001So we have a very packed program. So we expect you that you have a lot of questions. So we will start promptly now. Introduction. I just want to introduce a few people that helped this come about. You know one of them is Samantha programming sustainability corrector. Sorry. Okay. Then there's uh Nina. Where's Nina? Nina helped us with the pizza and Florence my wife who is doing the registration. And then from from Hopkin Jeff Roland and Nicole which which are the two people from Hopkarine which are all be part of the uh the panel tonight. Uh so the panel members will actually introduce themselves later in the during the program so I don't have to do all that. So there are three activities tonight. There's a presentation >> okay there's a presentation by Bob Zog which
002you can see over here. Okay. followed by a presentation by Rowan Ganison who is not here yet. He's still stuck in traffic. So hopefully by the time we finish with the first presentation he'll be all set followed by uh sec each of these presentations followed by a short question and answering session only like 10 minutes and we hope that the rest of the questions you can ask during the question and answer panel. So the panel will be some people from Ashland, some people from Hopkinon and they they will give their experience about uh how they like heat pumps and you know and you can ask them questions. We'll we'll hold the uh the we'll send you the materials from the speakers if you signed up online. If you did not sign up online and want
003to receive the the the Ashant or Hopkin newsletter and the presentation materials, please sign up over here on the uh signup sheet. Um I want to say just a few words about Energize Ashland if you're not familiar with that. So Energize Ashland is an all volunteer organization of your neighbors who want to encourage families to take local actions to address a climate change emergency. We do this through education like this event and we'll be holding other events during the coming year. We have a website energizeland.org with a lot of information about different actions you can take and where you can find testimonials of how your neighbors are solving their problems from big things like solar and heat pumps and EVA EVs to sustainable gardening and recycling and reducing plastics. Please check us out. Okay. Uh
004we also email a monthly newsletter with interesting information and current events. I think Hopkins will talk about what what they're doing in their hoping. Enjoy the presentation and enjoy the pizza. >> So next uh Bob Zach will start his presentation. We hope that the other person will come in time. >> Okay. Well, thank you everyone for joining us tonight. It's a great crowd. Um I know it's mostly for the pizza, but that's okay. We'll pretend you came to hear about heat pumps as well. Let's get right into it. Uh first, a quick introduction to my organization, the Heatsmart Alliance. Basically, our mission is to promote heat pumps throughout Massachusetts. And we consider applications of home heating and cooling as well as water heating. We're an allv volunteer organization. We have over 145 members in over
00555 communities. And our approach is to educate, coach, and collaborate. When I say educate, it's events like this that we talk to. It's also our website and some technical papers we put out. We also provide one-on-one coaching to residents who'd like to learn about heat pumps. Unfortunately, we we aren't currently active in Hopkin or Ashlin right now, but if there's anyone interested in starting a coaching program in either of those communities, we'll definitely talk. Uh, and we collaborate with like-minded organizations. And to keep ourselves honest, we do not accept referral fees or donations from manufacturers or installers. Okay. So, why consider heat pumps for your home? Let's first take a look at how we use energy in Massachusetts. The U pie chart on the left shows that almost 30% of our total energy use in
006Massachusetts is associated with our homes. And that does not count our vehicles. If you break down that uh 30% about 54% is home heating, 5% home cooling, 18% water heating, and maybe 2% for clothes drying. Those are all loads that can be served by heat pumps. That adds up to about 80% of the energy in our home can be supplanted with heat pumps. So, it's a big deal. If you'd like to decarbonize your home, there's really three basic steps. First and foremost, weatherize your home. That means to insulate an air seal to the fullest practical extent. Reduce the heat leak. Reduce the heat gain first before you start putting in fancy equipment. You all should be eligible for a home energy assessment at no cost through the Massave program. If you hadn't have one of
007those assessments in a couple of years, consider signing up. They'll refer you to they'll establish what weatherization measures make sense for your home and let you know what uh incentives you're eligible for and they are quite substantial. So, that's really a great thing to do if you haven't done it recently. Step two, electrify. This means converting your equipment that's using fossil fuels over to high efficiency electrical equipment. And that's where the heat pumps come in. Step three, procure your electricity from renewable sources. Now, you can put in rooftop solar, but you don't have to. both of your towns are have community choice aggregation programs that offer a 100% renewable energy product and check and make sure that you're getting that product because you do have to opt into that uh special product, but you can
008get that 100% renewable energy without putting the panel on your roof if you'd like to go that route. So, what is a heat pump? We all know that heat naturally flows from warm places to cool places. But if we want to move heat from a cooler place to a warmer place, we need to add energy. We need to use a mechanical device to do it. And that is what a heat pump is. So, it's literally pumping heat from a cool place to a warm place. Now, we all have heat pumps in our homes, but we don't really call them heat pumps or air conditioners or dehumidifiers. Our refrigerators all use the same basic technology that a heat pump uses. So, this is not anything new. And they're available for applications of home heating and cooling.
