Arctic Heat Pumps Air to Water Heat Pumps for Cold Weather!!

John Ruhnke

I’m happy to share that Shawn and I are starting a new company, Prime Reps New England!

Today, December 15th, 2021 is the actual birth of Prime Reps New England!!!

We are now the very proud Manufacturers Representative for Arctic Heat Pumps!!!!

We sell Arctic Heat Pumps, Combined Solar and Heat Pump Systems, Designed Radiant Heating, Hydronic and Hi or Low Velocity HVAC Systems. Everything sold in our designed package comes with a complete 4 year warranty by Arctic Heat Pumps! One source for your designs. One source for any warranty claims on it all! Manufacturers Warranty may be higher on some included products.

John Ruhnke and Shawn Roby
Co-Founders and Co-Owners

Shawn Roby CEO

John Ruhnke
Energy Systems Design Director
Prime My Profits LLC
Doing Business As Prime Reps New England
Manufacturers Representatives for Arctic Heat Pumps

John Ruhnke

Please ask me any questions about Air to Water Heat Pumps, radiant or any Hydronic Heating Designs or anything. I will be lurking. I have decades of experience. Lets Learn and Grow together. Time to build Sustainably!! Repair our planet!! Create Comfort!! Exciting Times!!

Larry Weingarten

Hi, Considering the NYC news, you’re in the right business.

Yours, Larry

HHutch

FInally a question! I presume its still the case that a separate heat pump for DHW is the right answer (I am considering an Arctic system for an in-slab radiant system in a cold climate)

John Ruhnke

Hi HHutch,

Arctic Heat Pumps has a few different solutions to provide DHW for you. Let me know what your application is. I had left Arctic Heat Pumps to work for Warren Energy Engineering for a while. Now I am back working full time with Arctic Heat Pumps. I am the East Coast Rep. I handle states along the shore from Florida to Maine.

John Ruhnke

ethicalpaul

Hi there, and congratulations and good luck on your new business!

We hear on this forum all the time that heat pumps can't handle new england (or even mid-atlantic) winters comfortably. I admit I am out of date with the current technology…is this still the case today for Air-to-Air or Air-to-Water?

John Ruhnke

Hi Paul,

I am a hydronics specialist. Arctic Heat Pumps is a Air to Water Heat Pump or Hydronics Heat Pump. They are from Winnipeg Canada. It is very cold up there!! Near the Arctic Circle. The Heat Pumps work great up there in that environment. So they can handle any weather the lower 48 can deliver!!

pecmsg

The technology is there yes but, how many techs know how to work on them?

Hard enough to get a simple gas or oil tech, throw all these computers in the mix and that # drops dramatically!

John Ruhnke

I can provide design assistance and training for anybody in my territory on Air to Water Heat Pumps. I won major awards on designing Hydronic Systems. I also was a hydronics installer. I have scene it all in the field of hydronics.

ethicalpaul

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811601#Comment_1811601

hehe ok. So I guess if attacking the technology doesn’t work, we can attack the techs available (something that is an issue for all heating and cooling technology it seems). Got it!

pecmsg

I've been dealing with Mitsubishi and Fujitsu for over 30 years and still call tech support regularly.

With all that's packed in there NO ONE in the field can carry enough spare parts and knowledge to get the units back online within a day or two. That is the biggest issue with heat pumps, when they fail your dead in the water for a few days if not more!

John Ruhnke

Hi pecmsg,

Our systems are designed with a HBX Eco 0600 controller. They have a source of back up energy for the real cold days that the COP hits 1. Maybe 3% of the year? or so do you need it. The Eco controller automatically switches from the back up to the heat pump. This way you never have a situation where you are left without heat on a cold day. The back up is electric resistance or can be a boiler. Millions of Air to Water Heat Pumps are sold all over the world for many decades now. This isn't new technology.

John

DCContrarian

John —

What would really help is if Arctic were listed in the database of air source heat pumps at ashp.neep.org. I find that the best resource for doing apples-to-apples comparisons and projecting energy cost.

Statements like "heat pumps don't work in the cold" are so devoid of context as to be useless. There is a lot of nuance to heat pump performance. I'm a fanboy but I realize there are limitations.

John Ruhnke

Hi DCContrarian,

Air to Water Heat Pumps aren't listed in the ASHP.NEEP.org website. The American energy efficiency standards are horrible. Antiquated, politically motivated and not based in reality. Very biased against hydronics. There is no Air to Water Heat Pump that is Energy Star rated. Sure Arctic Heat Pumps won the Energy Star emerging technologies award back in 2019 yet Energy Star still haven't developed the math to measure Air to Water Heat Pump performance properly. Our system is run by corrupt multi national corporate lobbyists and not engineers or scientists.

