How complicated are heat pumps in practical operation?

In the threads about heat pump consumption and supply temperature settings, there is a lot of technical jargon, values, and settings being discussed. Sometimes it is written that the installers pay little attention to optimal settings and that one should be more careful oneself already during the planning phase. If I understand this correctly, incorrectly sized and/or poorly adjusted heat pumps lose their economic advantages. Therefore, I have three questions: 1. How much knowledge and skill does a homeowner actually need to acquire in order to truly achieve the economic efficiency they expect from their decision? 2. How likely is misuse by inexperienced users who just want to have a comfortably warm house? 3. What lifestyle habits must a person give up who lives for the first time in a house with a heat pump in order to achieve the expected economic efficiency?

An interesting question. Unfortunately, it is difficult to answer precisely.

First of all, I would say that it is absolutely no problem to get your house or apartment pleasantly warm!

The optimization lies in the area of the seasonal performance factor (Jahresarbeitszahl) and maybe also the lifespan (although reliable figures are still missing).

1. Here, I think one must distinguish how capable the heating engineer was/is. If capable, then little to no own knowledge is necessary and you can only extract a few more percent yourself. If incapable, it gets interesting. ;)

2. The biggest misuse would be trying to throttle rooms/areas, but that does not happen if you just want to have it warm in the house.

3. None at all. (Differences generally come from insulation, controlled residential ventilation, underfloor heating, etc., but not from the heat generator)

First of all, it depends on the heating engineer whether and how much knowledge you need to contribute. However, you often only find out after the construction whether the heating engineer was sufficiently competent, when it is too late.

Regarding 1. Read the basics (whether here in the forum or other forums) and closely accompany the heating engineer. Then in the end you don’t need a rocket science degree, but only fine-tune the system.

Regarding 2. As long as the user does not tamper with the system, the risk approaches zero.

Regarding 3. No special habits need to be unlearned. I assume as basic knowledge that heating on and windows open is stupid.

In the end, the question will also be what you understand by "economical". Because properties. All heat pumps are economical. Some more, some less.

Basically, I consider heat pumps to be not yet mature in terms of control technology. The principle works, houses get warm. But the automatic adaptation to the house and its occupants does not take place. The user is left alone with a device that is supposed to work for thousands of houses and is considered good if no one is freezing. The user is supposed to optimize by adjusting heating curves??? Nobody reaches 100% efficiency with that. I would expect a heat pump to optimally adjust itself to the house and its occupants; every house is different. If every heat pump is optimized between 97 and 100%, the technology is mature. It doesn't matter whether this happens offline or online. In a car, I set the cruise control to 120 km/h, and I don’t care about the engine map. 1) Wish: no knowledge, yet optimal heat pump 2) Due to a lot of ignorance, half-knowledge, hearsay, and fiddling, many heat pumps do not run optimally 3) The user and all family members do not change overall, therefore the heat pump has to handle that. I just had to get that off my chest, with all the heat pump fiddling threads. That would be a task for universities and manufacturers to reduce consumption.

Just because many people here have "the hobby" of optimizing their heat pump, it doesn't mean that all others are running inefficiently. One would also have to find out how much potential there actually is. Is it 2%, 5%, or even 10%? So can you turn an annual performance factor of 4 into 4.4?

With a car, the driver probably gets significantly more out of it. (For example, driving a Golf with 5 liters instead of 8 liters per 100 km.) And there are drivers who attend training, exchange information in forums, and then there are those who just drive.

I believe the same could have been done 30 years ago with gas or oil heating systems. Only hardly anyone cared back then. Maybe people exchanged thoughts at the regulars' table while playing skat, if the local heating technician was sitting at the table. There were no forums or anything like that. Even then, instead of a 60° flow temperature, it could have been lowered to 50°. Instead, there was a night mode and the temperature was blasted high during the day. Whether that was sensible or not, hardly anyone probably questioned.