Gas furnace or electric heat pump

kenmac · Sep 10, 2005

Sigrams, although I don't install or care for carrier / bryant for personal reasons . I have to give them credit .They knew the change was A comming & put their "puron" unit in the field several years ago.

Cityboyfarmer · Sep 10, 2005

Ken,

The heat strips kick in during defrost, of course.

I did not intend to imply that any heat pump can stand alone. My point was that the heat pump can/should maintain your room temp with the OAT well below freezing. There are times, including the defrost mode, when your electric strips are needed. Sorry for the confusion.

As you know, the "defrost" mode is simply the reversing valve switching the unit to the cooling mode with the outdoor fan off and the electric strips on.

I have also owned and installed dual fuel systems with the HP/gas furnace combination. I really liked those systems till gas prices here got so high. I went all electric about 7 years ago and have been very pleased with the system.

kenmac · Sep 10, 2005

Here I don't know how long elec prices will low. Suthern co which owns AL. Power & GA. Power is the largest user of nat. gas here . They use nat . gas to run an engine which in turn turns a gen. to produce elec. So, I think elec prices will most likely rise as well.I think you will see more nat. gas used like this to produce elec. as the E.P.A. puts more restrictions on the burning of coal to produce elec.

Volfandt · Sep 11, 2005

Seems that natural gas was fairly inexpensive until I finally bought a gas furnace 3 yrs ago. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
Since then the price has risen faster than gasoline which I don't fully understand since natural gas is not imported, we drill it right here in the good ole USA!

I was going to go with a gas waterheater next then switch over the range and dryer when the electric's needed replacing but now there would have to be a drastic change in both electric & gas priced before I'd go that route.

I also had a gas line run to my fire place as I was going to switch it over from wood to gas but now I'm considering either a pellet or corn insert.

Natural gas produces very warm heat and my furance has a 98% efficincy rateing ( vents out a PVC pipe) but man O' man are they proud of that natural gas!

Volfandt

heehaw · Sep 11, 2005

natural gas is not imported? that's what i thought too, it seems we import a lot of natural gas, and you are right, the price has been very unstable the last few years: i think part of that is because the gas companies could sell all the gas they have to just a few customers, like the electric co's: to generate electricity, so they would just as soon not have to deal with us small folk..
heehaw