7 important questions to ask before installing a heat pump

A heat pump is not a product you can just buy off the shelf or add to your online shopping cart. While you may have invested a lot of time in researching all the information you wanted to know, it takes an experienced and certified heat pump installer with quality design calculation software to specify a heat pump correctly. Their in-depth knowledge is what will help you get a complete view on your heat pump investment understand what to expect from it.

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7 questions to ask an installer before installing a heat pump

A sub-standard heat pump installation can not only be dangerous, but it can also be costly. If a heat pump is not installed expertly and optimised for efficiency with long-term use, the costs will skyrocket over time with inefficiency and maintenance issues. Therefore, before deciding to invest in a heat pump we've put together a list of questions that are important to ask an installer before making any final decision.

These questions will help you broaden your understanding of heat pumps but through them certified installers should be able to demonstrate their product knowledge, be considerate to your unique circumstances and clearly answer the questions with fact-based reasoning, ensuring that at the end the solution is tailor-made to your needs.

In this article, we will cover: 

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If you haven't heard of heat pumps, you will soon. Solar panels, batteries and electric cars have been on the scene for years now; heat pumps are the up-and-comer of the clean energy world.

They use electricity to both heat and cool buildings with stunning ' some would say magical ' efficiency. And they won major federal tax incentives in last year's Inflation Reduction Act that amount to thousands of dollars in savings for each household that installs them.

But heat pumps require a more complex pitch than EVs or solar, with a more varied and obscure economic payoff. And the contractors who actually sell and install home heating often pooh-pooh heat pumps in favor of the fossil-fueled furnaces they're accustomed to selling.

Canary Media has been tracking the technological evolution of heat pumps and the policies that encourage their adoption, and we've compiled that knowledge into this user's guide, geared toward anyone considering the switch to highly efficient electric heating and cooling. 

(RMI)

If you care about climate impacts, decarbonizing your space and water heating is one of the biggest carbon reductions you can control directly. Doing so could make your home more comfortable, thanks to the way heat pumps operate. And yes, it could save you money, though that depends a great deal on where you live and what kind of fuel you currently use for heating. Consequently, many heat-pump businesses emphasize the comfort factor.

When Oregon-based GreenSavers switched from selling furnaces to almost exclusively selling heat pumps around five years ago, ''the word ''electrification' wasn't even a thing we had heard of,' said Operations Manager Craig Aaker. ''It was a comfort thing ' this was going to work the best.'

There are heat pumps for controlling the temperature of your house and heat-pump water heaters ' this guide focuses on the former. We hope these questions help you determine if a heat pump is right for you. And if we're missing anything, let us know. Happy heating and cooling.

1

. Do you own your home?

I'm a renter myself, so it's a bummer to have to start here. But as with installing rooftop solar, you have a lot more options if you own your home.

That's not to say you can't figure something out for a rental. If you live in an apartment building, you can attempt to lobby management for an overhaul, but that's largely out of your control.

Alternatively, renters can turn to small, mobile versions of heat pumps. A sleek forthcoming model from Gradient slides over the window frame, delivering electric heating and cooling without permanently altering the building (that product ships this spring, starting at $2,000). If the renter moves, they just take the little heat pump with them.

2

. What's your current heating and cooling source?

The systems you're replacing will dictate what type of heat pump makes sense and how good a deal it is for you. Remember that you're comparing it with both your heating system and your cooling system, because heat pumps do both (don't let the name fool you).

As a general rule, the more expensive and polluting your heating source is currently, the more attractive heat pumps become. Startup Dandelion Energy, which drills underground to siphon energy from the earth for ground-source heat pumps, launched first in upstate New York to compete with sludgy fuel-oil heating.

Let's say you're living in New England and shelling out big bucks to fill up a decades-old fuel oil furnace each winter, and you don't have air conditioning but want it to deal with increasingly sweltering summers. That amounts to a strong economic case for heat-pump adoption: Instead of paying for the most expensive heating and paying extra for a new air conditioner, you can buy one appliance and do both more efficiently.

