Hey guys. I just purchased my first home a few months back. It was built in 09 and is located in central Alberta. It's a fairly high end home with what I assume is well insulated. It's roughly 1700sq ft above grade and probably 1000ish partially finished basement. Currently the house is heated with natural gas. Winter temps average around -15c but can dip below -40c a few days a year. Currently I'm paying around $80-90 a month for delivery fees and miscellaneous fees just for having gas hooked to the house. There's a federal rebate for $5000 for green home upgrades as well as 10 year 0% interest loans for these upgrades. I'd like to ditch gas completely and try and get the house self sufficient with electricity \ solar panels. Long story short I was wondering if anyone had any real world experience with heat pumps in this kind of climate? I'm looking at a mrcool central system rated down to -30c (they say they stop making heat around -32c) along with a 20kw heat strip. My current furnace outputs 82k btu.heat strip would make about 68k btu when the heat pump stops working. I'm also playing with the idea of throwing a pellet stove in my living room in case the the heat strip can't keep up. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has actually had success with a system like this? I see lots of advertising saying it should work well but everyone seems to advise against ditching gas and there isn't many heat pumps in this area. If anyone has a similar setup are they able to post their hydro consumption numbers for winter months?

Wow, you posted this in 23 and no responses…. Seems odd. I am located on Mid-Coast Maine on the ocean, the weather can get a bit cold here although not for long periods of time. I have been converting all of our properties to heatpumps and have yet to have any issues (3 years now). I have installed 5 systems in various locations, one was a ducted mini and the others are wall mount mini’s (multi-head units). I have been very pleased with the performance. I am not sure if one brand over another makes any difference (I am installing Mitsubishi at this point), read somewhere a while back they were better in cold climates. I was curious if you went with the Mr.Cool unit and what you thought of it. I am building a very tight residential now, I’m using a warm-board radiant system (just installed the panels) and I’m trying to decide on AIR conditioning, it can get humid here.. saw the Mr. Cool system and was thinking it may work. Thoughts?

Wow, you posted this in 23 and no responses…. Seems odd. I am located on Mid-Coast Maine on the ocean, the weather can get a bit cold here although not for long periods of time. I have been converting all of our properties to heatpumps and have yet to have any issues (3 years now). I have installed 5 systems in various locations, one was a ducted mini and the others are wall mount mini’s (multi-head units). I have been very pleased with the performance. I am not sure if one brand over another makes any difference (I am installing Mitsubishi at this point, read somewhere a while back they were better in cold climates. I was curious if you went with the Mr.Cool unit and what you thought of it. I am building a very tight residential now, I’m using a warm-board radiant system (just installed the panels) and I’m trying to decide on AIR conditioning, it can get humid here.. saw the Mr. Cool system and was thinking it may work. Thoughts?