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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our climate story of the week, which we're doing every Tuesday on the show all this year. And it's a bit of news you can use. For context, here's an interesting if, "If all single family homes in the United States adopted heat pumps, the total annual emissions reduction would be at least 160 million metric tons, equivalent to taking 32 million cars off the road." That comes from Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrifying homes. Heat pumps have been touted as the cleaner and climate friendlier choice for home heating and cooling, but there's a lot to know before you update your home's HVAC system. There was a really helpful piece in The New York Times Climate Forward newsletter that lays some of this out. It comes from our next guest, Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation policy and recently made the switch to a heat pump himself. His story is, A Heat Pump Can Cut Your Emissions, but Read This Before You Switch. Christopher, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Christopher Flavelle?

Christopher Flavelle: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Now I can hear you.

Christopher Flavelle: Perfect. All right.

Brian Lehrer: You want to do a little one-on-one first? We've done heat pump segments on the show before in this climate series, but you want to do a little one on one for a lot of people who don't have any experience or haven't engaged in heat pumps as an issue? What are they? How do they work?

Christopher Flavelle: Sure. A heat pump is a combination air conditioning system and furnace. It can heat and cool your home. And best of all, and this is the big selling point, it does so much more efficiently than a standard gas-powered or heating-oil-powered furnace. At a very high level, it's a win for the environment. It's also billed as a win for consumers because being more efficient, it will save you money on your power bills over time.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to the things that you warn people to be careful of if they make the switch, but also just to frame who we're talking to here and who we're talking about, apparently there are some heat pumps that can be mounted into apartment windows, but the HVAC replacement project that you embarked on is the type of thing you can only really do in a single family home. This is more for our single family home listeners?

Christopher Flavelle: That's exactly right. I've got a three bedroom home, and it's 1,600 feet. My experience is probably most relatable to somebody who owns their own home.

Brian Lehrer: Last summer was grueling, and you also had to endure your home's HVAC system breaking down. You write, "I tried to stay positive. Maybe this was my chance to get a heat pump," but when you got quotes from companies that could install a heat pump, you say that most of them warned you away. Why would they do that?

Christopher Flavelle: I did some reporting on this. That's exactly right. My AC conked out in the middle of a heat wave in Washington, DC in July, the worst possible timing, which I think is basically how it always happens. I felt a degree of excitement. I thought, "This is great. I finally have a reason to go and join the heat pump revolution." As you know, when I called HVAC companies, they all came by and said, "Oof, think twice about a heat pump. That's not going to be a great idea."

I thought, "Well, tell me why," and I got a whole range of reasons about why to be worried about them. Some of them said, "This technology, it's still pretty new. We're not sure how well it works." Some said that the machinery will break down faster. Some said it won't keep me warm enough in the winter. They warned about all the changes and upgrades I have to make to my electrical and running wires. All kinds of reasons to think twice about doing this.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your calls in our climate story of the week as we talk about heat pumps and what you should know before you make this climate friendly upgrade to your home's HVAC system. If anybody has done this and wants to pile on with Christopher Flavelle here, not to say don't do it, or you can say, "Don't do it," if you've decided that you have regrets, but to let people know what's really involved, not to gloss over it, not to oversimplify it, not to romanticize it, but even if you advocate heat pumps, what should people know before they jump? 212433 WNYC. 212 433 9692, call or text.

Christopher, you write, "They'll save you money because you pay less for energy, and thanks to the tax credits passed by Congress, they're more affordable than ever. What's not to love?" Then you write, "Based on my experience, switching to a heat pump this summer, that pitch may gloss over some important points. And one of those points is, despite those tax credits, there are still pretty sizable upfront costs. So how much did your heat pump conversion set you back?

Christopher Flavelle: We got a bunch of quotes. Readers wrote this to me. It's a fine point. If we had done this differently, with some more time and weren't as rushed as we were, we would have gotten even more quotes, but in the frantic period between our AC conking out and finally pulling the trigger on the heat pump, we got maybe a half dozen quotes. Even the lowest quote from what seemed like a reputable HVAC company was still a few thousand dollars more than it would have been just to replace our unit with a standard gas-powered furnace and AC.