I like to live in reality.

John

DCContrarian

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811618#Comment_1811618

My understanding is that the reason they aren't listed is that no manufacturers have gone through the listing process, not that NEEP doesn't accept air to water units for testing.

"American energy efficiency standards" is painting with a very broad brush. The testing methodology that NEEP uses is excellent and allows for apples-to-apples comparisons.

John Ruhnke

I have been complaining about bad energy efficiency standards for decades. I just got done working for Warren Energy Engineering full time for a year. I inspected projects in the Con Ed rebate program for Con Ed. I was a energy efficiency consultant for them. They put me in charge of inspecting the combustion process for 100 boilers for Columbia University. Our greatest Ivy League minds were involved. They were following the energy efficiency calculation on the combustion analyzers. I learned many decades ago that the calculation in the analyzers doesn't work. I told them and Con Ed they were under firing most of the boilers in the project. They were increasing energy use and not decreasing it. The entire combustion efficiency rebate program was training technicians to underfire the boilers increasing fuel use and not decreasing it. I sent them papers and gave them experts to follow up with. I wrote in my reports how they could save huge amounts of energy. Nobody cares, no one followed up. I couldn't work for them anymore.

That is one story I have with the battles against poor standards. I have many more stories and not enough time to tell them.

pecmsg

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811610#Comment_1811610

send me literature.
emails in my profile

John Ruhnke

Hi pecmsg,

Start with ArcticHeatPumps.com and https://hbxcontrols.com

Then if you have more questions let me know.

pecmsg

thanks but more interested with

Service literature.

John Ruhnke

I emailed you a couple of manuals.

Hot_water_fan

 The American energy efficiency standards are horrible. Antiquated, politically motivated and not based in reality. Very biased against hydronics. There is no Air to Water Heat Pump that is Energy Star rated. 

are they? I’m not sure I buy that.

If they are biased against hydronics, is that a problem? It’s not a revelation that Americans don’t buy much hydronic equipment, especially the heat pump variety.

Larry Weingarten

Hi, Maybe these folks will have something to say about efficiency standards. 🤔 https://www.advancedwaterheatinginitiative.org/

Yours, Larry

DCContrarian

It's precisely because of the inadequacy of standards like Energy Star that NEEP started their database. I agree that Energy Star is useless. On the other hand, I consider NEEP to be the gold standard. If you have objections to NEEP's methodology I'd love to hear them.

John Ruhnke

DCContrarian,

I have been coming here to this website since the mid 90's. It is the community that I learned from the wet heads, wallies, RPA, CAPHCC and ASHRAE among many many others. I have been to well over 100's of factory training seminars. I came back here to learn from you all.

No I don't know much about NEEP. Can you tell me why it is the gold standard?

John Ruhnke

"If they are biased against hydronics, is that a problem? It’s not a revelation that Americans don’t buy much hydronic equipment, especially the heat pump variety."

I was at ASHRAE in Boston earlier this year. The main speaker at one of the main seminars there was talking about local law 97 and how they need to turn to hydronics to meet the requirements of measured energy consumption reduction. MEASURED!! Not some points system that lobbyists love.

DCContrarian

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811659#Comment_1811659

It's based on measurement.

They measure actual output and energy consumption under a series of standardized conditions, varying both load and temperature. So every unit is compared on the same footing.

That's the main thing. They also have a cool feature where you can put in your zip code and design load and it will tell you how many hours per year to expect at each degree. From that they tell you how many hours your heat pump will be load low modulating, and if you need supplemental heat, how many hours a year of supplemental heat you would expect. It's an extremely quantitative answer to the question, "will a heat pump work in my climate?"

They also allow you to download the underlying data for both performance and hours per year at temperature. From that, you can estimate your load at each temperature, and the COP for your heat pump at that load and temperature. Multiply that by the hours per year at each temperature, and add them all up, and you get energy usage per year. Then take your local cost of electricity, and any other fuel, and you get the answer to the question, "will a heat pump save me money?"

I've never seen anything like it.

John Ruhnke

Hi DCContrarian,

I don't see Air to Water Heat Pumps on the list. Why is that?

Kaos

I'll second DCContrarian on the NEEP site and data. It provides the data that was missing before to make an informed decision about selecting a heat pump.

It is the only resource that tackles the issue with low load cycling which is one of the biggest killers of heat pump efficiency.

John Ruhnke

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811667#Comment_1811667

That sounds like a big improvement. I also noticed talk of including Air to Water Heat Pumps. I wonder if they have a time line on when they will include us?

DCContrarian

I don't know why. You'd have to reach out to them.

My understanding is the manufacturer has to provide both an outdoor unit and indoor unit for the test, they test the configuration as provided. So an air-to-water heat pump manufacturer would also have to provide an air handler.

