You may be eligible for deductions to your 2023 federal tax bill!TheInflationReductionAct (IRA) was signed into law by the Biden Administration in August of 2022. The IRA provides you with tax credits, direct reductions of your tax liability or the amount your 1040 tells you that you owe the IRS, for installing various energy efficiency upgrades to your primary residence. Did you install a cold climate heat pump in your home in 2023? For an air source heat pump installed this past year, the credit is as high as $2,000, or 30% of the total cost of the heat pump and its installation. Nearly everyone who installs a heat pump will get the full $2000 credit as the cost of an average heat pump and wiring stands around $7,500.
The IRA tax credits fall under the name ‘Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit (25C)’ and may include other improvements that might have been part of your upgrade list. For example, did your heat pump installation require a new electrical panel or sub-panel with new 200 amp service? You can receive 30% of these costs as well, including labor, for up to $600 in additional credit. Wiring of the heat pump is not eligible. Did you install any exterior doors, windows, or maybe insulation? The purchase cost of these upgrades are all on the credit list! For full tax credit details, take a look at our IRA FAQ page. Credits can add up to an additional $1,200 on top of the heat pump tax credit, maxing out in 2023 at $3,200.
To claim your credits, fill out form 5695, Residential Energy Credits. Your cold climate heat pump get listed on line 22a. Find the form instructions here. The credits are applicable for the year the improvements were made, not the year when the expenses were paid.
These tax credits you’ve hopefully heard of are different from the IRA rebates that are starting to be talked about. IRA tax credits lower your total tax owed (if you owe any to begin with) and IRA rebates in part will lower the up-front prices of energy improvements. IRA rebates are not yet available and may not be available until later this year. Alaska Heat Smart will have more detailed information on IRA rebates in an upcoming post. Call us for me information at 907.500.5050.
Looking for other financial assistance to help you with the addition of a heat pump, help you save money, enjoy a warmer and drier house, and move beyond oil? Check out our diverse FinancialAssistancePrograms. Alaska Heat Smart staff do not claim in any way to be tax experts. We strongly encourage you to consult your tax professional for any questions or concerns that you may have with filing your 1040.
Too warm or too cold – this winter is shaping up to be one of temperature indecision! If you have a heat pump, the current weather will put it to work. As outside temps drop, the difference in temperature between the outdoor air and the pump’s magic refrigerant is reduced, in essence providing less thermal energy for the pump to extract and move into your home.
Alaska Heat Smart has an informative web page that you should get cozy with! A few modifications to your heat pump settings and a few cautionary bits of advice should see your pump working its best. Don’t be surprised if it can’t quite keep up. Cold weather like this is a striking reminder of the need for a well insulated and sealed home. My 1983 home is not well insulated and while my heat pump is still putting out 105F heat (according to my IR camera), the home itself doesn’t do a great job of containing it. To make up for this, I have one resistance baseboard turned on in the rarely used downstairs. In time, this heat rises into the main part of the home and is presently helping to keep us at a pleasant 69F.
…that Alaska Heat Smart has a growing library of heat pump resources available 24 / 7 for you to lose yourself in? We’ll be adding more good reads to our library as time goes on!
Today we’ve added a wonderful visual piece by Guardian Magazine entitled, ‘A Fridge but in Reverse? The Fascinating Science of Heat Pumps – Visualized’. This fun and engaging read may offer the best description I’ve come across of how a heat pump works. While you can enjoy the warm dry home and fat wallet that your heat pump provides without understanding how the device works, having a sense of what is happening ‘behind the scenes’ may help you appreciate your humble heat pump even more.
One of my takeaways from reading this story is the realization that heat pump science is a rapidly evolving. Unlike burning oil for heat, a science relatively unchanged over many decades, moving heat with a heat pump is ‘a science’ poised for tremendous change. The performance of today’s heat pumps compared to those of not too many years prior is almost laughable. Efficiency is through the roof and cold climate functionality is making today’s heat pumps a success story in areas previously thought impossible. Just yesterday I learned of a Canadian company soon to offer an air to water heat pump system that may be able to push water up to 180F, making it a perfect solution for oil boiler replacement while using existing hydronic baseboards!
Yep…this is exciting stuff (you agree, right??) and the type of read you’ll be able to find in the Alaska Heat Smart ‘library’!
Here at Alaska Heat Smart, we’re well aware of homeowners’ need for good sound information. Heat pumps are different from the heating systems of the past. And every home is different than the next. From levels of insulation, open or closed floor plans, ability of air movement, and the existence of one, two, or maybe three legacy heating systems – no two homes are alike. Each home presents it own interesting heat pump puzzle. Figuring out how a heat pump will successfully join your home’s heating mix can require a bit of research, analysis, and learning.