If, on the other hand, you just bought a new, efficient gas furnace and a new, efficient air conditioner, and you want to use the equipment you paid for until it reaches the end of its useful life, a heat pump will be a harder sell. 

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3

. Are heat pumps a good fit for the climate where you live?

Contrary to a persistent myth, heat pumps can handle cold weather. In fact, the snowy state of Maine is a hotbed of heat pumpery (so is Poland, for that matter). But their efficiency does drop in extreme cold.

This means that the region you live in does matter for what type of heat pump you choose. If you're in, say, coastal California or the Southeast and you're mostly dealing with hot summer days and the rare chilly spell in winter, a less expensive model will fully meet your needs.

'In most markets in the U.S., you can get a heat pump and not need a backup,' Aaker said. 

(Binh Nguyen/Canary Media)

Cold-climate customers probably want to invest in souped-up models, like those with multistage compressors, also referred to as inverter-based systems. Products on the market today go down to -15 degrees Fahrenheit, said Panama Bartholomy, executive director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition. ''The DOE's Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge is going to bring even more products to the market from even more manufacturers,' he added.

If you want extra assurance for super-low temperatures without relying on fossil fuels, you can install electric resistance heating around your heat pump. It's not as energy-efficient, but it can give the heat pump the boost it needs in the most extreme cold.

Then again, ground-source heat pumps can always find some subterranean heat even when the air is frigid. Sara Schultz, an environmental activist who lives just north of Buffalo, New York, put her ground-source heat pump to the test during December's historic blizzard. Even as 70 mph winds whipped the windchill into negative temperatures, ''The whole time we had no problem; we had heat in the house and hot water,' she recounted.

4

. What's the best time to make the switch?

Conventional wisdom in the heating industry holds that nearly all furnace purchases happen when the old one breaks. Finding reputable data for this assertion is tricky, but there's broad consensus that people rarely think about their heating equipment until it doesn't work right.

The problem, as far as heat pumps are concerned, is that it's hard to get a same-day heat pump installation. Companies interviewed for this story said they couldn't turn around heat pumps that quickly right now, due to factors including supply-chain constraints, shortage of trained workforce and being booked out far into the future.

The upshot is that if you want to install a heat pump, buy it when you don't need it right away, rather than when you need one urgently. Shoulder months are good so you're not competing with the emergency AC customers in the summer or frantic heating customers in the winter.

'Anytime you're thinking about buying an air conditioner, just buy a heat pump instead,' Aaker said.

And of course, you should consider your long-term plans ' if you're likely to move in a year or two, you won't get to enjoy your investment for long. Then again, studies have found that heat pumps raise home values by more than the cost of installation.

5

. Who should you hire to install the heat pump?

Heat pumps are a cutting-edge clean energy technology, but the way they reach customers is through local, often old-school contractors, who are not necessarily on board with the new approach.

Many contractors simply don't want to sell heat pumps; even heat-pump experts interviewed for this story had to struggle to get contractors to sell them the technology for their own homes.

'The risk is, if you get a general contractor, they're going to do what makes the most sense for them,' said Lacey Tan, who researches building decarbonization at climate think tank RMI (Canary Media is an independent affiliate of RMI). ''It's going to be business-as-usual, it's going to be what they trust. ['] There is a price consumers are paying for [contractors'] fear.'

Part of this stems from the contractor business model. An efficient furnace installation team can be in and out in two hours, said Craig Aaker of GreenSavers. It can take even a highly skilled heat-pump installer at least a day to do the job.

Some contractors trust gas furnaces but heard decades ago that heat pumps didn't work great.

'They weren't that good 30 years ago,' Tan said. But times have changed: ''Telling a contractor ''I want a gas furnace' is kind of like going to AT&T and saying, ''Can I get a landline, though?''

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(Binh Nguyen/Canary Media)