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Heat Pumps for Noobs, Like Me

Stefan, Ellie, and their dog Ernie recently installed a heat pump after finding out their furnace was near the end of its life. Here Stephan shares the results of their switch (spoiler alert: they are very happy with it, and love the fact that they have cooling now too). He also outlines the steps anyone can expect to go through when getting a heat pump.

Stephan_pic_4.png

Hello!  My name is Stefan and I live in the Pocket with my wife Ellie and our dog Ernie, and we recently installed a heat pump in our home. This is Ernie:

I’m not at all an expert on heat pumps; there’s a lot of science and engineering involved in these systems that I only kind of half-understand. But the heat pump made financial sense for us, and the investment has worked out well, so I thought I’d share our experience:

  1. Our home
    • When we moved into our home in 2023 there was a gas furnace and no AC.
    • I had the furnace inspected and found out it was nearing its end of life.
  2. The heat pump
    • A heat pump seemed like an appealing option because it would be both heating and AC in one system – it therefore would address both our needs.
    • Financially, when I factored in the government rebate, the price of the heat pump came out to a little more (by my estimates $2,000-$3,000 more) than what I estimated it would cost to replace the gas furnace and install a new AC.
    • Taking into account the environmental impact, uncertainty around future gas prices, and recent news about the health effects of burning gas in your home, and the heat pump seemed well worth this additional cost.
    • Ernie double checked my numbers:
  3. The energy audit
    • The first thing we needed to do was conduct an energy audit.
    • I booked an appointment with Goldfinch Energy
    • They inspected our home. Part of this involved a “blower door test,” where they attached a huge fan to our door that sucked air out of our house. We then walked around the house and found all the places where our home was leaking air.
    • After the audit I plugged all those leaking spots with caulk or foam filler. Here’s a photo of my handiwork using foam filler to plug a hole around an old pipe in our basement.
      As you can tell, I’m not very handy, but I think it worked…
  4. Getting the heat pump
    • The HVAC company we hired removed the old furnace from our basement and installed our heat pump. The whole thing took a day.
    • There are basically 2 components to the heat pump:
      1. A condenser on the outside that looks like a big AC unit. It makes less noise than a conventional AC condenser. But it does blow more air, so when it’s working you can see the plants and tree branches around it moving.
        Here’s what it looks like:
        Stephan_pic_4.png
      2. A fan unit that replaced the old furnace in our basement. This hooks up to the vents in our house. It’s about the same size as the furnace was.
        Here’s a photo of what it looks like:
  5. The post-retrofit audit
    • I then called up Goldfinch again and they did a post-retrofit audit.
    • They also filed the paperwork needed to receive the government rebate.
    • There was a striking change to our home’s energy consumption. Below are snapshots of the reports I got from Goldfinch from before and after the installation. According to these, our home went from consuming an estimated 96 GJ per year to about 62 GJ per year, not bad!
    • Before:



      After:

  6. Our impressions so far
    • Compared to our old furnace the heat pump is a lot quieter.
    • It doesn’t heat or cool by blasting very hot or very cold air, so the increases and decreases in temperature are a little more gradual.
    • We haven’t had much of a chance to test the heating, but the cooling is very strong.
    • All around we’re really happy with it and glad that we did it!

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