MidAtlantic

Exactly! Replaced mine last weekend. $30 at Lowes. Programmable. Took 30 minutes to fit. Now I just need to touch up some paint around it because it is smaller than the previous one, which had stopped working.

petitefrancaise

nope. online app is awesome. Being able to manually stop/start the electric heaters in the heat pump is brilliant ( not possible on cheaper thermostats), I can lie in bed and check the upstairs and downstairs temp, I can check the outside temp too.

When I was away in July, the teens re-set the thermostats to cool the house to ?68F accidentally and then they all went out. It was over 100f outside. luckily I checked the thermostats, saw what the so and sos had done and re-set it all and locked it whilst I was in Colorado and the house is in Austin. Brilliant system. Paid for itself in the first year easily

Pulaski

Our new system is going to be Web accessible, and be controllable in ways that the current piece-of-junk isn't. It'll have two zones, and has a variable speed heat pump backed with a two speed gas furnace, so the likelihood is that much if the time we won't even be using gas, the heatpump will be sufficient. It can also be used as a dehumidifier, and set to control humidity rather than just temperature.

It is also significantly more efficient than what we have, and more than the current minimum efficiency too - higher SEER, EER, and HSPF. The furnace is 96% efficient, so we we won't be sending $1 in every $5 straight up the flue, and we can replace the little metal stove pipe with a plastic plumbing pipe for a flue.

mrken30

At homedepot this week they had the Honeywell wifi thermostats for $70. These work with alexa, ifttt and a host of other internet based apps.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Honeywel...80WF/203356032

I think it is the same one that got installed with my heat pump.
The non wifi model looks identical, but obviously does not have wifi.

My next heat upgrade would be a variable speed fan. Apparently that can give a lot of cost savings.

Pulaski

I'll let you know.

ddsrph

The newer units definitely have some good numbers. Seer 22 heat pumps versus 14 for standard units. In my new house which I am just finishing up I went low tech seer 14 but with very high R value insulation and ten foot ceilings with commercial grade exposed spiral ductwork like you see in some restaurants. This eliminates any energy loss from ducts versus having them in attic or crawl space. I designed and installed the whole system and was not about to allow some tech to touch any part of it. I was ready to order my heat pump online but a local company let me buy a Trane unit to install myself. When all done they came out per our agreement and soldered the refrigerant line and started up the unit. I paid them 2500 including tax for everything. For those so inclined check online for units usually Goodman brand. This will at least give you a good idea of what a unit should cost when comparing prices locally.
The payback time of the increased initial cost and possible increased maintenance costs of the very high tech units is a factor to consider. They all are usually junk in about 15 years. My year around total house electric bill of $60 with thermostat set 70 in winter and summer gives no complaints so far.

mrken30

These are the specs for what was a mid range unit4 years ago. 15.3 SEER/ 11.0 -- 13.0 EER/ 7.7 -- 9.0 HSPF . The other thing I found was that the higher the SEER, the quieter the unit. The jump up to the top SEER rating did not seem to make financial sense to me. I think it was around another $3000, which would not have paid back in the 10-15 years lifetime of the unit.

I paid $5000 for adding extra breakers, running electric, running the refrigerant line, lifting the furnace, installing a coil. The length of the pipe run is around 40 ft from the pump to the coil. Unfortunately I had a gas line where I wanted to put the unit. I think I do get some inefficiencies due to the length of the refrigerant line.

We do only have an 80% efficient furnace, but our gas bill is only $40 a year, once you take off the service charge.

Lion in Winter

And, if you have forced air, get some humidifiers. Forced air will dry out already dryish air to Saharan quality.

Pulaski

We keep our heating fairly low, but run dehumidifiers when we're out, otherwise the air feels damp and musty when we get home. We have never thought of the air as being particularly dry when the heat is running.

mrken30

In the winter, both inside and outside can get down to about 20 % humidity, but generally when it's just cold and wet, inside is around 50% humidity inside.

scrubbedexpat099

Semi arid so no problem with moisture.

Mainly heat with wood, have radiators heated through a Triangle Tube Propane Boiler. Maybe by year end I will have the wood boilers going...

robin1234

True. It gets very dry in the winter, but I feel watering the plants alleviates it to a great extent. For instance we have a good sized ficus tree that lives outside in summer and fall, but joins us in the living room when the frosts come. It gets at least two litres of water a week. And all the geraniums (also refugees from the outdoors) probably get five litres a week or so...

Bob

We got our first gas bill for last month in our new gaff and it was $60. Wasn't that cold last month except for a few days, and temp was set to 68F during evenings. Was set to 65 during the day.

The place is old, from the 1870's, but has new insulation, new windows and pretty new roof. Fixed the draft from the front door, as the sweep was a bit buggered and that helped a lot.

I've lowered the temp to 65 in the evenings and 62 during the day. It is really dry in here though.

Prior to last months bill, it has been around $30.

At our last place, which was pretty poor for insulation, but similar space, 1200 sq/ft almost, was costing $100 a month during the middle of winter, but similar $30 odd a month the rest of the year.

Before that, we had a place that was electric heat and that was running around $120-150 a month, when the regular electric bill was around $30 in spring/autumn. Was similar $100 or so in the summer with AC. This was a fairly new build.

Prior to that, oil heat was $300-500 a month. This was a old Victorian house.

scrubbedexpat099

Has been very warm so far, just noticed we now have a Fire Ban, storm coming through tonight but do not expect much snow.

dc koop

A gas furnace located in the attic controlled by a thermostat. Fires in my neck of the woods usually exist for decorative purposes