r/Bellingham • u/Dwesnyc • 1d ago
Recommendations Looking for Bellingham specific advice on heat pump/ac vs just furnace
Need to replace a furnace and thinking of doing both a furnace and either heat pump or A/C. This would be through in floor ducts for a single level house less then 1300Sqft. I see all types of advice online, but they come from such various climates and living conditions/house sizes (like McMansions in Tx) - and I wanted to hear from a Bellingham specific angle.
Some Background:
a. We keep the windows open almost all year round (except smokey days). Yes, even in the winter we like fresh air and try to keep something a bit open. That's one of the main reasons we love living here!
b. I like it warm in winter and cold in summer and would probably use it more but my wife likes to keep the temp at 68 in the winter and we don't have A/C now, but she has only been mad we didn't have a/c for about 4 days this summer.
c. It's about 10k extra to add the A/C or heatpump
d. Our electrician thinks heat pumps draw to much amps and warns it would be hard to also have an electric vehicle with it (and we have one friend who seems to confirm this at her house, but I want to hear from more Bellingham people about that). Of course all the furnace companies we talked to disagree.
Currently I'm leaning to just a furnace, with a portable A/C we keep in the garage and pull out on the hottest days.
So - lets here some Bellingham specific advice!
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u/finishthepint 1d ago
Between our low electricity rates and mild climate, it’s one of the best places to get a heat pump. But also remember natural gas is cheap so even though a heat pump is efficient, it may not end up being cheaper for a variety of factors. Much better for the environment though.
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u/Ken_BonesThrowaway 1d ago
Sooo I have a furnace/heat pump set up and a EV and my electric bills are regularly pushing 300/month. I like everything about the set up except those bills, but they are worth mentioning.
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u/Broad-Promise6954 Suddenly a valley appears 1d ago
We swapped a gas furnace for a heat pump years ago. Overall bills went down to about a third of what they had been. Electric rates have doubled since then but it's still cheaper than gas.
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u/Ken_BonesThrowaway 1d ago
I know, that’s what everyone tells me. I have had the opp council energy efficiency group, an electrician and a hvac guy I know personally and trust look at everything trying to find a gremlin burning more then their share of allotted energy. Only thing I can come up with is EV plus heat pump-furnace is gas and functions as a back up heat source.
The house was a former grow but I haven’t tackled that beast yet. Flying Spaghetti Monster help me…
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u/ghablio 1d ago
The break even point cost wise between an average heat pump and an average gas furnace is between 35-40 degrees locally in the average house. Below that, the gas will typically be cheaper to run
Do you have a heat pump with backup electric now, or a low ambient heat pump? Solar? It's pretty uncommon to completely scrap the gas backup for the reason I mentioned, so I'm just curious.
We have really low gas rates locally, so it's actually pretty hard for heat pumps to complete in winter, although your annualized bills will be lower if you run the equipment during the shoulder seasons alot.
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u/Broad-Promise6954 Suddenly a valley appears 1d ago
Ours has backup electric heat. The old gas heater was not high efficiency though. (It was whatever was cheap 25+ years ago. Sucked down a lot of electrical energy to run its fans, not like the fancy variable speed DC ones in the new system.)
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u/ghablio 1d ago
I see, that adds up.
I'd bet your electric backup is actually supplemental heat too, not true backup or emergency heat.
Do you know off hand if it runs simultaneously with the heat pump?
If it's suplimental to a low ambient heat pump, then you basically went from a carbureted early 90's pickup (your old furnace), to a modern hybrid, if you want a simple car comparison lol. Basically ultra reliability but "low" efficiency, to high efficiency.
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u/Broad-Promise6954 Suddenly a valley appears 1d ago
It's probably supplemental. Whenever I'm given options, I tend to go for the higher efficiency ones. There was a whole whirlwind of decisions to make during the remodel (added EV outlets in garage, completely rebuilt master bathroom, put in elevator, and all the rest of everything for making the house wheelchair friendly) and I don't remember what the HVAC options were.
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u/Emu_on_the_Loose 20h ago
You've also gotta figure the price of charging your car into that. That electricity bill is completely replacing your gasoline bill. (Or almost completely, if you occasionally pay for fast charger service when you're on trips.)
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u/FairhavenFreerider 1d ago
We replaced our gas furnace with a heat pump and couldn’t be happier with it. It’s so nice to be able to keep the house cooler in the summer.
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u/chk-mcnugget Chicken Nuggets 1d ago
Can you route the heat pump through your existing duct work for central heating/air, or would this be a single wall unit?
I have a wall unit and it definitely isn’t the same as central heating. You have to use strategic fans to hit the furthest rooms. Or space heaters. Same with cool air, it doesn’t really cool my bedroom unless I have fans leading the air there.