Almost covers the tax credit, almost covers that difference, but we still were out of pocket a little bit. The thing that really stuck with me from this experience was, in the abstract, on paper, shelling out a few thousand dollars extra to get a more efficient unit that will save you money over time seems like a fine idea, but what I experienced was, in the moment when you're already facing this big, unexpected expense, the idea of a few thousand dollars more stings more than I thought it would. That's part of what stuck with me.

Brian Lehrer: You also write, given the environmental benefits for a heat pump, perhaps it's churlish to complain about the holes in our basement walls that were cut by the installation team to run wires from the electrical panel to the furnace room." For people listening to that and thinking, "What? Holes in my basement walls? What? Electrical panel? Do I even have the right amperage and stuff in my home?" What would you say?

Christopher Flavelle: Again, the best time to do an emergency AC furnace replacement is not during a heatwave. If you can have your AC fail when it's not hot or cold, do that, but, man, having these questions swirl around us in the middle of a heat wave in July was just terrible. I remember keenly the day where these guys came out to our house to install a new heat pump, and I got a worried call from the installation guy. They said, "We're looking at your panel. I'm not sure this is going to work," and I thought, "Now you tell me?"

All these questions that if you're thinking about a heat pump, honestly, my biggest advice is don't wait until your system conks out. Do it while you're not in a rush. because doing it under pressure was just a horrible experience.

Brian Lehrer: Bob in Riverside, Connecticut, installed heat pumps a year ago, he says. Bob, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Bob: Good morning, Brian. Thank you very much for taking my call. I'm in favor of heat pumps, and I agree that a little advanced planning is a good idea, particularly on the electrical side. We did have to upgrade our electric panel. That's not done by the heat pump contractor. You get your electrician in to do that, but it's not a big deal. You've got the power company. The wires that are in the street or over the overhead, depending on which way they run, have the capacity usually to serve you.

What you need is a bigger panel to put in a larger circuit breaker to handle the heat pump, which I don't know the exact load in my head, but I think there are 230 amp breakers on it. Basically, it's like adding a really big electric dryer or two or three, depending on how many pumps you wind up with.

In terms of holes in the walls and stuff, I think most of the units that I've seen, we've done it here, and a not-for-profit I work with, we've installed heat pumps in our new building. They're basically big refrigerators. In the summer you're inside the refrigerator, and the winter you're outside the refrigerator.

Brian Lehrer: We know a refrigerator gives off heat outside. Let me ask you one question, Bob, about yours, and it's something else from Christopher's article. He wrote, "It may be shallow to note that our heat pump is louder than our old HVAC system. The vents now emit a noise akin to the wind whistling in from the sea or the gush of a small plane overhead. Have you had that experience?

Bob: No. The units are almost completely silent. We had no air conditioning at all for 50 years in this house, and the noise that is silenced was my wife asking me to get air conditioning, put air conditioning in.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and finding it very quiet. Bob, thank you very much for your call. Christopher, that's another thing from your article that makes me go, "What? You put in a heat pump, and it sounds like there's a plane flying overhead?"

Christopher Flavelle: One of the things that has turned out from my reporting on this is that because these things are new, a lot of the contractors use might not have much experience with them. People who focus on this stuff, engineers, tell me there's nothing inherently loud about a heat pump, but because they're new, you can have contractors who maybe don't know the right size of the blower motor to use or aren't connecting it properly to your ducts.

I think the stuff that I found has been described to me as standard growing pains for a new-ish industry. The optimistic take is that as more Americans get heat pumps, the army of contractors putting these things in will just get better at the right sizing, the right connection, the right diagnostics. Until then, things like this can happen. I should say, in addition to mine being a little loud, it seems not to cool my home quite as quickly. If I'm trying to lower the temperature in my house, say, on a hot afternoon, it takes longer than it used to under my old system. That doesn't mean I regret it. Still a good idea, but these things that no one tells you.

Brian Lehrer: Which is why your article, which we're still talking about, is called A Heat Pump Can Cut Your Emissions, but Read This Before You Switch. We're talking about this with Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation policy for The New York Times and recently made the switch to a heat pump himself. Funny, you just said it doesn't cool the house as quickly as your old air conditioning system. I think Emily in Bay Ridge is calling in with almost the opposite experience. Emily, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Emily: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Emily: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What you got?

Emily: We live in an old home in Bay Ridge. We have three floors and a basement, and we switched to the splits last year. We were using window units, which were just totally impractical, and our gas heater is very old, and we knew we'd have to replace it, so we jumped to splits, but we found that it didn't work as well for heating. It worked, but it cost a fortune, because [unintelligible 00:13:04] rates are very high. Even with the rebates, we did lay out a substantial sum of money.

