TCL Heat Pumps

• First, use the map to choose where your house is.
• Using that, we get the hourly weather for your location for the full year.
• Then, use the text boxes to describe your house - where is it, how big it is, how well insulated, and how much your electricity costs.
• Using that, we make a model of your house and estimate heat loss for every hour.
• Using those together, along with capacity/efficiency data at different temps for lots of heat pumps, we estimate how much electricity each one would use, and figure out which ones won't be able to keep up - look for "Hours Over Capacity" to see which heat pumps aren't quite keeping up. A little of that is OK, a lot, not so much.
• The page combines the purchase price (amortized) with the annual electricity cost to show a blended cost per year. A more efficient heat pump might cost more upfront, but if you need a lot of heating or cooling, it might end up being cheaper overall. We sort by that annual cost.

Heat pumps are pretty awesome. They're basically air conditioners that can run in either direction, and because they move heat between in and outside instead of just creating it, they can be more than 100% efficient! In many cases, they're in the range of 400% efficient, or even more. You can get more heat in your house using natural gas to generate electricity to run a heat pump than if you burn the gas directly in your house. Crazy!

This tool is for people who are interested in buying a heat pump without going through a contractor, or for any contractors who might find comparisons useful. In many cases, especially with minisplits, it's not too hard to do it yourself, and much cheaper than hiring a professional. But they can be a bit tricky to compare when it comes to efficiency versus cost tradeoffs, which is why I built this tool to help you play around the numbers and figure out what might be right for you.

If you decide to DIY this, though, I'd advise a few things. First, watch a bunch of YouTube DIY videos, but be aware that it's not quite as simple to do a good job of it as they show. If you get one of the MrCool DIY series pumps, you can just use their pre-evacuated linesets, and I've heard that's pretty simple. But if you go with one of the others with normal linesets, you need a vacuum pump, torque wrench, and the other tools they recommend, but you also need a digital micron gauge, a flaring tool, and you probably want a coring tool with shutoff valve, and you might want to do a pressure test with nitrogen, which means you probably need a pressure regulator. You probably also want a higher quality vacuum pump than most YouTubers show. Many YouTubers use an analog manifold, but for pulling a deep vacuum and making sure it holds, that's like trying to measure inches with your car's odometer - the level to which you need to measure is invisible on that scale. Instead, you want a digital micron gauge. This isn't to scare you off, I did my own this way and it wasn't hard once I figured out what I needed, this is just to make it so you don't get halfway into your project before you realize the real cost of doing this right.