Author: renewablejuneau

It’s easy to forget about your heat pump when temps climb into the 70s, but early summer is an important time to show your heat pump’s compressor a bit of love! We suspect that your heat exchanger fins are gunking up!

You may have noticed ‘willow snow’ floating around our air recently. Willow trees across southeast are shedding their seeds, sending the tiny reproductive packets on their way with the aid of what I like to call willow snow, that bit of cottony fluff that catches any bit of wind and takes the seeds to their prospective new homes. While this is an impressive and ingenious seed dispersal method, these seeds and associated fluff are great at gumming up our outdoor heat pump compressors. And, once the willows are through, fireweed seeds will fly close behind!

As your heat pump compressor pulls air across its heat exchanging fins, willow and fireweed fluff, along with grass, flies, and any other air-transported material, will accumulate on the fins. This material works to block both air transport and the heat exchanging process, decreasing the unit’s efficiency. In short, operating costs go up and performance, i.e. the ability to heat or cool, goes down.

My heat pump compressor is fairly well removed from trees and plants, yet the middle two photos above show its condition this morning. It’s not horrible, like the internet-grabbed image on the far left, but it could be better and it will just worsen as summer progresses. It’s time for a cleaning!

Some local heat pump contractors offer an annual maintenance service, a process well worth the small fee, considering what you have invested in your heat pump. Call around to see who is available to do this important maintenance work. A few times each summer I take care of the easiest part of the cleaning process myself. If you choose to clean the fins on your own, BE CAREFUL! The heat exchanger fins are extremely fragile and can bend easily. While bent fins can be straightened, a special ‘comb’ is needed and a contractor may be best suited to take care of this detail.

I use a vacuum cleaner with a long hose and a very soft brush attachment. If you look closely at the fins, you’ll see that they run vertically, top to bottom. If you work side to side, you will bend the fins. Very slowly, I run the brush from the bottom to the top, pressing very lightly to draw up as much material as I can. Working gently may mean that a few passes are needed. The results won’t be perfect, but the fins should be much cleaner than when you started. The left side of the compressor fin array is blocked by a screen of sorts, attached with a few screws. In the images above, this is the third image from left. I take this off and work the vacuum gently up or down these fins, putting the screen back in place when done.

And that’s it! There are other parts of the compressor that should be cleaned as well, but if you just want to get rid of the bulk of the mess, carefully using a vacuum and soft brush attachment can do the trick.

An Alaska-centric heat pump update, covering the surge in interest spanning the state, from Fairbanks, to Anchorage, Juneau, and Sitka!

When she (Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, a resident of Alaska’s capital) received a bill of almost $900 last March for heating her home during the winter months, she decided to find an alternative. Gagne-Hawes decided to install an air source heat pump. “I expected it to be fine but it’s been spectacular,” says Gagne-Hawes. She says the heat pump is saving her roughly $100 a month.

Heat Pumps Sell Like Hotcakes on America’s Oil-Rich Frontier | WIRED

If you live on Juneau’s Starr Hill, or anywhere between Gastineau Avenue and upper 7th Street, home to some of Juneau’s oldest neighborhoods, and you call the quaint, colorful, steep hillsides near the base of Gold Ridge your home, you may be subject to a serious case of heat pump FOMO. According to the all-knowing internet, FOMO is an emotional response to the belief that other people are living better, more satisfying lives, or that important opportunities are being missed. FOMO often leads to feelings of unease, dissatisfaction, depression and stress.

Here at Alaska Heat Smart, it is our hope that ‘Starr Hill FOMO’ will lead any that find themselves afflicted to add a heat pump to their home’s heating mix. FOMO relief may just be that easy to remedy! A recent ‘Starr Hill heat pump prowl’ revealed a surprising number of heat pumps in Juneau’s 100+ year old neighborhood. If you’re willing to do the heat pump prowl, and brave Starr Hill’s legendary staircases, some pushing 200 steps, you’ll find many of these energy-saving, bill-slashing, emissions-eliminating heat pumps. They’re tucked under stairways, wedged below decks, mounted in back alleys and on the dark and mossy uphill sides of homes. A quick way to locate the more challenging and discreet units is to look for the lineset, the white channel-covered refrigerant connection between the outdoor compressor and the indoor air handler. This white link across the home, or up a wall, can easily be mistaken for a common rain gutter downspout.

In all, Alaska Heat Smart’s Sunday heat pump prowl discovered 31 different Starr Hill heat pumps. Some were really tucked away, convincing us that there are others to be found. We’ll keep looking as we sort of like the stairs and the associated exercise that comes with the required up and down of the prowl.

Heat pump FOMO is probably not limited to residents of Starr Hill who are yet to acquire a heat pump. It really could strike anyone. If you find you need help and would like some professional assistance in understanding just how a heat pump could improve your home heating, reach out to AK Heat Smart and apply for a free home heat pump assessment. You’ll come away educated, empowered, and maybe just a little less ridden with the unease, dissatisfaction, depression and stress that the internet suggests are associated with FOMO’s dark side.

A clogged air source heat pump filter will cost you in more ways than one!

Gross! This very dirty and neglected indoor unit air filter is crying out for help. If air cannot easily pass through the filter on its way to the heat exchanger, the unit has to work harder and will be far less efficient than you want it to be. Reduced air flow means less heat exchanging, or very simply, less heat. As the unit works harder to pull air through this mess, more energy is used and if we do the math our equation looks like:

dirty grimy filter + more work = higher cost + less heat. A lose-lose situation.

Luckily, a dirty filter is very easy to remedy! We encourage you to read this great post by Building Energy Vermont as it covers all the cleaning details needed to bring your sorry filters back to top notch condition. If you live in a home with pets or carpet you should check your filters at least every two weeks. If your indoor unit is close to your cooking stove, especially if you have an unvented stove, we suggest a weekly check. Dust, combined with greasy stove fumes, can really make a mess of your filter, again, costing your both heat and money. If this reality continues too long, grease and grime will find their way behind your filter and make a more invasive maintenance project necessary.

Consider a deep clean once a year! Some local contractors offer an annual maintenance program that we believe easily pays for itself with improved heat exchanger performance. Ask the contractors listed on our Find an Installer page about their annual service agreements!