• Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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    2 years ago

    it cannot be the only source of heat in a lot of cold climates.

    I live in Finland. Heat pump is the only source of heat in my house.

    • mustardman@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 years ago

      What are your lowest nightly temperatures? Also, it can operate at low temperatures, just not efficiently if you have resistive heating in your outdoor unit.

        • mustardman@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 years ago

          I’m sure your average lows are much higher than that. These systems have automatic switch-over so you’ll never be aware when it does. If your average lows are higher then of course a heat pump works in your climate.

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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            2 years ago

            Yeah averages are way higher than that. My point just was that saying they don’t work in cold climates isn’t quite true. Yes, there are locations with way colder climates than this but if Finland isn’t considered a “cold climate” then I don’t know what is.

            Heat pumps are super common here. Many houses just have a electric resistance heating so people switch to heat pumps to save on electricity.

            • mustardman@discuss.tchncs.de
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              2 years ago

              I posted the exact temperatures where the efficiency breaks down and if your sustained averages are higher than that then obviously it doesn’t apply to you. There wasn’t any ambiguity after that when trying to figure out what “cold climate” refers to with respect to heat pumps.

        • DeusHircus@lemmy.zip
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          2 years ago

          Are you intimately familiar with the inner workings of your heatpump? Nearly all heatpumps in a cold climate have backup heat built in and it would automatically switch to backup when it gets too cold outside. -30C is well into the too cold category for it to function as a heatpump alone

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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            2 years ago

            Yeah I have no idea. The alternative would be electric radiators anyways so in most cases that wouldn’t make a difference anyways. Temperatures that low are quite rare - maybe just a handful of nights a year. Generally it stays around -10C

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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        2 years ago

        The same thing that happens when you have electric or gas heating. It stops working, because none of those work without electricity nowadays. Hell if you have a coal/wood burner for central heating chances are it doesn’t work without electricity either.

        • deFrisselle@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 years ago

          How often does it got out in Germany At least Finland built a Nuclear reactor to power most of the country unlike Germany which shut all their’s down

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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        2 years ago

        Well it obviously stops working and unless you have some other means of heating your house you’re kinda fucked and can only hope it comes back on soon as it generally does.