic manual j load calcs.
They are only complex in this sense - most air source heat pump folks don't really have to know what they are doing, and it will often work okayish in terms of ability to heat/cool when they size it wrong. It will just be very inefficient.
If your ground source heat pump folks don't actually bother to do the work right and enter the calcs into the loop design program, it can fail.
Just about 100% of failed GSHP installs i've seen were done by air source contractors badly trying to moonlight because they thought they margin would end up better (and who were bad at ASHP as well).
Any good loop design program will give you the EER/COP of the system in your case based on historical temperature, along with actual yearly cost/etc. So you don't have to guess whether it will work out for you (and it will be very close to reality). It's also obvious if your contractor is giving you bullshit if you have a loop design report - IE if the page with the assumptions/data show clear nonsense.
As performance standards increase (IE California), or any form of real in-situ efficiency testing of air source heat pumps was ever required, you would see this "really efficient" argument disappear really quick. (Heating has definitely gotten a lot better in lower temps, not gonna argue with that).
D. It is true that GSHP is expensive to install, but that's mostly a factor of scale for drilling, and not size of install or unit cost. It's never going to be an effective way to deal with a single 2000sqft house. It will be a much more effective (and space efficient) at serving multi-unit complexes, regardless of individual house size.
For example, when they do GSHP for a new construction community (out here they are doing 200 new homes for examples), it's not a lot more expensive than installing air source pumps.
For single houses, again, it depends on your real in-practice performance of an ASHP, which is rarely ever measured. For a house i owned in MD, and compared to two ASHP's that were properly sized (and properly sized/sealed duct work/house/etc with actual leakage/r-value/perf testing), but just a really bad in-practice fit for my climate (neighbors had same issues, etc), it only took 5 years to pay back the GSHP cost (after tax credits, etc). This is uncommon case, obviously. But i'll also say being able to set the house at 72 and leaving it that way forever is worth something too.
Ductless i've got no qualms with :)
I think most folks with tight homes would be much better off in practice with lots of ductless wall/ceiling units than standard ASHP/GSHP.
In general, if you google "measured performance ground source heat pump" and "measured performance air source heat pump", you can find studies.
Most of the GHSP studies are consistent. Some of the ASHP studies are inconsistent with each other.
1) Air source heat pumps have become incredibly efficient even in cold climates.
2) Ground source heat pumps are complex and very expensive and probably best suited for large installs like schools.
3) Ductless mini splits are the preferred way to heat and cool most USA (tight) homes.
4) Modern code dictates a tight (measured by air changes per hour) home and making an existing home tighter is usually the best use of time and money.
5) Induction is superior in many ways and air quality points to gas cooking being much worse than previously thought.
6) Heat pump hot water heaters (with tank) are the most efficient way to provide hot water.
7) Tankless electric is difficult because of the huge spikes of power it needs. Maybe if you have a battery with your solar setup, it can work better.
8) Tankless also seems to have more maintenance issues than expected (e.g., it's not maintenance free as I imagined).
9) Once your house becomes very tight (measured by air changes per hour), you will need to bring in fresh air. An ERV is efficient at exchanging stale, temp-regulated air with outside air.
10) Building tight, all-electric, with solar will provide a comfortable, clean, long-lasting house, but it will be quite a bit more expensive. Possibly 30%+ more expensive than using standard contractor choices.