pnichols wrote:
Bumpyroad wrote:
One thing I'm curious about... are heat pumps that better than a conventional A/C unit with a heat strip?
Yes.
If you have a choice when buying a new RV whether to have, say, a 15K BTU air conditioner or a 15K BTU air conditioner/heat pump unit - and can afford the extra money for the combo unit ... get the combo unit.
The 1500 watt heat strip option available in RV air conditioners delivers around 5000 BTU's of heat ... as compared to a 15K combo unit - which puts out around 15K BTU's of cooling or 15K BTUs of heating.
Looking at the situation from another perspective: If drycamping in chilly weather and the propane furnace should fail, one's built-in generator could provide you with around 15,000 BTU's of heat with an RV heat pump set to it's heating mode ... whereas the generator may not run three 1500 watt electric heaters at the same time so as to provide 15,000 BTU's of heat.
This is because an electric heater "creates new heat" from scratch by conversion of electrical power, while a heat pump merely uses electrical power to "move (pump) existing heat" from the outside air into the inside air.
A heat pump produces around three times more heat over using the same electrical energy in a conventional electric heater. That is ... IF THE HEAT PUMP CAN BE USED AT ALL ... as (RV) heat pumps can't transfer much heat from the outside to the inside of the coach if the outside air temperatures are much below 38-40 degrees. We have used heat pumps to heat (and cool) our home for decades, however our current state of the art home heat pump is efficient enough to still be able heat the home with 30 degree outside air temperatures. Unfortunately, I don't believe that this kind of efficiency is available in RV heat pump models.
My comments above are all in regards to air-to-air heat pumps. There are other types of heat pumps that can keep interiors comfortable with outside air temperatures way lower than 30 degrees.
actually I was quoting mlts22 and that was not my comment. my comment was a $20 ceramic cube heater will do a better job than the heat strip in the AC. do you really want to wear out your AC fan for this ineffectual heat source? and I have been in campgrounds where they charge extra for electric heat. sort of obvious when your AC is humming at 10 degrees outside.
bumpy
