I just want everything with a heating element to use a heat pump instead. Electric heating elements are so horribly inefficient and wasteful in comparison.
I have a ventless heat pump combo washer/dryer. It takes up half the space that two machines would, plugs into a regular 110V outlet, gets HOT (way hotter than I expected a heat pump has any right to achieve), drains all its drying water into the drain, vents none of my indoor air outside, doesn’t require changing laundry from one machine to the other. Practically and mechanically it seems brilliant and I can’t imagine why I would ever buy a traditional machine ever again. Except…
It’s chock full of horrible apps and shit that I’ll never use. It’s way too “smart”, and those “smarts” are not there for my benefit. After a month or two it finally gave up trying to pester me to connect it to a network and install the app, which I’ll never, ever do. It’s never going to see an update or new firmware if I can help it, but I’m afraid that if/when it ever breaks, I’ll have no choice. I know it’s going to do things like eventually refuse to work until the computer has been “updated” to be “compatible” with new parts. And it’s not even just that it’s going to be expensive. It’s that I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust it to remain functional in the future, even if there are parts, that they won’t let me install the parts, or will require me to agree to play by their “rules” before I can.
Right to repair needs to be a thing, and people need to be able to break the ridiculous amount of both legal and practical control these manufacturers have over their devices after they’ve left the factory. We cannot and should not trust the manufacturers to support it. We need to allow independent repair.
Yeah my heat pump is something like 2000% efficient. It can cheat because it doesn’t convert electricity into heat, it uses electricity to move heat from the outside to the inside (or vice versa).
Heat pumps require a line to the outdoors, which may not be possible to create for existing use cases.
Also, if I recall, hot water heaters that use heat pumps can’t actually get hot enough to completely heat the water and rely on electricity a bit. Therefore, I’m not sure everything with a heating element (ie. stovetop, oven, espresso machine, etc.) would work for that.
Edit: for those downvoting, please link me where I can buy a heat pump oven and stovetop. Would really like to install one.
Incorrect, no connection to outdoors is required for these appliances. In the case of the ventless combo, it literally hooks up to nothing other than the standard washing machine hookup. 1 normal 15 amp power outlet, 1 hot water hose, 1 cold water hose, 1 drain hose. No dryer vents, no other tubes or hoses, no drilling or cutting, no changes at all required. It is literally a drop-in replacement for any washer, but it also dries, with a heat pump, powered from the same circuit the washer uses and the same drain the washer uses.
Also, let me blow your mind a little bit: theoretically, the cold water main running to your house contains enough heat energy to completely heat your house all winter on its own. It is cold to us, but thermodynamically it’s a goldmine and you have an extremely generous supply of it. Water represents an enormous reservoir of heat, and you can play some really fun games with latent heat of evaporation and condensation (which is exactly how heat pumps work in the first place). Dehumidifiers add as much or more heat to a room than a space heater does, using a fraction of the electrical power. That’s the power of the heat contained in water. I’m not saying that a heat pump dryer is doing this with your water supply, simply pointing out that once water is in play, it becomes way more of a complex issue than performance figures on paper actually represent.
Obviously, clean drinkable water is also a scarce resource, so using it directly for any form of heating would be wasteful in its own way, but the point is that it would be technically possible. Including water in the discussion adds a lot of really interesting possibilities to the way we manage heat and energy, and we will eventually need to start understanding how much heat we literally throw away down the drain and how wasteful that actually is. And in the process we’ll learn to save some money and maybe even make our lives a bit more convenient.
Heat pumps absolutely do not need to connect indoors and outdoors, every fridge and freezer is just a heat pump connected to a box.
Ive had a ventless heat pump clothes dryer, about 5 years ago, maybe 6. Technically it made the room it was in slightly colder while it ran, but that heat from my house was just concentrated inside the box and then allowed to escape back into my house.
I also think there have been advances in heat pump technology either with the refrigerant used to transfer the heat or with cascading systems that run multiple loops with different heat capacity so that one loop takes room temp water to “warm” temps and a secondary loop takes the “warm” water to hot.
I think they mean appliances that don’t necessarily heat an area but heat is a function of their purpose.
In the example given, a combo washer dryer, it is not necessary to have a link to the outside it merely uses the ambient air as it’s source of heat, The same is also common among heat pump water heaters.
GE Profile PFQ97HSPVDS. Not a sponsor, and not even a recommendation. It feels icky even admitting it. The only reason I am mentioning it at all is because I did manage to get it to (eventually) stop aggravating me about installing the app and connecting it to wifi and now it just works without annoyance as it should have from day one, and I recognize the possibility of having access to that feature alone may be valuable to someone. I can’t guarantee the one you buy now will even act the same way, as these things can be and are updated without notice.
I found some third-party home assistant stuff for GE smart home products on github if that’s important to you, but I haven’t even tested it for this as it still involves the appliance phoning home and everything is still gatekept through GE’s website and like I said I refuse to ever let this thing touch any form of internet connection or wireless.
For maintainability heat pump dryers are shit though. You can’t take the heat pump condenser out and thus you cannot properly clean it 😐. If you get lint stuck in there it starts reeking. The old condensers you could just take out and rinse.
I just want everything with a heating element to use a heat pump instead. Electric heating elements are so horribly inefficient and wasteful in comparison.
