Ducted systems are horribly inefficient. Why heat/cool the entire house if you're only in one room?
We paid $11k to have a 4-unit 42kbtu mini-split system installed in our condo. We love it. We turn the two units on in the living areas during the day, and just the two units in the bedroom at night. Each unit comes with its own remote and can be programmed individually. No need for an app-enabled/iot multi-zone thermostat. But if you want it, there were addons available to enable it.
The only downside in my mind is limited filtration, since the heat exchangers aren't very big, but we have some nice quiet hepa filters running that keep the air quality quite good.
This does leave CO2 as a potential problem, since its just recirculating inside air, but you'd have the same issue with a ducted system if the intake is inside, which most are.
You can always get an energy-recovering ventilation system, but that does require ducting. Interestingly, electric air mentions bringing fresh outside air in, but doesn't have any details about energy recovery. In fact the details are pretty sparse all around. I couldn't even find dimensions of the units!
All that being said, I hope this succeeds because heat pumps are way better than furnaces, and adding competition to this market will be great.
My main problem with mini-splits is that they are just ugly. I can't get past it. Neither can my wife nor others I've talked to. My engineer brain loves the idea, but I just don't want them on my walls nor do I want five different remotes laying around. I suspect thats a problem for many others too.
Have you looked at cassette style mini-splits? Nothing on the wall's you'd just replace the vent in your ceiling. They are quite a bit larger than your standard vent though.
As far as remotes, there are a bunch of universal remote control options and smart (wifi/bluetooth) based controllers.
My wife (who invested heavily in the aesthetics and interior design of our home) shared the same concern. We decided to do it anyways, and though they're certainly a little ugly, they blend in and just sort of go away. It helps that they're fairly close to the ceiling.
The remotes aren't lying around. They all have wall mounts that we placed near the light switches and ceiling fan remotes. With the units being programmed, though, you don't often have to mess around with them anyways. Unless you're the sort who likes fiddling with the temperature and fan speed.
You can get mini-splits that don't have protruding wall units, but the real downside of mini-splits is indoor air quality.
They don't have good filters and they basically recirculate the air in the same room.
For a very tightly built house, you need to bring outside air in continuously, ideally through an energy recovering ventilator (ERV), and then you want to filter that air with a MERV 13 filter (or whatever target you want), plus you want to move and filter all the house air in general, plus you often want to control whole house humidity.
Yes! This is what I wanted to do first but we only had an aging furnace and no AC. I've read that you can run into problems with back pressure if you close too many vents, though.
We paid $11k to have a 4-unit 42kbtu mini-split system installed in our condo. We love it. We turn the two units on in the living areas during the day, and just the two units in the bedroom at night. Each unit comes with its own remote and can be programmed individually. No need for an app-enabled/iot multi-zone thermostat. But if you want it, there were addons available to enable it.
The only downside in my mind is limited filtration, since the heat exchangers aren't very big, but we have some nice quiet hepa filters running that keep the air quality quite good.
This does leave CO2 as a potential problem, since its just recirculating inside air, but you'd have the same issue with a ducted system if the intake is inside, which most are.
You can always get an energy-recovering ventilation system, but that does require ducting. Interestingly, electric air mentions bringing fresh outside air in, but doesn't have any details about energy recovery. In fact the details are pretty sparse all around. I couldn't even find dimensions of the units!
All that being said, I hope this succeeds because heat pumps are way better than furnaces, and adding competition to this market will be great.