I think we probably would have made the same decision, knowing the numbers, but I don't think that this is-- at these price points, that it's affordable for everybody. I think part of our decision was motivated because it's more environmentally friendly and we knew we wanted to get there eventually, but I can't see regular New Yorkers being able to shoulder this kind of cost.

Brian Lehrer: To make it a universal solution. Did you say that, in your house it works better for air conditioning than for heat?

Emily: Well, it does because we found that you could put one of the units on in the bedroom and it would be ice cold in 10 minutes. The heat works well, too, but for whatever reason, it doesn't get warm enough that we run it as low. The AC piece of it, we can run at a pretty high temperature. We leave it on 76 and it feels cool, but the heat, it just feels cold. It feels cold. The house doesn't feel as warm, the whole house, because we're not heating the whole house. Now we're using the units in the rooms that we're in or on the floors that we're in just to save costs. It wasn't the perfect solution for heating.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, thank you very much for your call. That is almost the opposite of your experience, Christopher, heat versus AC, which one it's better for?

Christopher Flavelle: I should note, I have yet to use this new unit during a winter season. I got hundreds of emails from readers following this newsletter item and many of them said, "Just wait for the winter. It's not going to be as warm as you think." Now, I've spoken with experts who focus on this and they say, "No, no, no. In theory, a heat pump should heat a home just as well as a standard gas furnace." It's hard to explain all the reader feedback I've gotten saying people have gotten heat pumps and have not been happy with the heating they've gotten during the winter. I am very curious to find out what things are like in my house once it gets cold.

Brian Lehrer: Maureen in Princeton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maureen.

Maureen: [inaudible 00:15:35] about nine years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Sorry, Maureen. Start over.

Maureen: Are you there?

Brian Lehrer: That was my fault. I thought I brought you up, but I didn't. Now I did.

Maureen: Okay, so sorry. Yes, I wanted to say that about nine years ago, I added an ADU onto a hundred-year-old house that's an auxiliary dwelling unit and I live in that second, new build. The other one was a hundred years old and the windows breathed. Anyhow, I have an air sourced heat pump system versus a ground source system, and the difference is that it's very expensive and not easy to find people who will put in the ground sourced ones. It requires excavating on existing houses.

I only have three units in an 1,800 square foot house and it's been great. I also did build with sustainable features, so my monthly utility is $25 a month. There's a lot of things that bring it down. Anyhow, the hot and cold is fine. I really only close up the house when there's a lot of humidity and it's instantly comfortable. In the winter, one of the units is a little high on the wall and doesn't carry to the next room as efficiently as I'd hoped. I just will pull up a little electric [inaudible 00:17:06] Anyhow.

Brian Lehrer: Maureen, thank you. Good stories, too, with more details, more indications that different people are having different experiences and different kinds of heat pumps and installations have different pros and cons. Listener writes in a text message, "Heat pumps are not intended to be a total replacement for heat." Oh, we're getting so many. Let's see. We have time for one more listener comment. It's going to come from a text message. I think, Christopher, it's going to be a good way to end. It's a listener saying, basically, "I can't believe Christopher Flavelle, who's a climate reporter, is on a one-man campaign to dissuade people from heat pumps."

I don't think that's the impression you're trying to leave, so give us a closing thought about your bottom line now that you wrote an article called A Heat Pump Can Cut Your Emissions, but Read This Before You Switch.

Christopher Flavelle: The role of journalism is to just tell folks the facts. Indeed, my experience was not as positive as I hoped. I can't stress enough, heat pumps, I think, are still a good idea. I still expect, on balance, to save money over time, and it's the kind of change that has to happen to get greenhouse gas emissions down. My experience gave me new insights into how it feels to actually be the person shouldering this responsibility of making a switch to a greener appliance, going through the federal rebate system, and finding out that this is actually a lot to ask of people.

Definitely not saying don't do it, but I hope people, maybe because this article, will have more information and be able to make a more informed choice based on what's best for them.

Brian Lehrer: Christopher Flavelle covers climate adaptation policy for The New York Times, and his article, again, is called A Heat Pump Can Cut Your Emissions, but Read This Before You Switch. Thank you for coming on.

Christopher Flavelle: Thanks so much.

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