Derek Cole walks through HVAC options for new homes, from geothermal (most efficient) to heat pumps and mini-splits. He explains the upfront cost versus long-term savings trade-off, and stresses that tight new homes need energy-recovery ventilators and air filters to handle off-gassing from materials.
The most efficient way to go would be, in my opinion, geothermal. If you're building a new house and you have, you know, you don't have grass yet, it's obviously easier to do the wells and to do the loops and not cause any problems. And you can, with all of these, you can fold them into your house payment and becomes a lot better for you. So geothermal is really what I would recommend to start with, but it kind of, I mean, you can go geothermal, you can go Montazone mini-split, you can go traditional heat pump, you can go dual fuel. I mean, there's so many options, and really Steve, my father, has really said it the best. You know, if you give me a target, I can hit it versus having this shotgun approach, right? I mean, what's in your budget, first of all? If it's in your budget to go high-end and to go really efficient, let's do it. If it's in your budget to go standard, basic, let's just get done, bare bones minimum, then we can do that. But then again, you know, when you give us your budget, then we can see what you want, see what the budget is, and then fit something into that mold. It's kind of obviously harder to go with the shotgun approach, which was, you know, give me the most efficient. All right, we're going to give you the most efficient. I know my budget's right here. Okay. Well, let's come down to right here. But if we started with that, that would have been a little easier because then we wouldn't waste your time, wouldn't waste our time. We could just talk a number. So, um, I was talking to somebody recently and they said, you know, this number is like 10% of my home budget. I said, well, you're dealing with an appliance that's half of your energy use every single month. So I've said it before, heating and air, either pay for it now or pay for it later. But eventually you're going to pay for it. And so people say, what do you mean by that? Well, if you pay up front and you get a super efficient unit or an efficient install, then you'll save money. If you go with the cheaper unit or the low-end equipment or the value-based brand, then you'll pay for it every month in energy bills. So that's what I mean by heating and air is one of those you either pay for now or pay for later. You'll pay for up front In this case, upfront and put it in your house payment and save money every month on lower energy bills, or pay for it later by going low end to start with and then having higher energy bills every month. So I guess to answer the question, I haven't answered the question. It depends on your budget and what you're looking for. Now we have some homeowners who like to keep the house at 75, 78 degrees, and then we have some homeowners that want to keep it at 65, 70 degrees. Obviously, in that situation, geothermal would be better than traditional heat pump, but it depends on your home, your choice, what you want to see, what kind of energy bills you like to see. I mean, you can go with radiant barrier in the attic, save some money that way. You can seal the crawl space. You can have a dehumidifier in the crawl space, seal it up. You can go that way. That'll be efficient. The radiant barrier would be efficient, but then again, it goes back to your budget. What can you look at?
What are you looking at?
What are you looking to purchase and afford? Some people have built a really tight home. In that case, you need— well, in all cases really, but in that case particularly, you need an ERV, energy recovery ventilator, because you have such a tight home. You have new carpet, you have new countertops, you have new cabinets, you have new paint. All this stuff off-gasses.
Chemicals.
So when you have a really tight home, there is nowhere for that to go except for your lungs.
So ERV actually exchanges outdoor air, conditioned, it will condition it, and takes out the bad air, brings in the good air. So, and also you need to look at air cleaning products on top of that because with a newer home, homes today do not, are not built the way they're built in the '60s and '70s. You know, where it was a breathable home where, you know, they weren't too worried about the insulation or the paneling or, you know, energy was cheap. It's not that way today. So now you need to— yes, you can build a tight home, but you need to make it efficient and healthy as well. So in that case, you need an ERV and need some air cleaning to go along with it. So that was a long way to say it depends on your budget.
Hey, you made it long.
You see what I'm saying though? People just build these really tight homes, which is great for energy, but it's not so great for health because now you're breathing all the stuff in. There's nowhere for it to go.
Mm-hmm.
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