Nate the House Whisperer

Home Humidity Explorer Is your house too humid? What about in the basement or crawlspace? Use this to understand.

Humidity upstairs that's ok can be a real problem in a basement or crawlspace. I built this calculator to help show why.

What do you notice?

www.natethehousewhisperer.com/homehumidity...

I find it's helpful to share to reduce fear.

Also, fully communicating and variable speed heat pumps are amazing for both efficiency and comfort!

Heat Pump Usage and Cost Through the Cold Snap January/February 2026 ⚠ Daikin Skyport estimates consistently undercount actual usage — ranging from 3–16% below measured consumption. The Wizard House January gap (16.4%) was the largest discrepancy. Both houses...

I did a blog on it if you want more:
www.natethehousewhisperer.com/blog/heat-pu...

#energysky #2wayAC

I was pleased to see this.

These are the heating usage and cost of our four all electric houses here in southern WV.

It was a BRUTAL January and February, multiple weeks below 15F, a number of days around 0.

Still, at $.18/kwh the total monthly cost was $600-700 to heat all 4 houses. #heatpump

Thank you, I’m going to add to my new items for the hybrid heating call

I live in WV, $13/hour here is the bottom. Not 15 but not 7.

The market is largely enforcing higher wages at this point.

Thanks for sharing!

It's a bummer I know. I asked for every city it could get, that's what I got.

I have to look a ways away from me in Southern WV, I use Morgantown which is a 2.5 hour drive. Shows you just how few perfect datasets we have!

I chose to do 30 year averages for defensibility. ASHRAE does that too.

I posted about that last week and forgot lol. I said I don't want to live in Fairbanks!

We moved a bit south to get milder weather, from Cleveland to Southern WV, about 200 miles. It's usually 5-15F warmer here, most weeks we have a day in the 40s or 50s. Today was 65!

This calculator requires 30 years of hourly data, there just aren't that many airports that have the full dataset.

Touche! Good find!

That's called a cascading system and can be a great solution!

I like hybrids for this too, switch to gas/propane for the few hours a year heat pumps really struggle.

I like it! How would you answer that in this case?

Wow! It's seriously cold in Whitehorse! This is the worst city I've checked for heat pump suitability.

Still good 90% of the year though!

What's your city look like?

www.natethehousewhisperer.com/how-much-of-...

#energysky #heatpump #2wayAC

That was tough to read! I had Claude summarize, basically it is a nice push towards hybrids (heat pump + furnace) which is a fantastic first step.

Here's what Claude gave me if you're curious: claude.ai/share/7faa61...

Vs AC and resistance I presume?

Agreed. In 99% of cases air source is the more practical choice.

Consider this too, a $15K tax incentive for one geo system could turn 30 ACs into heat pumps that easily reduce fuel use 50%. So the same money goes much further.

How Much of the Year Will a Heat Pump Work In My City? Average hours per year at each outdoor temperature. Based on 30 years of hourly observations (1991–2020). Electric resistance or a furnace can serve as backup when the heat pump needs help.

They are indeed!

We need all 1 way ACs to be 2 way ACs (heat pumps), we're still selling millions of 1 way ACs every year.

BTW, here's a calc I built to show how much a heat pumps can work in your city. Built with AI lol www.natethehousewhisperer.com/how-much-of-...

And that makes sense, I’m used to US systems where everything is basically on the ground. We do have to haul pretty heavy units to the basement or attic though.

Sounds like the highest and best use for many of those sites!

This sort of thing is such a bummer.

I live in coal country, West Virginia, there hasn’t been much of a push for solar here, but I imagine it would create opposition

Not wrong, it covers AC as well.

I think there are multiple possibilities for more detailed tools as well, in fact I just built the best operating cost calculator I've ever seen, kinda by accident, beta testing now for holes.

I'm trying to show HPs work far more than most think.

It’s totally a balance, I screw around with weird solutions in our places as well!

I just don’t like our velocity on this problem.

I’ve got a series coming out soon in latitude media about just this, I still think it’s a solvable problem.

The curse of all this is that the more focus we put on experimentation, the longer the actual goal (at least my goal) of decarbonization takes.

I'm constantly looking for mainstream solutions because I'd like to finish home decarb before I die. Not looking good presently, but it's doable!

I’d like to understand if the juice is worth the squeeze.

I’m not sure how much difference it would make to performance

FrankensteinIng products usually carries a pretty high risk.

I haven’t seen one quite like that, it sounds interesting!

I find it a hair low if anything, but keep in mind it's right at design temp, NOT below.

We just had 2 weeks of design temps, one of our houses was at 30Kbtu at 0F, design is 11. This tool says 22K at 11, and note that I put +/-20%on it. Methodology is at the bottom.

Design temp: ~-1°F (99th percentile) — solidly climate zone 7B
Temps range from -25°F to 90°F
24 temperature bins from -25 to 90
8,769 hours/year of data
Inserted alphabetically between Springfield, MO and Syracuse, NY

You got Steamboat Springs, uploading code now, check in 5 minutes.

2. Steamboat Springs, Colorado added — Pulled 30 years of ERA5 hourly data (1991-2020) from the Open-Meteo archive. Key stats: