[waynesonfire]

> it's not what heat pump advocates are recommending.

sure seems like someone is. could it possibly be the heat pump salesmen? the idea behind heat pumps is to sell heat pumps.

In the event you're cold, maybe you should get a furnace too. But that wasn't part of the sales pitch. Regardless, there are now two appliances you have to maintain. Tell me again how much money this saves?

[icehawk]

The builder of the apartment complex likely just undersized the unit, they'll do this with the normal kind of heat pumps-- air conditioners-- too, and hope its not so undersized that it becomes an actual problem.

[jrockway]

I rented someone's condo circa 2004 that did this with the air conditioning. Hot summer day? Just warm air coming out of the AC. (It was the kind where the cooling is done centrally and you just have an air handler in your unit.)

Now that I think about it, that happened in both apartments I lived in in Chicago. I remember going for a bike ride one summer afternoon with a friend. Got home, AC didn't do anything, so I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of ice, poured it in my bathtub, and rolled around in it until I was numb. I was cold the rest of the day. Very effective but do the math correctly when you install building-wide air conditioning systems.

[icehawk]

Yeah, I had a similar issue, and had to solve it by purchasing a portable AC to supplement the main HVAC.

[NewJazz]

Tell me again how much money this saves?

Who said that was the goal?