Did any of the other HVAC nerds on here watch the Quilt launch?

https://www.youtube.com/live/lUAr76DrvZU?si=9Upjq7yiHjKonDY6 

I find it interesting, I’m glad they’re brining some progress, but I think there are holes in the design. I’m sure some others on here could bring up other issues as well. 

To start with the good:

they’re boasting some really high COP’s. https://www.quilt.com/tech-specs. I’d be curious what they look like in the wild. 

They look good. There are other good looking wall units on the market too, but  I like that they’re shorter and that you can paint the front face. They mention they’re designed to easily go above windows, which is great for aesthetics. However, I foresee lots of issues for the boots on the ground, having to deal with window headers, or having to do stupid looking retrofits where they’re poking through-holes, making the connections on the exteior side off ladders and running all the linesets on the outside. The outdoor units look great. I wouldn’t have to spraypaint outdoor units black anymore. 

I love app integrated stuff, and it looks like a very well designed “google-esque”  UI/UX. And the fact that they boast metrics and stats, like actual COP and electricity usage, that’s great and saves a lot of the people like us from cobbling multiple tracking products together and making spreadsheets to figure this out.  

I like that its meant to be a easy and digestible approach to purchasing and install. Very much like the Tesla model of sales. That’s nice for the common person, in a retrofit. However, that means I can’t get my hands on it from the supplier and install it myself or have my trusted HVAC guy to do it.  I have to deal with their installers.  

And some stuff I don’t quite like: 

I’m sad they opted to do wall units. Its just sad. I like ventilation and I like air filtration. Wall units can’t do this. 

They boast a room-by-room model for the approach to the quality and efficiency of this system, but that looks fishy to me. The wall units are 9k and the outdoor units are 18k and can only handle two wall units.  I believe 9k is overspec for your typical small bedroom (Unless they’ve got some secret sauce in their tech). Now do this for every room in your house, and you might find you’re running out of places to put your 6 outdoor units  and have a spaghetti of linesets running all over the exterior (obviously this is house specific and I’m being dramatic). 

They’re still wall units. big bulky rectangles sticking out on your wall, louvering around, doing stuff, turning on/off  and just always being present.  

Its a big install cost for a whole home system ( again home specific). I don’t think it’ll financially made sense for the typical person who already has a central ducted furnace/AC, to pay 30k+ for a retrofit whole home wall unit system, vs replacing the existing furnace with a central ducted heatpump blower. I suppose this could financially make sense when there’s a boiler radiant heat only system, and they wanted to retrofit AC in. 

What I wish they came out with: 

With COP’s like that, I wish they came out with a small and affordable monoblock hydronic air handler & DHW system to actually revolutionize hvac. I would love to see a floor-by-floor approach, where there is like a mid static slim duct fancoil with integrated ERV and filters. temp sensors and auto-dampers on the ceiling diffusers for finer room control, and small(ish)  buffer/indirect tank that can be localized closer to the DHW fixtures on that specific floor. Basically, a modular system that is more local and agile to the devices per floor or zone. 

This is a lofty vision, but I think it might be a better system than wall units with an app.  Then again, once you get plumbers involved, everything spirals out of control (this is a plumbing joke). 

Thoughts? 

Jamie