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Originally Posted by jeff5may
The main question here is: what are your long-term plans or needs? If you don't splurge and get a cooling-only unit, will you be spending any of the money on extra insulation? Would you rather chop wood or spend money to heat your house?
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I wont be spending it right now on extra insulation. i guess it would be going towards air sealing the house more. I know the basement/crawl spaces need their leaks sealed up which would include some insulation too.
I plan on doing both, paying for gas and chopping wood. My wife and i like to be warm in the winter(74*+). i wouldn't be able to afford the gas bill to keep us that warm so i use wood which does the trick. keeps us warmer then gas ever could and saves me money on a gas bill. I turn off the gas valve to the furnace in the winter.
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Regarding the heat pump option vs. gas vs. wood, it would be fairly simple to integrate the heat pump with the gas as a backup. If your buddy installs units in the area, he should know whether or not to install a low ambient switch and at what temperature it is cheaper to run gas for his units. Sure, a heat pump will put out heat down to zero, but efficiency drops below freezing pretty fast. During cold spells, you could load up the buck stove and run it to level out your utility bill(s). The heat pump shouldn't be sized large enough to keep up on the coldest days anyway.
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my buddy does commercial heating a cooling. a lot of boilers and ACs. he said he has done a couple heat pumps but he is no expert. the plan would be to back it up with the gas furnace then once it got to cold out switch to wood.
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Another thing to consider is the desuperheater/hot water option. IMHO, this is something that will save you money for the life of the unit. Depending on your hot water usage, the savings could be substantial.
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Im not familiar with a hot water heating option on central heating/cooling heat pumps. I have seen the A7 thread and im pretty impressed with its results.