Heat Pumps

A heat pump is an air conditioner that can run in both directions. In summer it moves heat from inside your house to the outside, exactly as central air conditioning does. In winter it reverses and moves heat from outdoor air into your house. That sounds counterintuitive when it is cold out, but there is usable heat in outdoor air well below freezing, and moving heat takes far less energy than generating it by burning fuel.

Yes, and equipment sold today performs substantially better in cold weather than heat pumps from a couple of decades ago, which is where much of the skepticism originates. Modern cold-climate models maintain meaningful heating capacity at low outdoor temperatures. That said, capacity does decline as it gets colder, which is why many systems here are configured with supplemental or backup heat for the coldest stretches. We would rather explain that honestly than claim a heat pump handles everything a furnace does with no caveats.

This surprises people switching from a furnace, and it is normal rather than a fault. A furnace produces short bursts of quite hot air. A heat pump delivers a steadier stream of warm air over longer cycles. The room reaches the same temperature, but the air coming out of the vents may feel cool against your skin because it is closer to body temperature. Longer, gentler run cycles are how heat pumps are designed to operate.

Frost on the outdoor coil during cold, damp weather is expected, and the system periodically runs a defrost cycle to clear it. During defrost you may see steam rising off the unit, hear the system change sound, and notice it briefly blowing cooler air indoors. That is all normal operation. What is not normal is the unit staying encased in ice, defrosting constantly, or never clearing — those are worth a service call.

It depends on local electricity and fuel rates, the efficiency of both systems, and how cold the winter runs — so an honest answer requires looking at your actual situation rather than a general claim. Heat pumps move heat instead of generating it, which is inherently efficient. But comparing running costs means comparing your electric rate against your fuel rate, and that math varies by household. We will walk through it with you rather than assert a result.

The work is similar but the schedule is not. A cooling-only system runs a few months a year; a heat pump runs year-round and accumulates roughly twice the operating hours. It is generally serviced twice annually — before cooling season and before heating season — rather than once. There are also heating-specific things worth checking, like defrost operation and supplemental heat, that simply do not exist on a cooling-only system.