Most people in the market for a new heating system probably don't want to think about this level of detail. But, perhaps surprisingly, some do want to think about those things. Every day, roughly 150 new users perties in the US.
Just over one third of those new users are not tradespeople but private homeowners, says founder and chief executive Bill Fiore. When choosing a heating system, people can find themselves bombarded with information – how powerful a heat pump do they need, for example? It isn't always easy to take a tradesperson at their word.
"As an overall trend, we are seeing homeowners be more informed," explains Fiore. "They want to do a calculation on their own." A heat loss calculation is a figure, usually measured in watts, that defines how much heat a home loses during cold weather. It's worked out room by room and is a key part of designing an efficient heating system.
This estimate is especially important to get right when installing a heat pump, which is sized fairly precisely, according to the projected heat loss. Should that calculation be off, the heat pump will likely perform poorly. You could be left with an underpowered device that struggles to warm your property, for example.
Given the costs involved, homeowners are often anxious to ensure installers avoid such mistakes. Certain new technologies are not, for the moment, helping, adds Fiore. "People are going to AI and they're getting a lot of misinformation because it's not backed by anything credible," he says.
Cool Calc is planning to integrate with AI chatbots to try and improve the quality of the advice they spew out. It is probably a good idea to be cautious about your new heating system's design, says Kevin Kircher at Purdue University. He and colleagues recently conducted a study, yet to be published, examining the heat loss calculations provided by tradespeople to roughly 75 US homeowners.
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