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Pete:
Thanks for the update LH. As we are now into summer here heating is not an issue. We very rarely need cooling as most Summer days are less than 25 degrees C. We don't really like it when it gets over 20 degrees C, but then our blood has thickened from living on the mountain .
I am toying with putting in another panel rack near my ground mounted panels, as the panels are so cheap these days. Then I would have enough power for winter use of heating.
We get quite a lot of foggy, cloudy days in winter. Some solar power still happens but not a lot.
I will let the idea rattle about in my head for a while.
Have a great time and enjoy your winter.
Cheers
Pete

lighthunter:
Im jealous of your season Pete! Its 10F -12C 85% humidity dewpoint 7° right now... brrr, the heat pump is drawing about 1100W 4.6A warm breeze from the vent, definitely not hot but it holding well insulated 3 vehicle garage about 50F. I set timer to come on at 11AM today and it will turn off at midnight, so 13 hrs of run time.
I cant deny this thing works but an 1100W resistive heater would compare in these conditions for sure. If you think about it, this poor thing is making ice cubes outside and then having to melt them into water. That phase change in these outdoor temps takes significant lost energy. Its hard to get a grip on what conditions make it senseless to run. That point is some combination of relative humidity and 10-20F outdoor  temperature.
The rule of thumb for disharge temp is 110°F + ambient which would be 120F.   By comparison, when my boiler water gets down to 120 the radiators are not putting out a lot of heat.

Definitely not complaining, just clarifying the below freezing performance in high humidity is marginally better or equal to resistive heating.

lighthunter:
Hi all!  I know in previous posts i was not optimistic about cold weather heating with this 12kbtu heat pump.

After using it hard for a month i gotta say it works great!  The heat pump has maintained the garage at 40°-52°F (8°C) during 7°-20° (-10C) outside temps with heavy cloud cover and running continuously. Tstat set @80F. Current is right at 5A 243V. Defrosting every 40 to 120 minutes. Attached is a photo of the ice it has melted from the coils lately, 92% humidity last night. Id say more than 5 gal ice there.

 A 1200W electric heater produces about 4100 btu/hr. Im fairly sure its outputting twice that judging by garage temp. I shut it off for now and turned on a 5400 btu unvented propane burner so will see what happens to the garage temperature. The doors have been used very little, maybe once/day so will be fairly good comparison.

All in all its a win for heating with electricity. With mild outdoor temps, the cost per btu is very close to propane, maybe cheaper in some cases. As hard as the poor thing works to heat i would think longevity may not be that great but who knows. So far so good.

(Update)

After running the propane 5400btu heater last night instead of heat pump, the garage temperature dip at night was 5 degrees, very similar to the heat pump so that means under 10°F (-12°C) outdoor  conditions we arent doing a lot more than resistance heating, maybe x 1.3 at best. Why this is important? Well, in those conditions, why wear it out when theres no gain? Use a simple resistive heater or propane in those conditions. So my (at a glance) conclusion is... A 19 SEER 9.5HSPF air source heat pump will do you well as a heater from 25•F.
(-4°C) on up and i expect cooling will be fantastic. Happy New Year!

Pete:
Hi LH sounds good. I would much rather use Solar power than Gas to heat our place.
At this time of year we don't need to heat the place at all. We are in the middle of 4 days of what for us is hot weather (25C)
Looking forward to it cooling down, we both much prefer the cooler weather, 15C and down is good for us.
In winter the house is heated at the moment by wood, we open doors if it gets to 22 C inside.
The idea of a heat pump is still rattling about in the brain box.
pete

lighthunter:
Hi!  Since its been so cold i havent used the heat pump much but today it got up to 14F (-10C) and plenty of sun (after removing 10" snow from panels), I turned it on and it impressed me again. It wasnt a ton of heat but it was certainly more than a 1200w electric heater.  I shut it off again at 5pm at 8F(-13C) when sun went down but it was still heating a fair amount and the garage temp had raised from 40F to 53F so it defenitely did some heating.

To be clear, if you want to spend the money, they make units like Cooper&Hunter that have an hspf of 12 and will heat down to -22F for $1269. There are of course units that cost less than this Pioneer at around $500. But they dont even have an hspf rating. So be aware, they are not all created equal.

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