MFennVT$5.50/gal for #HeatingOil next winter, at least!? Yeah, we're going to be burning more #firewood for sure. Once the house is paid off, we'll be switching to some kind of #HeatPump, I hope. Can you hook #geothermal up to already installed baseboard radiators? https://vtdigger.org/2026/05/18/after-a-long-cold-winter-energy-costs-are-soaring-some-vermonters-are-reevaluating-their-options/ #Vermont
john lehet@MFennVT Air to air heat pumps, mini splits, designed for cold weather will keep their rated capacity in the coldest weather, but as it gets cold you need more and more capacity. So to rely on mini splits in real cold, you need to both oversize the unit ($$$) and then pay a bit more to run it. I’m all for wood in real cold, as I said. With the current oil prices though a good mini split even in the coldest weather is about half the cost of oil in cold, wood 1/4 the cost.
@MFennVT It also turns out with geothermal you also run into a capacity problem in real cold. Even though the ground doesn’t get cold like the air, so you keep the same efficiency, your underground loop only has so much capacity unless you oversize that. In other words the loop can only pull so much heat out of the ground for a given size.