Comment by cma256
7 days ago
> but it's still a disturbing amount of energy usage and something I'm trying to debug
As someone who is deeply frustrated with their HVAC this stood out to me. A new home should have exterior insulation. Plus the solar panels plus "efficient heat pumps". I would expect it to perform very well.
I'm curious to know the square footage and how much power is being used. Did you have a blower door test done when the home was constructed?
5200 sqft. There are 5 heat pumps which seem to combine for an average 10kW power usage, with considerably less variation through the day than I would expect.
Yes, they did blower door tests.
Wow. Sustained for the full hour? That's 7200kWh monthly. Roughly 2x per sqft compared to my 80's home.
I've spent a lot of time in my attic air sealing, distributing insulation that was poorly installed, installing new insulation, insulating the basement, air sealing the basement. In my experience, it did not lower my power usage but in that time I added a second heat pump so I can't compare apples to apples. I can anecdotally say the upstairs seems to retain its temperature better. I'm hoping this winter I'll know if it helped.
If you end up solving your problem blog about it and I'll read it...