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AlternativeWay4729 t1_jcxme8r wrote

We have a 900 square foot STR that has a 25kBTU Fujitsu. The Fujitsu actually seems to work better when it's cooler. The remote set point has always been squirrelly, plus or minus 5F, usually minus. We tell the guests to set it to 74 to get 68F. It's a replacement remote, although it is the proper Fujitsu one. But I would never want just a heat pump in Maine with lousy CMP service and outages six to eight times a year. We put in a 10kBTU Empire propane monitor, runs without electricity, just enough to keep the chill off for when the power goes out in winter and we're not there and there's no guest, and a pellet stove for when there is a guest, no power, and we need to run a generator. Both were lightly used but secondhand and cost $500 each and then the stove pipe, etc. Pellet stoves pull only a few hundred watts, so we can still run the stove or hot tank on a 5kW genny (just not at the same time). We can turn the pilot on the propane monitor off after April and leave it off until November. We also put in a couple baseboards, which are quieter if the guest wants less fan noise. Kinda regret that once a month sometimes when the bill comes, because some guests will just run the baseboards and run up the power bill, but they never complain so that's worth something. Others would rather run the pellet stove, so we encourage that, and buy pellet for them no questions asked. It's important to know that the insurance company gave us not trouble when we said that there was both a heat pump and a monitor. That combination seemed to fit the bill. Twenty years ago they might have held out for a furnace.

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