Along with the diversity of home types is a diversity of personal learning styles. Some of you will be quick to reach out to Alaska Heat Smart for guidance. (Of course, we highly recommend such a step!) Others may hope to build a bit of foundation before consulting our energy advisors, diving into the wealth of websites, literature, and media available on the latest and greatest heat pump solutions.
The Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership (NEEP) Air Source Heat Pump Buying Guide (V5) is a fantastic resource, whether you scan it before a home energy assessment or after. We’ve added this guide to our resource library, found on our resources page. If you’re the type to cozy up with a hot toddy and an engaging and compelling read, this NEEP guide may be the ticket for you! It’s loaded with not only the heat pump basics, but step by step instructions for how to proceed with your decision making.
If we were to rewrite this guide, we’d change up the ‘How to Proceed’ steps that begin on page 13. To step one we’d add that homeowners should apply for an Alaska Heat Smart home energy assessment. This process takes care of a few of the NEEP steps and addresses some of the unit sizing concerns indicated in Step 4. Despite this flaw in the guide, and considering the likely fact that when written, NEEP was unaware of AK Heat Smart, the guide is a valuable and very handy resource!
Speaking of resources, be sure to check out our financial assistance programs page to learn more about the many ways that Alaska Heat Smart can financially assist with your heat pump purchase and installation.
“Getting more American-made electric heat pumps on the market will help families and businesses save money with efficient heating and cooling technology,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, these investments will create thousands of high-quality, good-paying manufacturing jobs and strengthen America’s energy supply chain, while creating healthier indoor spaces through home-grown clean energy technologies.”
“Today’s Defense Production Act funds for heat pump manufacturing show that President Biden is treating climate change as the crisis it is,” said John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation. “These awards will grow domestic manufacturing, create good-paying jobs, and boost American competitiveness in industries of the future.”
Heat pumps are critical to reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, bolstering national security, and boosting energy independence to strengthen national defense, lowering consumer energy costs, improving energy efficiency, and mitigating the climate crisis. This portfolio of selections will boost manufacturing of electric heat pump (air-to-air, geothermal, and air-to-water) and key components (compressors and refrigerants) This portfolio will lead to manufacturing in 13 states.
For those of you who know Juneau resident and heat pump believer Shawn Eisele, you know his passion for experimentation, for learning, for digging in to better understand what works and what works best. Shawn applies this disciplined approach to ski tuning, to program marketing, and most recently, to heat pump functionality. Shawn has generously shared with Alaska Heat Smart his latest thoughts on heat pump heating and some ways in which heat pump owners can extract more heat from these amazing devices. This seems like pretty appropriate reading material given our current chilly October temps! Thank you, Shawn!
“My Heat Pump Isn’t Keeping Up” – But It Probably Can!
Courtesy of Shawn Eisele
If your heat pump is set at 75, but your house temperature is barely 65, we have good news – your heat pump can probably produce more heat – it just needs to be told to do so. A few simple adjustments can help.
Most commonly, the heat pump isn’t being maxed out. Rather, it thinks it’s producing enough heat, even though you may think otherwise. The heat pump’s thermostat is located on the air handler where all the hot air comes from. This thermostat measures adjacent hot air so if air circulation in the room is inadequate, the heat pump doesn’t understand that it should produce more heat. The heat pump coasts along on easy street, believing it’s 72 in the room (or whatever the remote is set to), but the adjacent room is ten degrees cooler.
Yes, you could just crank up the temperature setting on the remote. You might need to crank more than expected, say to 74 so a further away part of the house warms to 68. But to really make your heat pump work well and do so efficiently, you need to boost its air circulation. First, on the indoor unit(s) of your heat pump, set the fan to medium-high or high so the hot air produced moves into the rest of the house. Then, direct the louvers of the air handler to where you want the warm air to go. Is most of your living area off to the right? Then direct the hot air a bit to the right. Generally, direct the air just lower than horizontal. You want it to move directly out and away from the heat pump. Move obstructions out of the path of air flow. If there is a coat rack or table blocking the air, move it out of the way and let the air move easily from your heat pump to other parts of the house. And speaking of circulation, if you haven’t cleaned your filters recently, do so now! Unimpeded air flow will not only improve heat circulation, it will save you money.
The next major change you can make is to improve circulation in the room generally. A ceiling fan running in reverse can pull cooler air up from the floor and back to the heat pump’s air handler. Or, you can add a standing or desk fan to blow air from the cooler part of your home (say low on the floor, from a cold room or below a picture window) up towards the air handler. That cooler air not only tells the heat pump that more heat is needed, it also makes the heat pump more efficient, since it’s easier to heat cold air than hot air. If your air handler is near the ceiling, moving cooler air to it might make the biggest difference of all.