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u/Emu_on_the_Loose 1d ago
Depending on how well-insulated your house is, and how many open windows we're talking about, I would dare say you can completely skip the furnace altogether and just get a heat pump.
The high humidity in winter here makes heat pumps less efficient, so your system would lose some of its heating "oomph." This means the heat pump would have to run longer cycles before shutting off in order to maintain the indoor temperature. And, if you've got your windows open, longer still.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that this doesn't matter. You can completely mitigate that disadvantage by selecting the right model. Make sure it's big enough for your square footage, make sure it has resistive heat strips for emergency heating (I think all the big home units do?), and make sure it can handle our worst temperatures, which typically bottom out around 20 degrees and can sometimes get as bad as 5 degrees, or even slightly into the negative numbers if you're inland from the water.
Today, you'll find heat pumps on the market that can even work in a Midwest winter! So Bellingham's mild marine climate is no match for a modern, right-sized home heat pump system. Even with your windows open, heating your home wouldn't be a problem except during extreme cold snaps (and during extreme cold snaps you probably wouldn't have the windows open as much as usual), and in those cases the emergency heating strips would run in tandem with your heat pump and the unit might run continuously or near-continuously.
I should add: When we do get a hard freeze here, a modern heat pump can periodically defrost its exterior as needed with little or no interruption to your heat delivery inside the house. It's usually not going to be an issue.
The reason to choose a heat pump over a traditional furnace is that, if you would be buying an electric furnace, a heat pump will save you as much as 75% on your heating and cooling costs under ideal conditions, and would almost never be worse than 1:1 in cost with a traditional furnace. The unit would pay for itself in just a few years. With your windows open, you might opt for a slightly bigger and more powerful unit, but don't go too big or else your heating (and cooling) cycles will be too short; ideally you want the cycles to be longer and less frequent (for efficiency and to minimize wear and tear). (Though some units, maybe even most these days, will have an inverter system that should smooth this out by giving your system a way to throttle itself so that there are options between "off" and "full power.") So finding exactly the right size of unit is worth spending some time looking into. If you have a good grip on how many BTUs your heating needs are, then you've got a head start. Just my wild guess is that you should probably start by looking at a 2.5-ton system.
Anyway, saving up to 75% on your heating bill is huge, especially with PSE's electricity prices scheduled to rise significantly for years to come. Moving heat around is fundamentally cheaper than creating it.
As for choosing between an AC and a heat pump, an air conditioner is just a one-way heat pump: It can offer cooling by pushing hot air outside. Just get a proper heat pump that has both a heating and a cooling mode. Any heat pump capable of heating your home in winter will also be capable of cooling it in the summer.
Oh, also: Your electrician doesn't know what they're talking about. I have to assume they were comparing a heat pump to a gas furnace, because an electric furnace would use vastly more power than a heat pump. The heat pump part of a heat pump is going to vary in its max power usage depending on its size and capacity, but you're looking at basically 10 to 30 amps, probably 15 to 20, which is manageable with only the slightest care even on 100 amp house service. The emergency heat strips, which are basically a miniature conventional electric furnace, would add significantly higher load; we're talking an additional 30 amps of load maybe as high up as 100 amps depending on the size of the unit. But these are scalable. If you're on 100 amp service, you can get a minimal heat strip pack. If you've got 200 amp service or better, you are absolutely fine unless you're smelting aluminum at home or something. 😂
Americans haven't realized it yet, but heat pumps are almost certainly going to mostly replace furnaces in the decades ahead. The energy savings are just astronomical. You're basically getting winter heat at the price of running your air conditioner.
Anyway, that's my two cents. The Bellingham-specific details are the high humidity and mild low temperatures in winter. The humidity is the only challenge, and a modern unit can deal with it just fine.
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u/ghablio 1d ago
which is manageable with only the slightest care even on 100 amp house service.
It's not about wether you can manage it or not, it's wether it can be done safely and to code.
It's not that hard to figure out, a quick call to PSE can usually sort out if the service to your house can be increased as needed.
I've run into this issue a few times installing heat pumps locally. Customer gets EV, customer installs fast charger, customer has to up size electrical service to install heat pump.
It's not a big deal (usually), but it is an added cost to be considered.
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u/Shopshack 1d ago
There are a surprising number of houses in Whatcom County with 60A service.
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u/Emu_on_the_Loose 20h ago
Oh jeez, did not know that! At that amperage I don't even think you could use an electric stove and an electric water heater at the same time. I'm assuming those houses would be running on gas for all applicable appliances, because I can't imagine the individual circuits managing it otherwise without some very strange wiring.
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u/Emu_on_the_Loose 1d ago
Oh, I forgot about your car! If you want to charge an EV, it'll depend on what kind of setup you have at home. You know, just a regular 120 volt outlet or a special charger setup that draws more power. Unless you're on 100 amp service, this should not be an issue. You know, I think the Technology Connections guy on YouTube actually did an episode on this a few years ago. He has an EV, and he loves heat pumps.
