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A comment on Do heat pumps work in cold climates?. Parent comment

Re:Do heat pumps work in cold climates? by Sohcahtoa82 on Thursday January 12, 2023 @11:02AM (#34355531)
I'm in the Portland area and got a heat pump installed in 2021.

I overbought for sure, as I got a hybrid system that has a gas furnace backup. I've never needed it, but I've had a couple times where I wanted it and it was nice to have. If I switch it from "Heat" to "Emergency Heat", then it overrides the automatic determination of which heat source to use and just uses gas.

I didn't lose power during that cold snap, but if I did, it would have probably brought the temp back up in under 4 hours.

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Re:Do heat pumps work in cold climates? by dev_tty01 on Thursday January 12, 2023 @07:20PM (#34362282)
We have quite a few power outages, so the best thing about gas furnace backup for me is that I only need a generator large enough to run the furnace fan to get heat in a power outage. Without it, I have to run a heat pump compressor and that is a lot more power than a fan.
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