I have a ventless heat pump combo washer/dryer. It takes up half the space that two machines would, plugs into a regular 110V outlet, gets HOT (way hotter than I expected a heat pump has any right to achieve), drains all its drying water into the drain, vents none of my indoor air outside, doesn’t require changing laundry from one machine to the other. Practically and mechanically it seems brilliant and I can’t imagine why I would ever buy a traditional machine ever again. Except…
It’s chock full of horrible apps and shit that I’ll never use. It’s way too “smart”, and those “smarts” are not there for my benefit. After a month or two it finally gave up trying to pester me to connect it to a network and install the app, which I’ll never, ever do. It’s never going to see an update or new firmware if I can help it, but I’m afraid that if/when it ever breaks, I’ll have no choice. I know it’s going to do things like eventually refuse to work until the computer has been “updated” to be “compatible” with new parts. And it’s not even just that it’s going to be expensive. It’s that I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust it to remain functional in the future, even if there are parts, that they won’t let me install the parts, or will require me to agree to play by their “rules” before I can.
Right to repair needs to be a thing, and people need to be able to break the ridiculous amount of both legal and practical control these manufacturers have over their devices after they’ve left the factory. We cannot and should not trust the manufacturers to support it. We need to allow independent repair.
I thought electric heaters were 100% efficient? All the electricity you put into it becomes heat yeah?
Yea but heat pumps have a coefficient of performance of greater than 1 cause you’re moving heat instead of generating it.
Yeah my heat pump is something like 2000% efficient. It can cheat because it doesn’t convert electricity into heat, it uses electricity to move heat from the outside to the inside (or vice versa).
Heat pumps require a line to the outdoors, which may not be possible to create for existing use cases.
Also, if I recall, hot water heaters that use heat pumps can’t actually get hot enough to completely heat the water and rely on electricity a bit. Therefore, I’m not sure everything with a heating element (ie. stovetop, oven, espresso machine, etc.) would work for that.
Edit: for those downvoting, please link me where I can buy a heat pump oven and stovetop. Would really like to install one.
Incorrect, no connection to outdoors is required for these appliances. In the case of the ventless combo, it literally hooks up to nothing other than the standard washing machine hookup. 1 normal 15 amp power outlet, 1 hot water hose, 1 cold water hose, 1 drain hose. No dryer vents, no other tubes or hoses, no drilling or cutting, no changes at all required. It is literally a drop-in replacement for any washer, but it also dries, with a heat pump, powered from the same circuit the washer uses and the same drain the washer uses.
Also, let me blow your mind a little bit: theoretically, the cold water main running to your house contains enough heat energy to completely heat your house all winter on its own. It is cold to us, but thermodynamically it’s a goldmine and you have an extremely generous supply of it. Water represents an enormous reservoir of heat, and you can play some really fun games with latent heat of evaporation and condensation (which is exactly how heat pumps work in the first place). Dehumidifiers add as much or more heat to a room than a space heater does, using a fraction of the electrical power. That’s the power of the heat contained in water. I’m not saying that a heat pump dryer is doing this with your water supply, simply pointing out that once water is in play, it becomes way more of a complex issue than performance figures on paper actually represent.
Obviously, clean drinkable water is also a scarce resource, so using it directly for any form of heating would be wasteful in its own way, but the point is that it would be technically possible. Including water in the discussion adds a lot of really interesting possibilities to the way we manage heat and energy, and we will eventually need to start understanding how much heat we literally throw away down the drain and how wasteful that actually is. And in the process we’ll learn to save some money and maybe even make our lives a bit more convenient.
Are you Alec from Tech. Connections?
Unfortunately not, but I am proud to be compared to him.
I can definitely read your comment in his voice, particularly the “also, let me blow your mind a little bit” part.
Heat pumps absolutely do not need to connect indoors and outdoors, every fridge and freezer is just a heat pump connected to a box.
Ive had a ventless heat pump clothes dryer, about 5 years ago, maybe 6. Technically it made the room it was in slightly colder while it ran, but that heat from my house was just concentrated inside the box and then allowed to escape back into my house.
I also think there have been advances in heat pump technology either with the refrigerant used to transfer the heat or with cascading systems that run multiple loops with different heat capacity so that one loop takes room temp water to “warm” temps and a secondary loop takes the “warm” water to hot.
I think they mean appliances that don’t necessarily heat an area but heat is a function of their purpose.
In the example given, a combo washer dryer, it is not necessary to have a link to the outside it merely uses the ambient air as it’s source of heat, The same is also common among heat pump water heaters.
What brand is it? I want a heat pump dryer, but I don’t like “smart” stuff.
GE Profile PFQ97HSPVDS. Not a sponsor, and not even a recommendation. It feels icky even admitting it. The only reason I am mentioning it at all is because I did manage to get it to (eventually) stop aggravating me about installing the app and connecting it to wifi and now it just works without annoyance as it should have from day one, and I recognize the possibility of having access to that feature alone may be valuable to someone. I can’t guarantee the one you buy now will even act the same way, as these things can be and are updated without notice.
I found some third-party home assistant stuff for GE smart home products on github if that’s important to you, but I haven’t even tested it for this as it still involves the appliance phoning home and everything is still gatekept through GE’s website and like I said I refuse to ever let this thing touch any form of internet connection or wireless.
For maintainability heat pump dryers are shit though. You can’t take the heat pump condenser out and thus you cannot properly clean it 😐. If you get lint stuck in there it starts reeking. The old condensers you could just take out and rinse.