The Top 10 Heat Pumps!!!
By
Trent Wolbe
Look, I’m a heat pump freak. A recent non-scientific survey of my history and property reveals that I’ve bought about 10 of them in my adult life - and all of them are pretty great.
But, we put our stethoscopes to the internet, and we heard you want to know about the top 10 heat pumps you can buy - whether they’re in the Bay Area where we’re based, or somewhere else in California, the United States, or the world. That’s all well and good, but, spoiler alert: there is no list of Top 10 Heat Pumps that’s going to work for everyone.
The amount and diversity of heat pump types, heat pump incentives, and heat pump information that exists in 2024 is too complex for me to tackle once, let alone maintain, but because I heard there’s a thirst out there for top 10 lists, useful ones!, we’re giving it a shot. Are we biased? Maybe. Actually, hard yes, we are biased, but c’est la vie being an HVAC manufacturer.
So, without further ado, a completely unbiased (and by unbiased we mean very biased) look at what goes into a good heat pump - and a few specific brands we can recommend.
But first…heat pumps 101
OK, I know I just said “without further ado,” but here is, without further ado, further ado.
We can’t just launch into an article about the Top 10 Heat Pumps without talking about the different kinds first, and we can’t talk about the different kinds without some science. Or, sciencey-type stuff.
What the hell is a heat pump, anyway? I could write something technical with AI that even I probably don’t understand, or tell you to go to Fluid Mechanics Doctor School like our founders did, but how about this: I’ll show you an image from the amazing Nicole Kelner.
So: even when it’s cold out, the gnome can squeeze a little bit of heat out of the air.
Another way I’d explain it to a 5 year old: heat isn’t like an on/off switch. Even in an extremely cold climate - everything except for the vacuum of outer space, really - there’s still a tiny bit of heat in the air. A heat pump just takes that heat - even if it’s really tiny - and puts it someplace else, like your house or your water tank.
And! A heat pump doesn’t just heat! This is important. It just moves heat around - you can think of cold air as air that just had all the heat moved out of it. So, a heat pump also cools. Your refrigerator uses a heat pump to pull heat out of the fridge.
For a variety of reasons we won’t get into here, heat pumps are also super-efficient - they’re 3 - 5x as efficient as their closest relatives - regular ol’ plug-in space-heaters. That means 3 - 5x lower energy costs are kind of table stakes.
How does it do all this? Magic, of course.
The Top 10 Heat Pumps, for real this time
10) Heat Pumps In Space.
They use heat pumps on the international space station. I mean, how cool is that? (And no, that was not an HVAC pun, since you asked.)
David wrote a whole article on it here.
9) Whatever’s In Your Refrigerator
This is the heat pump to rule them all (almost). A simple, no-name unit sitting in your refrigerator (and freezer), providing great service for ten or more years, depending on how often you update your refrigerator.
Refrigerators have the major benefit of having been in homes for about a hundred years, so the technology has been getting better, by trial and error, for longer than most others.
Residential space heat pumps are still relatively new to the game, at about 60 years in homes - and they were more popular in Europe and Asia for a long time. They also have to contend with the complexities of non-enclosed spaces. Whereas your refrigerator stays really sealed most of the time, your home is like a sieve: windows, doors, and skylights - oh my! So there’s just a lot more your home heat pump has to worry about.
Fridges, then, win the game for longevity, controllability, and predictability.
8) Frigidaire Mini Split
A legacy brand that produced the first heat pump I ever installed in my house. They’ve been doing heat pumps in another context for a really long time, and it was the dirt-cheapest one that I could have installed when I did it twelve years ago. It’s kind of noisy, a little ugly, and not the most efficient, but it works almost as well as it did on day one. So, Frigidaire! In a sample size of one, it’s batting a hundred.
7) The heat pump in your Tesla
Look, we’re as disappointed in Tesla’s…ahem…leadership as you are. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t packed with amazing technology, including some of the world’s best heat pumps in cars.
Since 2021, all Teslas have included heat pumps. Why? Efficiency, of course. Older EVs used a really inefficient (7.5 KW, for the nerds out there) heating element, and 2021+ models use heat pumps with extremely high efficiency (up to 5.6 COP, again, hello nerds). How are they so efficient? They use things that are already hot - like the battery, the motors, and the radiator - to draw heat into the cabin. Crazy.
Here is a 70-minute deep-dive into all types of EV HVAC systems, if you want to get deep. And here’s the 3-minute Tesla Marketing version.
Other EVs from Toyota, Kia, and Volvo use heat pumps, too. Shout-out to the GM EV1 (RIP) and the Nissan Leaf, which used heat pump HVAC in 1996 and 2013 respectively.
No matter what kind of EV you drive, know that a heat pump-enabled EV can drive farther than one with a traditional heater.
6) Rheem ProTerra Heat Pump Water Heater
I actually have two of these: one version from 2018, and one version from 2023. They both do an amazing job heating up my water fossil-free.
