DIY Heat Pump Install and What would you like to be next?

It's an $11,000 difference

What would you like to read about?

I haven’t published much recently because, truthfully, I’m not sure where to take this newsletter. When I started, I wanted to cover parts of our fight against climate change that weren’t being covered (like building electrification). I still want to do that, but I find that my interests range further and wider. What I’d really like to do is take you along on things I’m curious about (many of which do lead back to climate change). Two things that I’ve been thinking about recently are:

Personal problem-solving processes - I think most of the people I view as successful are successful not because they know everything about their chosen field, but rather because they’ve developed a personal problem-solving process that enables them to experiment, learn, and iterate quickly. Over time, they’ve developed both competence and competence in deploying it on big, hairy problems that don’t have instruction books. I could interview some of the people I admire, describe their processes, and see if there are commonalities. I suspect there are things we could apply to organizations and societies too.

The Art of the Pivot - I wonder if there is a process to pivots that could be explored. Pivots for companies, for individuals, and ultimately, since we are in the midst of a required but not assured pivot to a carbon-free economy, to societies/civilizations. Same process - interview people involved in pivots well-known and not and see if there are commonalities.

What would you like to explore with me? Please write back to me@parkerthomas.com.

DIY Heat Pump?

I started writing about electrification based on the horrific user experience involved in electrifying our 1400 SF cabin in Markleeville. The summer project was installing a $6000 panel to support replacing the propane furnace, stove, and dryer. Now that I’m ready…

The next project is the furnace because it was installed with an inadequate air supply that causes it to overheat and shut off (YAY!) and its $400 per month propane bill. I've been watching lots of videos on how to install a ducted heat pump. My wife will tell you that I’ve been known to utter these words and be profoundly wrong, but…..it doesn't look that hard. The hard parts seem to be:

• sizing the system (done with the fabulous help of Dave Barnes)

• making the ducting (will use the existing ducting)

• making the copper line sets between the outdoor compressor and the indoor air handler. One solution (Mr. Cool) has a pressurized line set that screws on and the other solution requires flaring copper tubing. This is serious business because you don’t want the coolant to escape. But it also seems very similar to the flares on airplane fuel systems - which I’ve already done. Those are also serious.

The difference in price between doing it myself and hiring someone is about $11,000. That’s hefty.

But I’ve been struck by two things already. First, the support for DIY or anyone who’s not an HVAC professional is seriously lacking. There are lots of videos, but even Mr. Cool, which positions itself as a DIY solution, explicitly states that installing it yourself voids the warranty. Mitsubishi, Daikon, and others aren’t even available to DIYers. They also have the same warranty restrictions. In some ways this is completely understandable - why would a warranty apply to a problematic install? But it also feels like something needs to change - $11,000 is a pretty hefty profit margin for one day of work. Plus, most of the installers in South Lake Tahoe won’t touch heat pumps.

I was also struck by the, um, howls of the HVAC installers in Nate Adams’ Electrify Everything Facebook group about how difficult this installation will be. They might indeed be right, but the howls seemed a little contrived given the well-informed and extremely specific questions and answers on the thread. It felt like the protests weren’t just about my installation, but were about an industry starting to feel the forces of change. We aren’t going to get homes electrified if it requires HVAC techs that don’t exist and $16,000 checks.

Parker