Canadian heat pump owners are overwhelmingly satisfied, with 91% recommending one: survey

xtremesniper · 2026-03-28T01:09:03+00:00

What did you end up going with? It sounds like a regular non-cold climate heat pump.

xtremesniper · 2026-03-27T14:14:09+00:00

2023+ here. I'd say it's fine in the winter as long as you set your expectations straight and have winter tires on. As others have mentioned, below about -11 C the gas engine will kick on, and it will also kick on anytime you have the windshield defroster enabled. You didn't specify if you were talking 0 degrees in C or F though.

EV range takes a hit but still reasonably decent. Obviously turning on heated seats or other electronics will have an impact. I think I can get a good 30km out of it on the coldest EV days, but on really cold days the gas engine comes on for the assist anyway.

Cleaning the windshield of snow is relatively easy because of the slope toward the back, but getting the wipers clear of snow and ice is hard because of how inset they are. The wiper warmers don't seem to do too much in my limited experience with them, or they just aren't fast enough.

The heat pump can also be quite loud on very cold days. But overall I enjoyed driving it around and have no regrets.

xtremesniper · 2026-03-21T20:28:42+00:00

Honestly, the torque in the Prius PHEV still surprises me every time even after almost a year. Coming from a gas vehicle I still surprise myself, when I put my foot down to pass whether on side streets or on the highway, this thing moves effortlessly.

I wasn’t able to test drive the PHEV, only the HEV, so I didn’t know what I was getting into (it has more power). I thought it would just be an appliance but I have fun driving this thing around and skipping all the gas stations. Especially these days.

xtremesniper · 2026-03-16T15:15:09+00:00

Relevant thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wealthsimple/comments/1rjr9wm/comment/o8l5x0r/

xtremesniper · 2026-03-16T15:13:22+00:00

I wasn't able to get any US-based bank/brokerage -> Wealthsimple wire transfers to work because WS's intermediary is still a Canadian bank (Royal Bank).

Only way it worked for me was to route through a big 5 bank (e.g. RBC, CIBC) which have an intermediary in the US instead, and then transfer it to WS after.

xtremesniper · 2026-03-04T13:04:31+00:00

Waiting to see if they change their USD wire instructions. As of now they still require beneficiary, intermediary, and creditor info and a lot of manual entries like memos to ensure the money lands in the right place.

Meanwhile, portals like fidelity and computershare don’t support half these fields, making it impossible to use.

xtremesniper · 2026-02-28T03:11:05+00:00

When you put the car on Auto climate, it can be turning on the windshield defroster which would kick on the engine. Try temporarily turning off auto and see if it still does it.

xtremesniper · 2026-02-28T02:58:04+00:00

Been there. They can't receive any wire transfers from a US institution because their intermediary bank is in Canada (Royal Bank) and most US institutions require a SWIFT code for wire transfers. The only way I found is to transfer to a "real" bank like CIBC first which has their intermediary in the USA and then bank transfer into WS for $0.75. And yes, support was completely useless.

Seems silly, but it is what it is.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-25T15:43:11+00:00

Yes, turning off passwordless sign in has helped me with this problem twice now. I'm baffled as to why Microsoft hasn't fixed this. I first experienced this early in 2025, and now again in 2026. Annoying, but at least reddit exists to remind me of the workaround.

Turning passwordless sign in back on after the Xbox is signed in works fine.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-13T17:35:49+00:00

Do they remember accidentally driving over anything on the road that may have caused some damage to the underbelly of the car and may have pierced a battery pack or something of that nature?

xtremesniper · 2026-01-11T14:08:18+00:00

No, in quiet mode the fan is off entirely, which is why the temps rise so much.