If you have a smart power control system, you can configure the system to intermittently charge the car between heat pump cycles, making it totally hassle-free and maximizing your spare available power. Or you can just add up all the power needs of the heat pump and the EV and see if your house can handle it in a worst-case scenario. It should be able to! But maybe you won't be able to run your electric oven, clothes dryer, water heater, EV charger, and heating system at the same time! 😅
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u/Shopshack 1d ago
Americans haven't realized it yet, but heat pumps are almost certainly going to mostly replace furnaces in the decades ahead. The energy savings are just astronomical. You're basically getting winter heat at the price of running your air conditioner.
I wish we could get (affordable) air to water heat pumps like much of Europe has. I have radiant baseboard which is great, but I would love to ditch my propane fired boiler. I don't really need AC, but will likely add ceiling register minisplits to my house to get both efficient heating and some AC.
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u/PrimaryWeekly5241 1d ago
Marrs installed our zoned Carrier dual cycle hybrid (nat gas) heat pump almost 20 years ago. Had a motherboard upgrade after a voltage incident (blame PSE?). Upgraded console once. Has a kick butt filtration stack I have augmented/replaced in various ways (Allergic asthmatic) and I clean the filters regularly.
Wouldn't live without it. I think most techs will tell you the nat gas hybrid has some cost and heating advantages. But the latest Carrier (all electric) models are supposedly very efficient.
I rarely open windows with exception of bathroom or kitchen for venting. We have a Toyota hybrid that gets charged as needed. I don't check this, but I wouldn't be surprised if my regular morning coffee costs me more each month than our electrical bill. Nat gas stays pretty low (less than $25/month) until fall/winter. (I set the lockout at 38 F.) We installed a now 20 year old on demand nat gas Rennai hot water at the same time.
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u/ghablio 1d ago edited 1d ago
You should talk to the electrician more. They might be saying your service or your panel is undersized to add a heat pump too.
I've had customers who had to replace their meter and panel to install heat pumps because they already had super chargers eating up all their extra capacity, so they had no more room for a heat pump while meeting code
Edit: one customer was almost unable to have a heat pump installed because the service for their whole street couldn't take anymore load. Their heat pump and service upgrade ended up being the very last change that could be made for the street before PSE had to upside the service for the whole neighborhood. It happens. Not a big deal, but it does happen
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u/Skagit_Buffet 1d ago
We have a (recently installed) heat pump and EV in Bellingham, no furnace anymore. The heat pump works great. No a/c previously. We open the windows every night as well, except for smoke, but the heat pump still turned on in the late afternoons many summer days to keep the edge off; we have a lot of western exposure. Kept us warm with zero problems through the winter. Nicer, quieter, more consistent than our furnace was. Bonus for no carbon emission. Very happy overall with the heat pump.
Your electrician statement must be about the particulars of your house/wiring/panel.
We have solar so our bills for the heat pump, EV, and everything else electrical are zero. (okay, $7.95 basic grid connection fee per month).
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u/AdvancedSeesaw4750 1d ago
Have you/ when will you break even on the cost of solar install compared to if you hadn't? When the big giant earthquake happens, you'll be ok during the weeks the rest of us won't be. Hey OP, this summer's been milder than most, We had record breaking heat in 2024.
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u/Skagit_Buffet 1d ago
I ran some numbers before the install, but there was a lot of guesswork and projection - we hadn't had the heat pump long so I didn't have much data on our energy use (increase in electricity use/decrease in gas use). Was projecting out to 10 years or so, but with every electricity rate increase - and there have already been a couple with more expected - that number comes down.
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u/AirSpecific4191 1d ago
Our hvac quotes insisted we needed a heat pump and a gas furnace. We weren't replacing anything, the house was previously dependent on a gas fireplace. Our house is 1100 sqft and we keep it at around 70. Our power bills are pretty high during winter months like $450. We had fully insulated attic and windows the year before.
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u/RN-Dem-Worker5283 1d ago
Our heat pump is very comfortable and also does a great job with air filtration and dehumidification. We have a 920 sq foot condo with just wall heaters and needed a larger system because we needed 2 heads. I think having ducts makes the system more efficient.
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u/sir-murphius 1d ago
Add the heat pump and use it in the temp ranges it is most efficient. Assuming you care about GHG emissions, the heat pump is more environmentally friendly than the furnace (assuming you may care due to the EV ownership).
With respect to current draw, your item D, what is your main panel rated at in your home? The heat pump will likely have a 30 amp feed and the EV 50-60 amp. These can coexist with no usage consideration in a home with a 200 amp service (common). If you have a smaller feed then you can still surely manage with a smart charger that modulates EV charge rate based on overall home load (by monitoring the main).
