Reply to Does your heat pump heat your home in our climate?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a heat pump that's on today.  It's set to 69 and had been running all day although it was 50 degrees outside.  I hear it running and think of all the dollars in electricity that are going out the door.  I asked both my builder and the hvac installer why the system runs all day and they say when you get below 30 degrees heat pumps loose efficiency.  I'll get a few hundred dollar electric bill.  I lie to myself and say this is efficient just like my electric dryer that requires 2 cycles to dry a load. I can see through the app how many hours my system has been running. My house is brand new and well insulated.

In my old house I had a gas furnace and gas dryer.  It easily got my house to temp and didn't run nearly as as long to maintain the temp and overall was cheaper in monthly cost.  That was also a brand new house that was well insulated.  Same thing with my clothes dryer.  I used to have dry loads before the dryer finished the cycle.  The joy on my new house is i have all day sun so in the summer i just hang clothes outside to dry.  Its better and faster than the electric dryer.

I tell myself I'm being doing the right thing by choosing electric.

[/quote]

I have to wonder about the quality of new construction. We haven't turned the heat on at all today in MoCo and our house, built in 1990, is at 68 degrees.[/quote]

The efficiency part of the building code is far, far stricter than it was 30 years ago, it barely existed then. Now it's possible that a house built back then was built better than code, and not every jurisdiction has adopted the most recent codes nor are they always enforced. But in general today's houses are much better insulated than at any time in the past.

But yesterday was clear and sunny, on a mild day solar gain alone can keep a house comfortable. Solar gain is not by itself a sign of quality; excessive solar gain is a sign of poor design. [/quote]

Fair enough. We do get a lot of light in the afternoon.

I'm curious about the timeline for increases in efficiency requirements. The draftiest house I lived in was a 2003 townhome. You could feel the wind coming right through the windows.[/quote]

Codes and code enforcement has always been highly local. In 2000 the first national building code, the International Residential Code  -- "international" means US and Canada -- was introduced, to date 49 states and DC have adopted it. A new version comes out every three years, so the current version is the 2021 version, and localities vary on how quickly they adopt new versions.

The part of the IRC that deals with energy is called the International Energy Conservation Code, which localities can adopt or not adopt separately from the IRC. The 2015 IECC was the first version to require that all new construction be blower door tested, which is a minimal standard for air-tightness.  You can see here a chart comparing the 2009, 2012 and 2021 codes: 
https://basc.pnnl.gov/information/2009-2021-iecc-and-irc-minimum-insulation-requirements-new-homes

For instance, in our climate, Zone 4, the 2009 code required ceiling insulation of R38, 2012 required R49 and 2021 requires R60. [/quote]

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