Is it possible to upgrade A/C to a heat pump by only replacing outside unit?

Question

I have a standard southern California tract home that was built in 2010. It has a Carrier gas-fired furnace, Carrier 5-ton A/C, and a smart thermostat.

I'm slowly upgrading the major systems and replacing gas with electric wherever feasible.

However, since the gas furnace is already there, is it possible and/or feasible to upgrade the A/C to a Heat Pump by replacing only the outside unit, leaving the gas furnace in place as the air handler and as the secondary/emergency heat?

The system as it exists now:

• Carrier 58STX110 gas-fired forced air furnace
• Carrier 24ABB360W320 A/C compressor (R410a)
• Unbranded evap coil ASFM6026A (X-reference lookup tells me Allstyle Coil Co)
• Ecobee thermostat

My reasons for wanting to upgrade the A/C to a heat pump:

• Gas heat as primary is stupid and wasteful in this climate
• The current A/C compressor is going on 13 years old
• Current A/C compressor is an 11 SEER - newer one should be a fair bit more energy-efficient all year, not just the 2 month heating season
• I have gobs of extra solar during the winter that I'd rather use on-site than sell to to the PoCo for a fraction of its worth

My reasons to try to retain the gas furnace as backup heat:

• Aside from the compressor being cool-only, the rest of the system is in fine working order - might as well create less waste and save material costs
• All the indoor HVAC equipment is in the attic of a narrow 2-story. Reusing instead of replacing should also save labor
• Only 120V/15A electric available in the attic (and it would be very difficult/destructive to route additional wire up there, so 240V strip heat for Em. heat would be costly/impractical)
• Blower motor was recently replaced with an Evergreen IM ECM blower.
• Ecobee thermostat has the ability to control multistage heat/cool

So... is this idea realistic? I'm going to have to involve a contractor anyway because of the refrigerant, but I don't want to be sold a full tip-to-tail system if I can realistically only swap out the parts that need to be swapped.

Answer 1

YES, basically.

Because the only real difference in the outdoor unit is a reversing valve and possibly some sensors to detect freeze-up when running in heat mode, and some code. If I were king, there'd be a retrofit kit lol.

Here is the only gotcha. Operating in heat mode requires the refrigerant to operate in a somewhat different range, obviously. That may necessitate a different refrigerant, that may operate at a different flow or pressure. That may, in turn, require replacement of the interior unit in the air handling stack and possibly hoses too. That said, I don't see a problem with R134A.

But still, R134A is a bit of an albatross. You may notice that the very high-SEER units are using other refrigerants. So I suspect this will create a practical upper limit on the SEER and COP which is possible for you to achieve.

Lastly, I somewhat question your premise. You are trying to optimize for saving the most materiél, on the presumption that things made of atoms are the scarce commodity in technical products, thus it's worth going through backflips to save that evaporator coil. I disagree. I say the knowledge to integrate complex systems successfully is the scarce commodity. The engineering skills to find the right compressor unit to match to that evaporator may well cost more than another evaporator. This is the dilemma of modern overseas robotic assembly line manufacture.

So I am sorry to say this, but you may be better off letting the old evaporator become Mountain Dew cans, and use a matching evaporator that lets you achieve the highest possible SEER/COP.

And, this will manifest as contractors being reluctant and unwilling to build the system the way you want, because, they are afraid of their valuable time being wasted by many "go-backs" to resolve problems, afraid of you misbehaving as a customer* (because the demandy ones are the worst for that), and being unable to give you a warranty on any of it. Even if you are paying for the go-backs, good contractors are so overbooked that they have no reason to touch that system with a 10 foot pole.

That leaves bad contractors.

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* by "misbehaving" I mean you would presumably agree in advance to waive warranty and pay for go-backs and support, to some extent. Misbehaving would be forgetting those agreements in the heat of the system not working, and then becoming a hell customer. That alone would motivate many shops to not touch this with a 10 foot pole.

Answer 2

AC/ Heat pump compressor units ( outside) and Air handlers (inside) are made to work together an be balanced properly. Trying to Adapt a compressor to something it was not designed to work with may be achievable, however the results will most likely be unacceptable and a constant source of issues.