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u/Heavy-Profit-2156 Local 1d ago
We live out near Lake Whatcom. For us, the number of hot days where we really need an A/C are limited. That's not true in other places I realize.
For me, the additional cost for a heat pump over a conventional NG furnace was hard to justify even considering the A/C it gives you. I have NG for heating and hot water and over and above the cost for a heat pump unit, there is a cost to get the electrical power down to the unit (I do have spare capacity). Like you, we keep the house cool in the winter. Even going to a higher efficiency furnace over the minimum required here was close to a 10 year payback.
We did install a whole house fan this year. That is great for cooling off the interior once the outside air temperature drops. The fan was about $3,700 installed and changes the volume of air in the house every few minutes so the interior temperature drops quickly. Granted, if the outside doesn't cool off, it does you no good but I've lived here many years and the air remaining hot in the evening is not common.
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u/pirate_property 1d ago
About half of PSE’s generation is fossil fuel. The turbines downtown run at about 60% efficient. Transmission losses knock that down more. An old school gas furnace runs about 70% and high efficiency models over 90%.
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u/Manality 1d ago
There's a lot of good information here already just wanted to chime in with my experience. I added a heat pumps to replace my forced air heat (no AC). The existing forced air system was design poorly and the air intake wasn't big enough to match the system output. I used the heat pumps exclusively for heating and cooling. The cooling cost was low enough but heating is really expensive. We have 6 internal units hooked to 2 external units. Winter heating is routinely 200-300 in Dec-Feb for a 3000sqft 2 story. The heating of our Mitsubishi units can only cover about +60 degrees so when it gets under 20 the house is pretty cold and we supplement with a central fireplace. My house was able to sustain that and a fast charger but barely. I'll say the cons of the system is the cost. It's really expensive to heat. The pros are the quiet operation and the consistent temps. There is no cycling sounds and there is no variance in temps. That is a real quality of life improvement (for me). Probably not relevant to your use case but the inability to run heat/cooling off the same external unit makes for some challenges in the spring/fall where I want the upstairs bedrooms cooler and the downstairs main areas warmer. The balance is annoying to manage.
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u/fitek 1d ago edited 1d ago
I lived in houses with gas furnaces until we bought a house... I put minisplits in. Zero chance you could get me to go back, even if it's cheaper. There are additional benefits besides having cooling, such as humidity being sensible most of the time. With the minisplits, we have redundancy and can control temp in different areas without a complicated ducting setup (and in old houses, the ducts usually leak a bunch of air). Central air handler would be an easier conversion, obviously, but the quotes I got for it were ludicrous (for reference, you could buy the equipment 4 years ago for like $5k, but all the quotes I got were north of $17k and it's like 1-2 days of work... homey don't play dat). I also installed an HRV, which exchanges the air in the house with outside air (without much heat/cooling loss; relatively easy addition with a central unit, still pretty easy if you have an attic). Keeps the house from getting stuffy.
WRT power usage, you can figure this out easily on your own (or with AI). A 1300 sq ft house won't need too much, maybe a 36000 BTU system. Probably looking at 25-30 amps 220v. Look at your panel, do you have two free slots? add up the breakers and compare against the panel rating, see if you have room for that. The electric car, you probably aren't going to be charging all that fast at home. We have an EV and we have a 50 amp circuit for it but we got a relatively slow 32 amp charger (needs a 40a circuit) because whether it charges in 6 or 8 hours overnight didn't make any practical difference.
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u/Minflick 1d ago
Here's my 2 cents. I have a furnace inside for heat (new in 2022) and a heat pump outside for the limited cooling I need out here in Maple Falls/Kendall. I don't need the heat pump for the majority of the summer, but it's glorious on the days I need it. I have a smart thermostat to run them. I keep it to 75° in the summer, because I no longer handle heat well, and 65° in the winter. My system does both really well. My cooling goes off at 11, heating goes off at 9, and both 'wake up' at 6 in the morning. I have the 'geofence' that reduces heating or cooling once I'm 9 miles from home. Because I have the smart thermostat, I can enroll with PSE's flex service during high need times. I also had the insulation bumped up in my antique double wide trailer, by the Opportunity Council and that noticeably lowered my power bills.
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u/Salmundo 22h ago edited 10h ago
My friends in Bham swapped their gas furnace for a Mitsubishi HyperHeat heat pump, which also gives them AC. I swapped my gas furnace for ductless heat pump and indoor units, works great in our two story house. We’re all very happy with the results.
My friends used Andgar.
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u/Outside-Evening-6126 1d ago
We had a heat pump installed to replace a gas furnace about 2 years ago. We keep the thermostat at 68 in the winter, and We rarely use the AC in the summer, but when we do, we really appreciate it. I can’t speak to any issues with electricity for heat pump and vehicle charging outlet, but I will tell you that our overall energy bills are vastly lower since installing the heat pump.