HVAC in Squamish: The Questions Homeowners Ask Before They Upgrade, and the Plain Answers

This post is the list of questions we hear at almost every in-home consult in Squamish, and the answers we give. Some of those questions get the same answer in every house, some depend entirely on the house we are standing in. The last part of this post covers a different question altogether: what to look at when you have two very different quotes in front of you. If you are thinking about upgrading your heating and cooling and are not sure where to start, read on my friend, read on.

The question we hear first, in almost every house

"I know I need to upgrade. What should I do?" This is the most common opening line we hear, and the people who ask it most are living with electric baseboards. They usually arrive with an idea of what they want, and it is almost always a ductless mini split. Some are picturing one unit in the living room, and quite a few are picturing a unit in every room of the house.

Our answer depends on which of those two it is. If the idea is one unit in a central, open part of the house, we usually agree with it: for the cost of that one installation, a single ductless unit in the main living space can take a real bite out of a baseboard heating bill, and it is a good first move. If the idea is a unit in every room, we usually suggest looking at a different layout, and the reason comes down to how these systems are sized.

The outdoor unit has to match the combined capacity of every indoor unit connected to it, and each outdoor unit can only carry so many connections, a number that grows as the outdoor unit gets bigger. Once you are trying to serve six or seven rooms, the outdoor unit ends up chosen for the number of connections it can handle rather than for how much heat the house needs, and it comes out significantly oversized. Oversized equipment is expensive to buy, and equipment is a large share of what an installation costs. The homeowner ends up paying for capacity the house will never use.

What we suggest instead depends on the house, and it comes out of the heat loss calculation rather than a standard package. For a lot of baseboard homes that want every room covered, the layout we end up proposing is a hybrid: a ductless unit, either a ceiling cassette or a wall-mounted head, in each of the big open spaces like the great room or the rec room, because those rooms have the load to justify a unit of their own, and a small ducted unit, tucked into a ceiling space, a garage, or a closet, running short duct runs to the bedrooms, bathrooms, den, office, and mud room, because none of those rooms needs a full head to itself. In other houses the better answer is a fully ducted system, and in some a couple of well-placed heads is all the house needs.

Where the hybrid fits, one small ducted unit can often pick up five or six of those smaller rooms, so the whole house might be covered by three connections instead of seven. With fewer connections, the outdoor unit can be chosen for the heat the house actually needs rather than for a connection count, and that is what brings the equipment cost down. Whichever layout the calculation points to, the aim is the same: every room heated and cooled, on a system sized to the house rather than to the number of rooms.

The questions we answer the same way in every house

Can I reuse my ducting? Most of the time, yes. The exception we see is ducting that was run under a concrete slab, which was done in some homes for a period of time. Underground ducts collect condensation, the condensation rusts them, and dirt works its way in and fills them. Even when that ducting still moves air, we suggest at least considering a replacement, because a new system should last fifteen to twenty years or more and it makes sense to set it up on infrastructure that will last as long as the equipment does.

Can I do this on my existing electrical service? Most of the time, yes, and there are two reasons. If we are removing baseboards or another electric heating system, that frees up capacity on the panel. If we are not, BC Hydro allows the existing electrical load to be calculated from your actual smart-meter consumption instead of the theoretical load of everything in the house switched on at once, which is a situation that never happens.

When we run the numbers on real usage, we often find around forty percent more capacity available than the old method showed. You need to have had the same BC Hydro account at that address for a year, and you need to download the hourly data from your account portal, which is straightforward to do.

Can I keep my gas furnace? Can I just add a heat pump to what I have? Yes to both. Adding a heat pump to an existing furnace is a real option, and there are a few ways to do it, so this one always turns into a longer conversation at the consult about how those options compare to replacing the system outright. The comparison is the useful part, and it is different for every house.

Will a heat pump work when it is cold? Will it give enough heat? Yes, if it is designed to. A heat pump that has been sized from a heat loss calculation for your house will heat it on its own all winter. We size for the coldest design condition unless there is a good financial reason not to, and we will get to that reason in the next question.

Do I need backup heat in Squamish? No, not as a rule. The design condition for Squamish is minus nine, and ninety-eight percent of the hours in a winter are minus nine or warmer, whether the house is in Valleycliffe, Brackendale, or up in Garibaldi Highlands. A heat pump designed for that condition carries the winter by itself.