You can, by the way, install a separately-purchased heat pump thermostat in a different room, so the heat pump really knows it needs to keep producing heat. Still, increasing circulation and providing cooler return air is important to making even that set-up more efficient.
When outdoor temperatures drop, avoid setting your remote’s thermostat down at night. Instead, consider closing or mostly closing doors to bedrooms and spare rooms you don’t need overly warm. Reducing the square footage to heat at night, the time when it’s coldest and hardest to produce heat, will keep the heat pump’s warm air flowing to those spaces that you’ll want warm in the morning. That’s great because on cold days the heat pump won’t have capacity to warm them up as quickly in the morning. Later, open the bedroom doors when the sun is out and it’s easier for the heat pump to produce heat. CAUTION: If you have an oil boiler and hot water (hydronic) baseboards in your home, be sure to not cool certain rooms too much to prevent pipes from freezing. The same applies to plumbing in bathrooms.
VERY UNHAPPY COMPRESSORSOMEWHAT UNHAPPY COMPRESSORHAPPY COMPRESSOR
Attention needs to be given to the heat pump’s outdoor unit (compressor) as well. Make sure there’s an abundance of air flow around the compressor. Is snow covering half of it? Get rid of that. Is the copper refrigerant line uninsulated and giving off heat? Insulate it and save that heat for inside. Hopefully the compressor is far enough off the ground so it’s not touching the glacier of ice forming below it. (When a heat pump gathers heat from the air, the compressor becomes very cold and humidity freezes on it. A defrost cycle melts this frost and drains below, forming ice.) Good projects to schedule for next summer are to construct a roof over the compressor to shelter it from rain and snow. Ensure there is a clear path for water to drain below an elevated compressor. You can have a technician install a drain pan heater at the bottom of your unit, so water flows through instead of freezing there. Most installations today have this as a standard feature, or at least a highly recommended add-on.
By the way, it’s a little late to mention this, but hopefully you’ve installed a heat pump designed for colder climates. Daikin’s “Aurora” line and newer ‘Atmosphera’ line are rated down to -13°F and Fujitsu’s “H” models are rated down to -15°F. If you don’t yet have your heat pump installed, be certain that your quoted equipment is cold climate ready!
Ultimately, a heat pump struggles to gather heat when it’s really cold outside, and unfortunately that’s when you need the most heat. Having a back-up heat source to provide supplemental heat on cold days is important. This might mean retaining your old Toyo, furnace, or boiler for frigid days, or installing a wood stove or electric or IR baseboard heaters. Luckily, Juneau is rarely frigid, allowing us to get the most out of our heat pumps on these cold, but not frigid days. A heat pump may require a bit more thought and tinkering than our outdated oil-burning systems did. The savings seem worth it!
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.
Months in the works, the Thermalize Juneau ‘how-to’ guidebook, “Thermalize Your Rural Community: How to Bring Clean Energy & Energy Efficiency to Your Community’s Doorstep” is now live. This tremendous body of work, made possible by the superhuman efforts of Alaska’s Information Insights, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Alaska Heat Smart, is THE blueprint to instruct any community on building a community-based energy efficiency campaign.
The Thermalize Juneau StoryMap guidebook has been designed to be interactive, engaging, informative, and fun! It is built to provide assistance to community leaders in small, rural locations to promote beneficial electrification through wide-scale adoption of energy-efficient technologies for homes and businesses. The guidebook details all stages of a thermalize campaign for rural cold-climate communities, from early planning to program evaluation. The tools, forms, and lessons that came out of the Thermalize Juneau 2021 campaign are linked for easy download throughout the StoryMap. A full list of resources, which includes outreach materials, heat pump specs, requests for proposals, surveys, reports, and more can be found in the Resourcessection.
This guide offers many best practices and recommendations from our own experience in setting up a campaign of this kind in a rural, isolated community. There is no single way to start on the path to beneficial electrification or to organize and implement a thermalize campaign. Our guidebook seeks to connect residents, leaders, organizers, and energy enthusiasts with Thermalize Juneau’s campaign resources and experiences so that they may design an approach that aligns with their opportunities and nee
Get started today with Thermalize Your Rural Community. We’d love to hear from you! Send is your thoughts, questions, takeaways, impressions. You’ll find other Thermalize Juneau resources on our Thermalize page.
The Juneau Empire covers Alaska Heat Smart’s most popular money-saving home heating programs!
In short, there really has never been a better time to add a heat pump to your home. Alaska Heat Smart can connect you to low-interest traditional financing, provide a financial incentive of up to $3,000 towards your heat pump purchase, or offer up to $15,000 in funds to improve your home’s heating, air sealing, and safety. Alaska Heat Smart can guide you along your pathway to clean and affordable renewable energy heating with a free home heat pump assessment.
