Greener Home Grants - Feedback Wanted

[msommers]

That's the most common setup in Alberta. Your blower motor circulates the cold or hot air from the coil. If you forego a furnace entirely, an air handler is needed which is just a blower motor with venting attachments. Of course in this scenario you'd rely entirely on the heat pump for heat. For smaller homes like apartments or maybe row housing it might be enough, I just don't want to test that theory when the ol' polar vortex kicks you in the crotch.

My experience with Daikin was that the heat pump, furnace and thermostat all needed to be Daikin to talk to each other without issue. No experience with other brands mixing and matching brands but something that needs to be considered.

[sabad66]

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Has anyone run a nat gas furnace + heat pump? I have two original 80s era furnaces, with an a/c only on the upstairs furnace. I’m thinking of switching out my upstairs furnace to a heat pump, and then moving the a/c to my main floor gas furnace.

My thinking is that this way I’ll have a/c across the entire house in the summer instead of just my 2nd storey, and since hot air rises, keeping my main floor/basement furnace as gas will get me through these -35 cold snaps without tripling my electric bill.

It makes sense in my head but I’m sure I’m missing something. Thoughts?

I should have been more clear. In this scenario I would replace my upstairs furnace with an air handler because the existing furnace blower motor is very inefficient and I assume a modern air handler would have a newer ECM motor. So basically:

As-is:
80s Furnace A with a/c for 2nd storey
80s furnace B with no a/c for main/basement

To-be:
Air handler with heat pump for 2nd storey, delete furnace A
80s furnace B (existing), then move existing a/c that was on Furnace A to here

Problems I’m trying to solve:
- right now with a/c only on upstairs, it struggles on summer days when temp is >26ish. Basically runs all day and can only ever really get my upstairs down to 21 or sometimes only down to 22 if it’s really hot
- get a/c for entire house
- replace at least one very old blower with a more efficient blower (with the air handler)
- current furnaces are so old that I don’t have fan control capability from the thermostat. In summer I run the fans on both furnaces 24/7 to circulate the air and I feel like it’s such a waste of electricity. With an air handler I assume you can control it from thermostat?