There is one situation where we will suggest a small electric heater kit anyway: if the price jump from a unit rated for minus nine to a unit rated for minus fifteen is large, it can make more sense to install the smaller unit, add a resistive heater kit and a slightly larger circuit to the indoor unit, and let the kit cover the handful of hours a year that fall below the design condition. The heat pump still does ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of the work.

Can it cool the house too? Yes, if it is designed to. Every heat pump we install can run in reverse for summer, and if cooling matters to you, say so at the consult so the design accounts for it from the start. Our post on why a hot Squamish house is usually a heating system question goes deeper on the summer side.

The questions that depend on your house

Can it be done at all? That one gets the same answer every time: yes. Finding the right way to heat and cool a house is the job, and we have not met the house yet where there was no way. Everything after that first yes depends on the building.

Is the system big enough, and is there enough ducting? Those are capacity questions, and capacity comes from a heat loss calculation for your specific house, not from the size of the old furnace and not from a rule of thumb. Some houses need more than the typical residential heat pump can give. Large older homes that are not well insulated, that leak air, and that carry extra loads like several fireplaces, a sunroom that needs to stay warm, or a lot of ventilation might need a much larger heat pump, which costs a lot more, or a supplemental electric or gas heat source alongside it. We would rather tell you that at the consult than have you find out in January.

Can ducting go into this house? Nearly always, though some houses make it hard. High-end homes with exposed post-and-beam ceilings, roofs sitting directly on those beams, and a slab-on-grade floor have no attic and no crawl space, which leaves very few routes for ducting, and those houses can be tricky even for a ductless layout. We always find a way, and in an architectural home that often means hiding the mechanical in plain sight, boxing it in tastefully so the finishes match and it reads as the new shape of the room or that section of ceiling.

Your plans for the house, the thing we most want to hear at a consult

Very few homeowners tell us what they are planning to do with the house in the next few years, and it is the thing we most want to hear at the start of a consult. If you intend to take out a wall, split a room in two, finish the basement, or add a space, tell us before we design anything. Knowing that lets us lay the system out so the change can happen simply later, or so the new space already has heating and cooling accounted for.

There are dozens of small technical decisions inside every design, from how the load gets divided between indoor units to which combinations of equipment work together, and we make assumptions where we have to. Most of those details are ours to carry, and we do not bother you with them. Your plans for the house are the one input that only you can give us, and they change the answer.

Two things people around here believe that are not quite right

The first thing we hear all the time is that a heat pump will not keep up when it gets cold. We are hearing it less than we used to, and the belief comes from somewhere real: older heat pumps and heat pumps that were badly sized or poorly installed did exactly that. The older generation of equipment worked well down to about plus five, and below that its capacity dropped off sharply.

When the outdoor coil ran colder than the air it iced up and had to defrost, and during a defrost cycle those old units would cool the inside of the house, then either switch on an electric resistance heater or leave the house colder than before. The result was a system that spent much of the winter running on backup heat while the owner believed the heat pump was doing the work, with a high electricity bill to show for it. A modern cold-climate heat pump, sized from a heat loss calculation for the house, heats it through the whole winter on its own.

The second thing we hear all the time is that turning the heat down when you are out and up when you are home saves money the way it did with a furnace. A heat pump runs most efficiently when it runs slow and low, more or less continuously, and it does not produce the blast of very hot air a furnace does. When a house is allowed to cool, everything in it cools: the walls, the floors, the furniture. A furnace can push through that with a big burst of heat, and a heat pump cannot.

The air warms up, the thermostat says the house is at temperature, and the room still feels cold because all of those surfaces are radiating cold back at you. The thermostat itself is mounted on a cold wall, so it can misread how fast the air is warming and overshoot or undershoot the setting, and you end up uncomfortable either way. Set it to a comfortable temperature and leave it there.

Going away for a week is the exception, and turning the heat down for a trip is the right call. Our recommendation is a setback of about six degrees: if you keep the house at twenty-one, fifteen is a good temperature to leave it at. Do not take it down to five, because cold interior surfaces bring condensation, and hardwood floors and artwork do not like that kind of swing. Then turn the heat back up six to twelve hours before you walk in the door, so the house has time to come all the way back up to temperature and is comfortable the moment you arrive.

