Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine November 2022

News Magazine November 2022

Alert! Alert! IRA Heat Pumps May Impoverish the Poor

Are These Heat Pump Houses

Thieves and traveling salesmen, ill informed politicians with good intentions, and bureaucrats too busy to take a stand are all going to push the IRA Heat Pump section giving away up to $8,000 for heat pump installation to persons making 80% of the median income. That’s right, perhaps as early as spring, door knocking salesmen are going to travel through lower middle income and poor neighborhoods offering an $8000 heat pump for free. Yes, free. The new Inflation Reduction Act has a section designed to hasten the conversion to electric heating in our country. Billions will be spent over the next ten years and con-artists and over-anxious persons will prey upon those for whom this was to benefit. So why am I so upset when folks are getting a break? Perhaps you remember in the early 90s when the electric utilities needed to increase their winter load and the best way was to get homeowners to install heat pumps. To get dealers to install heat pumps, the utilities started the Arkansas Heat Pump Association. Yes, that was the beginning of the present HVACR Association. The Heat Pump Association provided education and promotional

training to HVAC dealers to install heat pumps. Sadly, the training was based on gauges and tools not so much design.

There was some Manual J and Manual D training but for the most part it was

a. What is a heat pump? b. How do you install a heat pump?

We, as an industry, used the readily available financing and rebates to build the market and sold lots of heat pumps. Sadly, some of those installations were in houses that needed a gas furnace or, even better, significant weatherization. Why?? Because, those houses were very inefficient and had terrible whole house leakage. When ASHRA was posting a desired NACH, natural air changes per hour, of 0.35, many of those houses had double, triple, or even greater infiltration. May have worked OK in the summer; but, come winter, the wolf in sheep’s clothing came out of the closet. The homeowners were accustomed to furnaces producing 140 o or greater air temperature which could overcome the cold wind