Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anybody run a combo gas furnace/heat pump?

Looking into getting a dual fuel heat pump furnace system in our new house. Will be talking to the builder and HVAC guy about it.

But I'd like some real world opinions.

Anyone here run such a set up?

From what I've been told, a heat pump alone is not enough, thus, you also need a furnace.

I get that. But some are able to look at the outside temps and determine which is more efficient. Also, I think, that some can look at prices and determine which is cheaper.

Yes, I have one. Pretty standard equipment in this area.

In this location (Kansas City MO area), the air-to-air heat pump is set to run when ambient temp is above 40 degrees (+/-). Below 40 and the gas furnace kicks in. I've been in my house 17 years and all works fine. Anymore when its time for heat, I just run the furnace and 'shut out' the heat pump. Doesn't take much to get below 40 degrees on a regular basis and didn't want to mess with the outside unit running.

So in your case you're running it more as a furnace/aircon system.

Thanks!

Whatever you do, good luck with it Steve.

94 % efficient gas furnace plus 13 SEER AC downstairs. Any higher "efficiency" is fan speed gimmicks more than anything. Heat pump up. Doubtful the extra unit complexity and cost of the combo unit pencils out. Insulation is more important than anything. I finally relented and went spray foam. The difference in cost has easily been recuperated. And the air quality is better, less fine dust, etc. Every customer has been pleased. Sealed crawl space too if that's a thing out there.

We`ve had 1 for 15 yrs .Been very happy with it. North Ar. Set up like Heelers , propane, When the heat comes on warms up house fast. Expensive at first but worth it..

In the past decade or so, heat pumps have come a loooong way. I don't have a dual system, but I do have NG in the main house and a heat pump in the guest house. It was put in two years ago and is amazingly efficient. You see guys installing them in cold climates even in the minus zero range.

When I bought my 900 sq ft lake house it had a 20 yo Lennox 1.5 ton heat pump and electric aux heat. I did an addition and added 700 sq ft of conditioned space and changed out my HVAC to dual fuel. New system is a 3 ton heat pump + propane furnace.
Cost to operate the old unit was about $250 - $300 a month in the summer and about the same for heat in the winter.
For reference this house is in N Georgia.
After the renovation the operating cost dropped. My average electric bill was around $90 - $110 a month year round and I spent about $350 a year on propane. Pretty amazing since I had increased the conditioned space by about 40%.
I sold the place a little more than a year ago when the market for lake houses was so high I couldn't pass up the offers I was getting.
I imagine Propane costs are higher now but the saving at the time was real.

Thanks guys. Gonna go with the traditional furnace / aircon combo.

Heat pumps useless here! In fact we’ve quit using our forced-air furnace and are using only a 30K btu ventless decorative stove! Well only it, until we had that little cool snap with a minus 30 one morning ……then we had to fire-up a little 10K ventless that we have upstairs! memtb

If you believe the hype heat pumps will work down to 30 below... ha ha. I asked my buddy who had a heat pump installed in NY (long island).. it struggles at 30 above and electric on LI is very $$$.

They sold and moved to NC .

Great.

When we had our house built the price of NG was up and electricity was down, so we had a high efficiency furnace and heat pump installed. We don't use the heat pump in Winter now and when it crumps I'll have a good A/C unit installed.

Heat pumps and AC can do the same thing, depending on how you have them set up except that AC won't supply heat. The name of the game is efficiency and even if the heat pump/AC only runs part of the year and the furnace takes over the heating chores when it gets really cold you are still going to be more efficient than just the standard AC unit alone. The new split units are very efficient and if everything is sized properly the heat pump will handle 90% of the heating/cooling chores of your home and the furnace will simply be your air handler.

The house we are starting our build on in a couple months will definitely have a heat pump/AC unit tied into the furnace....

Only way to go. Got tired of running the AC in the winter to "unfreeze" the electric heat pump. Mom can stand in front of the vent and let the warm air blow up her skirts and smiles.