Comparing contractors: what to look at when the quotes do not match

There is a kind of contractor now that has turned heat pump installation and furnace replacement into a commodity: one-day changeouts, fixed prices posted online, a set package. We are not going to knock that model, because sometimes it is the right choice for the right house and the right homeowner. What we can tell you is what has to give for a fixed price and a fixed day to work, so you can weigh it with open eyes.

The only way to install at that price is to do less. Simon has installed a great many systems himself, and when an installer has been told the job has ten hours and then the truck has to leave, there is no time to make sure every joint is sealed and every detail is done properly, whatever checklist the company advertises.

If the job goes perfectly, the result might be fine. If it hits a surprise, either the surprise gets skipped or the fixed price starts climbing. A contractor who comes to the house and looks at what it needs is going to find those surprises ahead of time, so you can decide what to do about them before anyone has a wrench out.

Sometimes what that contractor finds changes the plan entirely, including the order of operations. If the house is leaky, the right advice might be to tighten it up first, so the heat pump you install later does not have to be oversized to keep up. If your budget covers either new windows or a heat pump this year, doing the windows first can be the better sequence: get one more winter out of the old furnace, knowing it will cost a bit more to run, then install a smaller heat pump next year that may not need auxiliary heat at all.

Since auxiliary heat is often what pushes a house into an electrical panel upgrade, the right order can take a whole expense off the table. A proper professional opinion is what tells you which order is right for your house, and a package price cannot.

Equipment is the other thing to ask about. A contractor selling a single package price has often bought a case lot of one model, chosen because it was the cheapest available, and a house brand that a contractor sells under their own name is generally at the low end of the market on quality. When one size is what is in the warehouse, one size is what you will be told you need.

Your equipment should be specified from a heat loss calculation done for your house, and any quote that skips that step is guessing at what you need. The guess might work out, and it might not.

Meet the person quoting your house, if you can, and ask them questions. What did they find? What do they recommend, and why? What is their view of the system you have now, and does it actually need replacing?

We have been to many homes where the owner was sure the furnace was done, and after looking at it we told them it could be replaced if they wanted to be proactive, and it did not need to be: there were one or two issues that could be repaired for another three to five years of service. Replacing early is not always the greener choice either, because manufacturing new equipment carries a real environmental cost. If you do not think the contractor in front of you would ever tell you not to buy, think twice about the quote.

Squamish HVAC questions people type into Google

Do heat pumps work in cold weather in Squamish?

Yes, when the system is sized from a heat loss calculation for the house. Squamish's design condition is minus nine, and a heat pump designed for that carries the winter without backup heat. Older or undersized units are where the "it can't keep up" reputation came from.

Can I add a heat pump to my existing gas furnace?

Yes. A heat pump can be added to an existing furnace in a few different configurations, and the consult conversation is about how those options compare against replacing the system, in cost and in how the house will run.

Do I need an electrical panel upgrade for a heat pump in BC?

Often not. Removing electric baseboards frees up capacity, and BC Hydro allows the load to be calculated from a year of your actual hourly consumption instead of the theoretical maximum, which often shows considerably more room on the panel than expected.

Should I turn my heat pump down at night or when I'm out?

No, apart from trips away. Heat pumps run most efficiently at a constant setting, and a house that has been allowed to cool feels cold long after the thermostat says it has recovered. For a week away, a setback of about six degrees is fine, with the heat turned back up several hours before you get home.

Bring your questions

If any of the questions above are ones you have been sitting on, an in-home consult is where they get answered for your actual house, with the heat loss calculation done and the options laid out with numbers attached. We will tell you what we would recommend and why, including when the recommendation is to repair what you have or to do the windows first, and the decision stays with you. You can book an in-home consult five days a week, and nothing gets decided on the spot unless you want it to.

If you want to read more before that, our guide Thinking About a Heat Pump? Read This First covers what to know before you spend anything.

We are Porcupine Mechanical, a Squamish-based mechanical contractor working from the North Shore up through the Sea-to-Sky, from North Vancouver to Squamish to Whistler, on residential heating, cooling, and ventilation. Our whole thing is doing it efficiently and doing it right the first time.