Condo dwellers has anybody ever installed a condo friendly heat pump? Experiences?
 

I live in a 1,000 square foot split level loft (bedroom downstairs though). It has baseboard heaters in every room and a small, cheap gas fireplace in the living room. I've been worrying about my heating bill trying to heat this place and it's not even November yet.

If I set the living room thermostat for 20 degrees, the thermostat will likely never shut off, and has to run all day. I blame that on big open rooms and a sloped ceiling that starts out at about 8 feet and goes up to 16-18 feet in the living room and then goes up to over 21 feet because of the second level.

The only way to keep this place warm is, when I get home from work, to run the baseboard heater AND the gas fireplace until it gets to about 24 degrees (a little too hot for me) and then shut them off and then it'll be about 19-20 when I go to bed. And because the thermostat is literally 25 feet from the heater (by the living room window) the living room will get hot enough but since the rest of the condo (especially near the thermostat) isn't reached by the heat, the thermostat never registers it being hot enough and will run forever until I shut the damn thing off myself.

I was researching heat pumps and while the initial cost is high, apparently the cost to run them is exponentially cheaper. I'd have to get strata approval for that one but it may be worth it to do, since the summers here are brutal too (32 degrees in the afternoon sun since we face west, and that's with a dual-hose portable A/C unit on full blast.)

Curious if anybody has had experience with heat pumps or has any other suggestions? I thought insulation but the building is relatively new so I would imagine that's not a big problem?

Or I was thinking to upgrade the fireplace to something more efficient as I was trying one out at my dad's and it's much newer and while it's smaller it throws so much more heat than mine. But strata has a rule about not heating your unit with your gas fireplace.

Is the fireplace gas?;;also where are you going to put the heat pump?

Fireplace is gas. Duct free heat pump I'm thinking on the patio on top but i'm not sure.

Put a fan in front of the fire place?

I have a large house and my kids' room upstairs has three exterior walls, so it is hot in the summer and cool in the winter. Learning from my neighbours, we use two oil tank heaters in the house, one downstairs and another in the kids' room. They can be set to keep a certain temp and will shut off, staying warm for hours afterwards. It may be a temporary option as you go through the strata hurdles. I have no clue about heat sumps, but I thought they needed to be tunneled into the ground for insulation purposes

Heat pumps are all the rage these days, especially in our climate. You'd definitely get a boost in efficiency over electric baseboard heat (They're the cheapest heating systems to install, hence their prevalence in condos). A ductless split will be fine. Your biggest challenge as you guessed will be getting your strata to allow you to install your condensing unit considering aesthetics and noise.

At the very least, a Destrat fan at the top of your vaulted ceiling would go a long way to pushing that hot air down to floor level where it's useful.

The same amount of gas energy will be supplied to burn for any other fireplace you put in, so I doubt you'd see much difference changing it.

Days ago I was planning to redirect fireplace heat through the built in ducts with a fan (hood fan) and the cut up toaster oven I have but the air was barely going through (even with out the toaster inbetween).
So now Im planning to tunnel the fireplace heat directly to my room using a larger none fuming metal box which I'll update in one of my threads on the subject. https://i.imgur.com/XsPmrTV.jpg

If you dont want to go that far, maybe you can redirect the heat to your thermostat if its closer... that way when the place warms up your base board heater will not keep running.

Gonna break your heart and tell you its not gonna happen

A condenser on your patio / balcony is a liability for the strata.

Source: hvac tech, we get these requests, and 95% of the time, strata denies it.
Additionally, both my condos denied the install. Even after trying to change the strata bylaws by majority vote / wasting my time

Ps. "boost in efficiency" or even considering "saving money" over baseboards is a joke
Your install is going to cost 7000$, for that 7k, you can run heat for 20 years

Donk already commented on the heat pump part.

I'd comment on how to cheaply keep yourself comfortable. The keyword: SMART.

Find a way to remote/schedule the fire place, and set it on x amount of time before you get home/wake up so that the place would be relatively warm as the heat would ultimately heat up the house. And of course to shut it down when you leave/don't need it.

For your bedroom, my recommendation is getting one of the Vornados heaters or if you are $$$, Dyson and again, using a smart switch or app to schedule your sleeping routine so that it's not cold when you go to bed/wake up. Baseboard is horrible as it radiates heat without distributing it.

If you are super sensitive to cold, add an electronic heating sheet (any Korean supermarket would have them if you don't want to shop online) and again, use a smart switch to control it. Just a quick 15min would leave your entire bed warm and comfy... maybe add a few times during the night to compensate for the lack of heat at night.

Having an emf field near you, specially an electric blanket, will give you cancer.

Gas is also way cheaper than electricity (1 GJ = 278 kWh; 1 GJ of natural gas is $4.83 including carbon tax vs 278 kWh of electricity is $26 at Step 1/$39 at Step 2), so you'd have to have a coefficient of performance (COP) at least 6x higher than your gas fireplace before you even start to claw money back on heating costs.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the cheapest way is to get that heat down from your vaulted ceilings. Fans cost almost nothing to run. Good circulation will also keep the thermostat doing its job properly. Also, if you haven't had your gas fireplace serviced recently, that could improve efficiency as well.

Have you considered just layering your clothes instead?

sound like my mom. when we were young, we had to play the how long does the temp have to go before we turn on the heat.... FML.

How is it a liability?

As my meeting went, the issues were:

Strata thinks it needs to be "bolted / fastened" to the patio

The linesets/electrical need to run through the building, window, wall, etc. (common property)

Change of entire building insurance for your benefit

Who is going to do the maintenance on the unit

Noise (one guy said it sounds like a train lol) they dont understand, and dont want to understand, that new splits are silent. Typical rating of 55bda (this would only occur if it was 49C outside) otherwise they operate closer to 35dba (silent)

Ah fair enough, thank you.
Are they generally safe to operate? I know the patio is common property but I'd be of course running it from my hydro bill and paying for it.

But it'd be a loooot of money to install, sadly.

There's really nothing unsafe about operating a heat pumps. They're safer than furnaces that burn stuff to make heat...

You're right, strictly speaking energy costs, ROI is probably 20-30 years over electric baseboards.

However, I think thermal comfort is a factor to consider in overall efficiency of your HVAC system. Sounds like his existing baseboards and fireplace setup is crap in that respect, so that's 20 years of shitty heat.

One can buy many cheap cotton sheets and layer them as really thick curtains to keep in heat (even if your window has a bend in it, run a pole across that bend for the curtains to wrap around).
The important part of the setup is a pelmet that is over 5 inches long.

Regarding my previous setup... theres too much toxic fuming in the form of nickle, zinc and lead in the metals for a proper setup.

https://i.imgur.com/oshsp9i.jpg https://i.imgur.com/xDbGSMM.jpg

But now you are blocking the sun that was adding heat.

The little sun we get wont be strong in the winter time, then there pulling the curtains aside if it is warm enough.