These things have been completely standard fixtures elsewhere in the world for decades. I was honestly shocked that America, the land of air conditioning, had never heard of them.
They’re so ubiquitous in Australia it’s what we think of when we hear “air conditioner”.
When you shop for aircons they have to specify “cooling only” because reverse cycle is the default.
Typical naive Australian. What you would consider unbearably frigid is warm by northern standards. It wasn’t until recently that heat pumps were efficient enough to compete with wood and coal furnaces.
They are completely standard in large parts of the US too–just the northeast and other colder areas haven’t started using them due to their colder winters.
I’ve watched many heat pump videos from Technology Connections on YouTube and he covers some of this. Heat pumps have had trouble handling really cold temperatures (apparently they’re getting better at that), so rather than having a furnace and a heat pump, or just a heat pump and being left cold… most Americans in regions that need to worry about being colder than heat pumps could historically handle would just get a furnace and call it a day. I’m in one of those areas. I’m starting to see heat pumps around on newer builds, I assume due to advancements in the technology. The Technology Connections guy tried it out and clocked just a few days per year that the heat pump wasn’t good enough. Some people are willing to put up with that, some aren’t, and most are going to assume it’s going to be worse than that, so they play it safe. Everyone has a pretty big fear of their pipes freezing (rightfully so).
These things have been completely standard fixtures elsewhere in the world for decades. I was honestly shocked that America, the land of air conditioning, had never heard of them.
They’re so ubiquitous in Australia it’s what we think of when we hear “air conditioner”.
When you shop for aircons they have to specify “cooling only” because reverse cycle is the default.
Typical naive Australian. What you would consider unbearably frigid is warm by northern standards. It wasn’t until recently that heat pumps were efficient enough to compete with wood and coal furnaces.
They are completely standard in large parts of the US too–just the northeast and other colder areas haven’t started using them due to their colder winters.
I’ve watched many heat pump videos from Technology Connections on YouTube and he covers some of this. Heat pumps have had trouble handling really cold temperatures (apparently they’re getting better at that), so rather than having a furnace and a heat pump, or just a heat pump and being left cold… most Americans in regions that need to worry about being colder than heat pumps could historically handle would just get a furnace and call it a day. I’m in one of those areas. I’m starting to see heat pumps around on newer builds, I assume due to advancements in the technology. The Technology Connections guy tried it out and clocked just a few days per year that the heat pump wasn’t good enough. Some people are willing to put up with that, some aren’t, and most are going to assume it’s going to be worse than that, so they play it safe. Everyone has a pretty big fear of their pipes freezing (rightfully so).
We have them in Florida. It’s just very cold in the Northern USA.