I don't see any reason why testing a heat pump/air handler combination would be any different if the fluid running between them is water instead of refrigerant.

Larry Weingarten

Hi, A question; You're discussing split systems… how about the HP water heaters we're seeing that are combined into one unit? Perhaps when ducted, they could be tested? 🤔

Yours, Larry

DCContrarian

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811673#Comment_1811673

I think you were the one who turned me on to it originally.

John Ruhnke

An Air

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811682#Comment_1811682

An air handler isn't as efficient as a radiant heating system. Heating by Hot Air is not what Air to Water Heat Pumps are designed for. So it would be an unfair comparison. Yes we can heat by forced air but why?

DCContrarian

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811659#Comment_1811659

And please don't think I'm picking on you. I think the Arctic unit will do very well in the NEEP testing. The point I was trying to make that while certifications like Energy Star are useless, serious people look at the NEEP database. The number one thing you could do to get your product taken seriously by the kind of people who are opinion leaders would be to get a performance profile into the NEEP database.

I have no idea how that happens. I know they have over 100,000 equipment configurations in their database so it can't be that hard.

Hot_water_fan

I think one challenge is picking the ODR curves to test at. From what I’ve seen on the water source side, the water to water is seemingly always less efficient than water to air. I can’t imagine air to water being much different - you’ll always have higher return temps and at least 1 extra heat exchange to rob efficiency.

As to why it’s not included - could it just be efficient to skip these products? They’re extremely niche. Surely Mitsubishi could get their products certified if they pushed, maybe they don’t think it’s worth it?

John Ruhnke

Millions of Air to Water Heat Pumps are sold world wide. That is not a niche market. In many places it is more popular that an air to air heat pump system.

Hot_water_fan

Not arguing that but obviously they don’t need a Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership rating then would they. Niche in the US, popular elsewhere. Like hydronics at large.

DCContrarian

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1811692#Comment_1811692

OK, this gets to the issue of apples-to-apples comparison.

In the past, the claim was made that underfloor heat was more efficient, in that occupants of the space experience the same comfort with less heat being delivered. That claim has kind of gone out of style and the evidence to support it was always kind of sketchy.

What is true is that with underfloor heat you can use much cooler water, which with a heat pump allows for much greater efficiency, in terms of COP. You can reasonably run such a floor with water at 95F.

Now, you could also run an air handler with water at 95F, and I believe you'd see the same efficiency — measured by COP — as with underfloor. The issue you'd run into is it would have to be a big air handler, with a big fan. But it would get you into the NEEP database.

One thing I thought was curious was that the only performance numbers I could find on the Arctic website were for water at 113F, most air-to-water manufacturers push the 95F numbers because they move the performance curve 18F to the left, which looks a lot more impressive.

Also, on the Arctic website there is a line of hydronic fan coils from 3.6 to 14.3 kBTU/hr. The coolest water they provide ratings for is 113F.

John Ruhnke

Radiant Floor Heat and Hydronics are more efficient. There is lots of solid proof of that. The engineers for larger commercial projects are shifting to hydronics just for the purpose of meeting lower energy consumption requirements. They have to meet MEASURED PERFORMANCE data required by Local Law 97 in NYC. They know hydronics is solving this in NYC. I was just at the ASHRAE show in Boston. The featured seminar was on hydronic heating and cooling. Radiant is more comfortable. Always has been. A person that has had radiant floor heat loves it! They always request it in there next house. A dog always knows which room the radiant floor is in. Radiant never went out of style. It was and is always loved. I have radiant heat in my house.

You can't just take a few small clips for COP off of marketing material from a website and do a COP comparison. You have to ask for the engineering specs and take your data from that. We have COP charts for all of our heat pumps. And there are engineering specs for the fan coils. You can operate the fan coil at any temperature as long as you don't make steam. ODR is used with the fan coils a lot. There are engineering charts at different water temperatures.

If a customer comes to you and they want or have radiant heat and want to stay with electricity or do hydronic cooling then you can send them our way and we will take care of them. We can make them happy.

Hot_water_fan

I think this would be more productive if you sold homeowners on this and not us. There’s a disconnect here: this corner of the internet loves hydronics but the public doesn’t. Listen to what the customer is telling you and adjust.

John Ruhnke

Hi Hot Water Fan,

I have lots of Homeowner Leads coming in everyday. I don't need to advertise. Its more than I can handle. They love radiant heat and don't want fossil fuels. Its like a Tesla for the house. I am here because they can't find enough installers. I am here to train you guys on proper installation. Because of the lack of installers, if I trained you there will be less bidders than other projects you might be working on. You will close more projects.