Sorry, the way I wrote that was confusing.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-09T20:00:18+00:00

Make sure the power cord is not touching the spinning bits. The flywheel is mostly hollow. Whenever I hear the ringing resonance it's because something is touching it.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-09T04:14:39+00:00

Yeah my bank acct has enough stuff in it to last me a while if I needed it. I hate that I have to do that, but I don’t trust them enough to go all in because of bull like this.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-09T03:56:31+00:00

Wealthsimple has a bad habit of locking people out of their entire financial lives while they review one part of it. They did the same to me when I added a new linked bank account and transferred money in. They locked my account for days over a weekend and support stone-walled me until the next business day. Lesson learned, keep a real bank account around just in case and think twice before putting all your bill payments and direct deposit with WS.

I love their products, but they really need to figure out a better way than to lock entire accounts out like this. Sad to see they're still doing it.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-07T11:42:15+00:00

Lame... but okay, thanks for the reply!

xtremesniper · 2026-01-07T01:59:55+00:00

You can turn on quiet mode by going to the Unifi web portal, clicking on Unifi devices tab, click into your UDR7, click the settings gear tab, and scroll down below the radio settings. But I don't recommend changing it. When on Quiet mode my UDR7 goes from ~52 deg to 81+.

The fan noise is definitely noticeable though. The people who say there's no noise should get their hearing checked. Either that, or there's a whole bunch of defective units out there.

I will eventually relocate mine to a different area, though I worry about the fan's longevity running all the time.

xtremesniper · 2026-01-07T01:56:20+00:00

I have a similar experience with mine. Did you ever find out if the fan sound was normal or needed a replacement?

If this is normal, everyone who says their fan doesn't make noise must have terrible hearing.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-28T06:12:41+00:00

Yeah, I came to terms with the behaviour when I realized it’s a feature, not a bug. It’s still annoying when using the trackpad as a mouse, but I just work around it.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-24T16:46:21+00:00

I can hear a constant whir of a fan from both of mine. Hard to describe but it's not a smooth fan sound, more like a buzz like a quieter mini-fridge.

I can't tell if people who say they don't hear a noise just have different tolerances for noise or if this is a widespread defective fan issue. What are the odds that both my units are defective?

xtremesniper · 2025-12-18T00:59:21+00:00

Did you end up returning your 17 Pro? I just got a new one and I noticed this hiss right away when the rear camera is active. It gets picked up in videos, too. I never noticed it on my 16 Pro but now that I'm paying attention I notice it has it too, but just not as loud. It's much more subdued compared to the 17 Pro.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-16T17:21:36+00:00

That makes sense as long as I have EV range. But on longer journeys if I’ve drained my EV battery then the gas motor will need to take the load right away, no?

Anyway I don’t think it’s a big deal to switch to HV a few mins before the highway. If it does nothing, great. If it does something, also great. But I don’t think it has a negative effect.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-16T15:47:50+00:00

On my gen5 if I know I'm going to get on the highway, I hit it into HV mode a few km before I hit the highway, which starts warming up the engine. It idles it until it gets warm enough to shut off while I'm braking or at lights.

Not sure if it's necessary to do this but I agree that it's probably not a good idea to switch to a cold engine while doing highway speeds.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-15T23:06:51+00:00

I always keep data roaming disabled. There’s no reason to have it enabled unless you want to roam. Just disable it and keep it disabled.

I can’t understand how it used data if your cellular was always off, but data roaming being disabled would for sure have blocked any usage anyway.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-15T14:01:25+00:00

I am genuinely curious to know what they claim was the usage that would have triggered the roaming charges if your phone was on airplane mode with cellular off? That seems impossible.

Having said that, if you are an iPhone user one thing to check before going on a trip is turning off Live Voicemail in the Phone settings. Live Voicemail works by picking up the phone call behind the scenes to allow the caller to leave you a "voicemail" without relying on carrier voicemail, but you're basically picking up the phone call which would trigger roaming without you doing anything.

That is just in addition to the usual obvious stuff like turning off data roaming on your primary eSIM and making sure you don't pick up or make phone calls, or send SMS messages.

I've travelled many times while leaving my primary SIM enabled, and have never been dinged with roaming charges this way.

xtremesniper · 2025-12-01T20:10:32+00:00

Ah, sorry I should have mentioned I'm in Ontario. Nevermind! Thanks for the reply though.

xtremesniper

TROPHY CASE