What’s Up With Heat Pump Requirements for ENERGY STAR?
We’ve had a good run using ENERGY STAR branding for the NEEM program—no real changes since 1999, but new requirements are scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. The insulation levels will stay about the same, except for an increase in window efficiency to capture improvements from newer technologies. The new emphasis is on heat pumps. Most homes will need to get one to qualify for ENERGY STAR. Single-section homes are exempted from the requirement. Gas heated homes also do not need heat pumps, though furnaces will have to be high-efficiency 95 AFUE units.
These changes will make selling ENERGY STAR a little more complicated, because many homes will not be certified and labeled as ENERGY STAR when they ship from the factory. Multi-section homes with electric heat can ship with NEEM certification and a notice on the NEEM certificate that the home is “Prepared for On-Site ENERGY STAR Certification, with verification of heat pump installation.” The NEEM program is getting ready to move into a new database system that will help us to track heat pump installations on homes in the field. The NEEM certificate will offer guidance to send the NEEM program a copy of the heat pump invoice and/or a photo of the outdoor unit’s data plate and the indoor furnace/air handler via email or web form. We expect the new system will allow us to put a label on the furnace with a QR code that anyone can scan to upload the verification information. NEEM staff will review the information and confirm the home’s ENERGY STAR certification status, which will then generate a new ENERGY STAR home certificate for the home owner.
What do these changes mean for plants and retailers?
For plants it means that the NEEM home certification won’t always come with ENERGY STAR. We all will have to get used to the “Prepared for On-Site ENERGY STAR Certification” messaging. There is also an opportunity to beef up options for heat pump preparation in the plant. Adding a 4 in. chase through the floor for refrigerant lines and providing a waste drain for the condensate line will greatly simplify heat pump installation and prevent the all-to-common damage to the floor system that is done by many HVAC contractors when they cut into the belly to install the heat pump. Adding a conduit from the main electric panel to below the home also saves time and expense on site. Even better is to have the customer locate where they want the outdoor compressor located and wire up the equipment disconnect on the outside of the home. Any preparation that minimizes the extent to which a HVAC technician needs to tear into the home helps reduce risk of damage to the home and contractor “bad mouthing”.
Retailers will do well to learn a bit more about heat pumps. Many customers opt to add heat pumps to their homes already, so this is not an entirely new concept for anyone. There are still some people who might be inclined to add just an air conditioner to the home’s electric furnace to save a little on up-front costs. Every sales person needs to know that a heat pump will cut heating costs by at least half (usually much more than that), and the $700 or so incremental cost to go from an air conditioner to a heat pump will pay itself back in less than one winter. Know also that heat pump installation involves “surgery” on the home, which comes at a cost. Working with the factory and the customer to nail down the heat pump location and getting the plant to do as much preparation as possible can save customers some significant money. Visit the neemhomes.com site for more information.
What About Comfort? Does a Heat Pump Work as Well as an Electric Furnace?
Heat pumps from decades back did have problems with delivering comfort. There’s no denying that. But, changes in compressors, coils, fans and refrigerants have greatly improved heat pump performance. Today’s heat pump can deliver similar air temperatures as an electric furnace, and it can do so when it is below freezing outside. NEEM program staff are part of a research project conducted by Slipstream and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. For this project we installed a new variable-capacity heat pump into a new manufactured home in Oregon and monitored it over most of a year. We also included a comparison period where we heated the home with just an electric furnace. The two-ton heat pump handled virtually all the heating for an 1,800 square foot home all winter long. When the outdoor temperatures dropped into the 20’s, the heat pump actually managed to deliver warmer air than the electric furnace! The home owners reported that they had to increase the thermostat setting by two degrees when the electric furnace was in operation to feel equally comfortable as when the heat pump was doing the job. And, yes, the heat pump used well under half the energy needed by the electric furnace. Most of the time the heat pump was running, it was using less electricity than a small space heater—to heat the whole house. For comparison, the electric furnace is about equivalent to eight such space heaters.
Is the State of Washington Going to Make Us Use Heat Pumps on All Homes?
Washington’s 2021 residential energy code seeks to require heat pumps in homes built under that code, but manufactured homes are built to the federal HUD standards, which pre-empt state codes. The HUD standards address heating equipment requirements, and they require an electric furnace of adequate capacity as a minimum. The standards also address requirements for heat pumps when one is to be included. This writer is not all-seeing, but it would seem that the state would be reaching beyond its jurisdiction to require heat pumps in electrically-heated manufactured homes. However, the state’s land use planning laws do allow jurisdictions to place restrictions and require all homes in the jurisdiction meet certain requirements. This is why communities have been able to mandate that new manufactured homes demonstrate “thermal equivalence” to a home built under the state’s energy code. This approach manages to not dictate the building code requirements for a home, just that the home meet certain performance objectives, regardless of what code it is built under. Even in this arena, there is a strong argument to be made that a home’s thermal performance is strictly a matter of how much heat it loses in the winter (and gains in the summer). A well-insulated home has excellent thermal performance, period. Adding a heat pump does not change the home’s thermal performance at all. It just changes the technology used to deliver the heat needed by the home. While the NEEM program administrators are strong proponents of heat pumps, we will continue to provide analysis and document thermal equivalence for homes built with insulation and window packages that match those of site-built homes (aka NEEM+). We shall have to see how this plays out over time.