Comments by "SeanBZA" (@SeanBZA) on "Undecided with Matt Ferrell" channel.

  1. By me cooling is the much more important thing, but as a heat pump is pretty much the same price as a cooling only unit I went with the heat pump, as in the smaller sizes the cooling only is actually rare and expensive. 1 extra wire in the cable set is all you have, to control the valve, and thus easy to do. Actually used it for a whole 2 days this last winter, because it was unseasonably cold for the sub tropics, dropping below 10C on a day or two in the morning, so the warmth was a nice thing to have for an hour or so, before it was turned off again, and natural air was better. Summer time it was needed, keeping the inside cool and dry, as it was hot and humid outside, so well worth it. $350 for the unit was well worth it.
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  2. Grabbing stored ground heat though will probably be cheaper power wise though, and as a bonus will work down to really cold temperatures, so while the up front cost is higher might be worth it if you plan to live there long term, as power costs will never decrease.
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  3. For the niche applications resistive heating in the outdoor unit, which can serve double duty in doing a defrost cycle while operating, would probably be a good thing, turn off outdoor fan and reduce heating draw, while ramping up the heaters till the outdoor coil is above freezing, then slowly start the fan while reducing heat. That at least will still ensure energy extraction from the air, and thus extra heat, and you could also have a vent panel that also flips, to allow the compressor cooling air to be directed to the coil, and not dumped to ambient, providing a useful amount of heat as well. Summer you dump that heat, keeping it away from the coil, but in winter you want that heat to go to the coil. Another way to grab that extra 5 degrees of differential, or an extra few percent on efficiency, as most compressors run hot, and have little to no cooling air flow over them, unless they are in a square block tower, where they get cooled by the hot condenser air, or warm up the outlet air.
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  4.  @JRP3  Just paint the wall black, and have a baffle to allow air to flow over the wall before entering the coil. Issue is that the mirror will need to be a tracking one, to follow the sun, and will possibly only be effective for a few hours a day, especially at high latitudes, where you might only have 6 hours of light a day that is useful. Might need to use a masonry wall as well, to store the energy for the long evening peak, but in the morning will have a wait while the wall defrosts and warms up as well.
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