Laughs in firewood
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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Its becoming more common here in Central Europe, most new builds family houses have them.
They have a couple drawbacks, like the high upfront cost (in my country a mid-range pump can cost between 3-8K Euros) and they work best with well insulated buildings, but once its installed they can save a tons of money, especially when paired with solar panels or wind turbines.
For a flat I once had, to have 24 degrees I paid 2000 โฌ in just gas for one year. It may seem high, but it gets profitable pretty quickly.
Who would have guessed that importing overpriced fossil fuels is bad?
๐ฎ
Certainly not Germany and Poland. Gas cucks. I just want affordable heat. Renewables are cheaper, why are policymakers resisting cheap energy, during an energy price crisis?
I just want affordable heat.
The monkey's paw just curled. You've been granted a heat-wave, free of charge
Money.
Lobbyism.
Yeah in Central Europe we donโt have corruption, we have โจ Lobbyism โจ
Didn't Germany add shitload of renewable capacity recently?
In other European countries that also expanded renewables at great speed โ such as Germany, which increased its share of wind and solar in power generation from 28% to 45% in the last five years
45% of wind and solar is impressive.
Tldr: they are trying to sabotage existing transitions, like with fossil fuel boilers and the hydrogen/efuel bullshit, which is about 14x more expensive than electricity.
Source:
Edit: The electrification of Germany is happening in spite of the shit gov, not because of.
Fucking Merz...
Yes, but our current Minister of Economic Affairs is all out to kill it again.
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Perhaps it surprises you but a lot of people are such oil brained corpo shills they cannot fathom not burning the planet down to the ground. They call free energy ideologically driven in an obvious attempt at projection.
Which is to say that sadly a lot of people would never guess importing fossil fuels just to burn them might be a terrible idea actually.
Wonโt stop the tidal wave of heat pump installations though because most people actually like saving money.
Yes, but it's important imo that Europe produces heat pumps and components itself rather than importing it from countries like China. It wouldn't make sense to replace dependence from Russian fossil fuels by dependence on Chinese technology.
There is a bit of a difference there, though.
If European-Russian relations sour, the fossil fuel supply can be cut off and you're just fucked by that.
If European-Chinese relations sour, the Chinese can cut off supply of new heat pumps, but all your existing heat pumps will still be there and will still work.
Losing fossil fuel supply is an immediate and urgent problem; losing heat pump supply is a much less pressing issue and leaves you much more time to spin up alternate supply lines.
Well, if the said heat pumps are connected to chinese servers over the internet so they can be remotely controlled...
In every heat pump I've ever seen, internet connectivity is optional.
And even if you did connect it and the Chinese server told the thing to shut off ... I'm betting it's nothing a decent appliance/electronics technician couldn't undo by resetting the board. Or, in the very worst case scenario, the heat pumps would require replacement logic boards, but all the actual heating/cooling hardware could still be used once that board was replaced.
Why would you connect your heat pump to the internet
Likely so you can control it when you're away from home.
Why do people connect their home security, thermostats, or refrigerators to the internet? Because theyโre designed, first and foremost, as data collectors. Users discover after the fact that they donโt actually own anything, and the company hides behind software licenses to maintain their control.
the Chinese can cut off supply of new heat pumps, but all your existing heat pumps will still be there and will still work.
No. As someone already said, a remote control with the data on servers in China is apparently a bad idea. In addition, Europe must produce the pumps and its components on the continent where we have better labour rights and social welfare systems. We don't need cheap products made by slave labour with intransparent supply chains under a dictatorial regime.
You don't burn a heat pump every time you use it. Not the same thing
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In a modern build or something that is easy to insulate properly they're a great idea. Expensive here in the UK but still great.
But as @StealthLizardDrop@piefed.social already mentioned retrofitting to old housing stock (Eg. Victorian terraces) are an absolute ball ache.
Mini-splits are really not that hard. Run an electricity supply and punch two holes through the wall. Mount the units.
What kills me if in America, especially in New England, is we still have tons of people, if not a majority a huge percentage, burning #2 heating oil during the winter. It used to be so cheap as to hardly think about filling the tank before winter, but it's almost as much as gasoline now. My thought is "how hard can it be to convert those burners to biofuel, either reclaimed vegetable oil like diesel or with a mix of ethanol from corn to lower the cost." Because if there's one thing America has the capacity to produce a shitload of, it's ethanol.
If somebody with a better grasp of the subject has an answer for that I would be very grateful.
We have just converted from a gas furnace to a heat pump. It took a day. Connected to the existing heating system (water radiators and under floor) and hot water pipes. I know you wanted an ethanol solution, however, the electricity route combined with solar cells (like we have) makes it cheap to run.
Currently on an oil system that uses baseboard radiators throughout the house. Didn't realize a heat pump could potentially tie into the same system but am going to look into it now. Anything to watch out for in your experience?
It's cool that you had liquid based heating a heat pump could tie into, but most of new England is heated by forced hot air systems that don't tie in the same way. Most heat pump installs around here, and there are a lot, are mostly for cooling and supplemental heating. Having to install an interior unit usually winds them up near the ceiling so the more expensive cooling can fall and cool more efficiently, at the decrease of heating efficiency because it rises. Also, until pretty recently a heat pump was basically no good below zero ยฐf, lots of people still have those units and still need heat in the winter. I resolutely think B20 (20% biodiesel mix) is a great solution for current heating prices, and think a state sponsored program to install the necessary upgrades to burn B50 and get production up to scale would be a really good investment. Big changes are great if you can afford them, but those aren't the folks I'm talking about. I'm talking about folks using HEAP benefits, people who scrounge up the $450 for a 100 gallon minimum delivery and keep a couple jugs of off-road diesel on hand in case the tank runs dry on a cold day. People that know how to bleed and reignite their furnace without calling the guy, because they've had to do it 5 times a winter because keeping oil in the tank means not eating and the stove burns propane, which is already paid for and makes heat too.
Sorry, I've had some pretty fucking desperate Maine winters in my years up here.
I'm back from the Internet with knowledge to share!
https://www.northeastbiodiesel.com/heating-with-biodiesel
So it does exist, requires no retrofit up to 20% biodiesel, and with minor retrofit can go to pure BD, but it congeals around 45ยฐf so some amount of petroleum as a stabilizer is required for winter heating. Apparently ethanol from corn does not produce more energy than is required to create it, but biodiesel already being partly made for another purpose and otherwise wasted brings its creation energy down a lot.
Even ethanol critics don't claim ethanol nerds more energy to make than it produces. However the most optimistic supports only give in around 1.7x.
If I remember correctly, the issue with corn ethanol is the scale. It requires a lot of space and a lot of water.
Solar panels are energy wise a much more efficient use of the same area. They also don't require water or any kind of labour to harvest. Finally the consumption of electricity in heaters or cars is more efficient than burning ethanol.
I like your idea of using existing burners instead of replacing entire heat systems. Perhaps biogas produced by household and agricultural waste is a better option than growing corn for this purpose.
Yea, the company page I linked basically says the same. Ethanol from corn has so many more energy inputs, it doesn't wind up being very efficient. But saving fryer oil from the waste steam and mixing it with standard #2 heating oil with no burner modifications seems like a thing we should just do wholesale.
They have a large scale project of that sort in Finland.
Since this was written, they've also started running busses on that fuel.
My parents installed geothermal heating in their house, that saved a shitload of electricity.
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