In the 2023 model, Rheem has foregone the older model’s touchscreen for an old-school LCD screen, which seems a lot more robust - and if you want more info on how your system is running, you can use the EcoNet app. I don’t end up using it that much, because the thing just works.
When you have an all-in-one heat pump water heater (or HPWH), it shoots cold air out into the surrounding space, which you can use as a fun form of air conditioning, or duct it outside.
The biggest testament to the Proterra is that it’s available at most Home Depots, and I have been running it off-grid (i.e. with solar and batteries) for more than a year with no hiccups. You’ll probably get better results if you can combine your heat and hot water with Harvest. But if you just need hot water, I can recommend this thing wholeheartedly.
5) A Daikin Mini Split
I can attest to the fact that Daikin is a reliable heat pump mini-split system…because I’ve had two of them installed at my Los Angeles home for about 10 years. They’ve functioned seamlessly the entire time, providing great heating and cooling in two separate zones the entire time. Daikin has been around for about a hundred years, and they’re in 150 countries, and lots of contractors know the system well. There’s been minimal system maintenance required - things like cleaning fins and clearing condensate lines.
But - it was expensive to install - around $15,000 for two rooms. And there’s a big “head unit” that sticks out in every room - it looks pretty 90s and has slowly turned yellow over time, like an old PC.
So: Daikin heat pumps work well. But I wish Harvest had been available when I did this in 2014, because it would have worked with my ducted system for my entire house, not just the two rooms. Harvest is usually cheaper to run than gas - in fact, it saves up to 30% on energy bills. Especially if you have solar.
4) Quilt
Quilt is a big upgrade on mini-split technology. Like existing mini-splits, they use an outdoor unit (or a few) to move heat into or out of a home, and they work inside of a single space - so you need a head unit in each room - the thing that shoots warm or cold air inside.
But unlike existing heat pump head units, they’re kind of gorgeous. They have customizable faceplates that you can color to match your space, and they use a nifty app to coordinate heating and cooling based on when you’re home, and the weather outside.
Quilt will work well for individual rooms, or for spaces without ducting or radiant flooring. Like Harvest, they’re a Bay Area startup - and we wish them the best.
3) Dandelion
After two years in X, Google’s “moonshot factory,” Dandelion was set up as an independent company in 2017 - and they’ve been busy since then.
Dandelion is a ground-source water-to-air heat pump, but unlike traditional geothermal ground loops that take a ton of space to deploy, they’ve pioneered micro-drilling techniques that allow their system to go in almost any decently-sized backyard.
For now, Dandelion is only available in the northeast, though, since it makes the most sense in really cold climates. We wish them the best in helping everyone decarbonize their homes.
2) Gradient Window Units
If you’re looking for the quickest way to get heating and cooling into a room, look no further than Gradient, a beautiful heat pump that sits right on top of your window sill.
Unlike older window units (god bless ‘em! They were the first A/C the world ever knew, more or less), Gradient is cleverly designed to sit on the window sill like a saddle. That means you can still open and close the window. And, it’s gorgeous.
Gradient is new, and they’ll be a big part of decarbonizing home comfort - especially in older apartment buildings that don’t have any HVAC infrastructure.
1) Harvest
You might have seen this one coming.
Harvest is more than a heat pump: it’s a smart thermal battery system that uses energy when it’s cheap and clean, stores that energy in a water tank as heat, and deploys it as both hot water and as heating for your home. None of the others in our list (or any list!) can do this - they use electricity instantaneously, even when it’s expensive and dirty.
Harvest also works with ducted and radiant flooring systems, so we can cover all parts of your home - bathrooms, hallways, mud rooms - that other per-room options don’t cover. All in one system.
And credit must be given where due: on the heat-pump-business-end of Harvest is a SANCO2 air-to-water heat pump. CO2 just happens to be one of the lowest-global-warming potential refrigerants out there, housed in the most efficient and quietest heat pump out there.
With the Harvest Pod orchestrating the SANCO2, air handler, and tank charge, you get an all-in-one system that gets you plenty of hot water, a comfy home in any season, and - most importantly - energy bills that are up to 30% lower. And, we're available just about everywhere in the US that a good contractor can reach.
Is Harvest a heat pump? Well, you caught us there - we’re a heat pump, and much more. Harvest has made heat pumps smarter, cheaper to operate, and much more efficient. Harvest has turned heat pumps into a friend, rather than an enemy, of an electric grid that works for everyone.
And trust us, you want an electric grid that works for everyone.
So.
As we said before, heat pumps are magic - but they’re also not one thing. They’re lots of things, and they make life comfortable in ways that fossil fuel-based HVAC can’t.
Sometimes, in the middle of a marketing meeting, I’ll stare out the window quietly, wondering: heat pumps, where will you go next? What energy revolutions will you inspire? And how can I use your magic to fight climate change?
Then, I snap out of it, because someone called my name, and I wasn’t quite listening.
That’s the magic of heat pumps.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of the article had said that Quilt hadn't begun installing yet. They have.