009That's one piece of equipment that both heats and cools your home. For water heating, you can also get them for uh clothes dryers and for pool heating. We won't talk about, sorry, I flipped back on you there. We won't talk about clothes drying and pool heating today, but just be aware they those products exist. This uh simple illustration shows how a heat pump can be more than 100% efficient. In this example, we're taking one unit of electricity. We're using that electricity to pump two units of heat out of the outdoor air to deliver a total of three units of heat into the home. So, this particular example, the efficiency would be 300%. Some heat pumps can do even better. And just a reminder, the heat pump can cool and heat. Provides both functions with one
010piece of equipment. What are the benefits of heat pumps? Substantial reductions in carbon pollution. We'll talk about that more in a second. Safer. No risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. No risk of explosions from fossil fuels. They're quieter than most air conditioners by far. the new equipment. Superior year round comfort. This one is the one that's the toughest to appreciate until you've experienced it. Our bodies are really tuned into temperature. As this illustration shows, most of our conventional equipment operates with an onoff cycle. It's either on or it's off. There's no in between. That causes temperature fluctuations in the home as shown by this orange line. Modern heat pumps operate at variable speed. They put out just the right amount of cooling or heating that your home needs. Very quiet, very efficient, very comfortable, very uniform
011temperature. Again, you have to try it to really appreciate it. So, regarding the carbon pollution, uh this chart is comparing different heating technologies for the heating season in a typical Massachusetts home, a 2,000 square foot example here. This is not your home. This is a generic example and we're showing uh comparing how much carbon pollution each of these heating technologies produces. As you can see, the two types of heat pumps. We'll talk more about the ground source and air source in a minute, but they top the chart with substantially lower emissions. Now, here's the beautiful part of a renewable energy. You purchase your electricity from renewable sources or use solar panels to generate your electricity. you reduce those emissions to virtually zero. Okay, let's talk about the different types of heat pumps. Uh first step
012in the process, look at what you've got now in your home. There's two basic types of distribution systems for heating. One is hydronic where you typically will have a boiler in the basement. You'll have you may have um baseboards in most cases and if you have an older home, you might still have steam radiators. You can might even have uh radiant floor heating. That's a form of hydronic heat. So that's hydronic. Forced air systems on the other hand have duct work in your home. You circulate air through the home. You return air down to a furnace in the basement. It may have an air conditioner on top of it if you have air conditioning. And then you return conditioned air to the heated space using the heated air. If you have hydronic um systems, the
013most people opt for the duckless mini split heat pump. And this uh includes an outdoor unit that is connected to an indoor unit that's commonly mounted on a wall, not always. and is connected with two copper lines. No duck work required. So that unit in the room that it's mounted will heat and cool that room. A variation on this is a multi-spread system. Same concept, but now you have one outdoor unit connected to a multitude of indoor units. And with either of these two variations, you can have a whole range of different types of indoor units. There's floor mount, there's wall mount, there's ceiling recessed, and there's even a horizontal ducted system that can use one indoor unit to serve two adjacent rooms. So, these are all options. And you can keep your fossil fuel
014system as backup heat on extreme days. If you have forced air distribution, most people opt for an air source heat pump, a central ducted air source heat pump. The outdoor unit here looks a lot like a conventional air conditioning outdoor unit except we put it on a pedestal to keep it out of the snow and ice. Uh I'll talk about two variations on this. The first variation I'll talk about we call a hybrid system. It has a what looks like a conventional uh furnace indoors, but it has the uh a coil for the heat pump uh on top of it. And so this particular unit can use either the heat pump or the furnace with fossil fuel fired furnace to heat the home. That's why we call it hybrid. On the other hand, you can
015go all electric have a very similar looking system, but in this case there is no fossil fuel furnace. There is instead either just heat pump with no backup or you can have electric resistance backup elements built into this air handling unit. And those air handling units, I've shown examples in basements, but sometimes these might be in atticss. It depends on your home and how many zones you have. And if you want to go for the ultimate in energy efficiency, there's the ground source heat pump, also known as geothermal. This type of heat pump extracts the heat from the ground or dumps the heat during the cooling season into the ground, which stays at a steady 55 degrees year round. So it allows the heat pump to operate very efficiently. You have an indoor uh unit
016that looks a lot like the air handler for an air source heat pump except this uh indoor unit has the entire heat pump typically has the entire heat pump packaged within it and it's uh connected up to your duct work. A caveat here, your existing duck work does need to be suitable for a heat pump. Uh, and an HVAC uh technician can tell you whether your duck work is suitable or whether it can be made suitable. It has to be the right diameter or cross-sectional area. It should be well insulated and well sealed. Sometimes that can be done uh after the fact, but that is uh one caveat. If for any reason your duck work is not suitable, you're still a candidate for the duckless systems we talked about a minute ago. Okay, a little
017bit more about the ground source versus the air source. Ground source heat pump is 50 to 70% more energy efficient than even the air source heat pump, which is already very energy efficient. That means less carbon pollution, lower energy costs, better outdoor aesthetics. Once everything is done and rellandscaped, there is no mechanical equipment outside of your home. Okay? It's all underground. And most ground source heat pumps have a factory packaged refrigeration system, which means the installers don't have to make any refrigerant line joints in the field. And that improves reliability because that's uh one thing. Uh some systems occasionally you'll get a refrigerant leak and it's almost always associated with a joint that's made in the field. Air source on the other hand much lower first cost. No disturbance of landscaping during the installation. When
018you put in a ground source heat pump you have to be prepared for well drilling rigs to come in and drill bore holes. You have to be prepared for back hose to dig ditches to run the lines to your home and it can make quite a mess. All that gets cleaned up, get landscaped over, but there is a temporary uh issue. Does require some space for all that equipment to come in. If you have a very small lot that can be a constraint and currently um it's very difficult to use a ground source heat pump if you do not have duct work or cannot install retrofit the duct work into your home. Okay, let's not forget about a water heating. This is an underappreciated use of heat pumps. Heat pump water heaters, also called hybrid
019water heaters, can improve the efficiency of your water heating by over 60%, give you very fast paybacks compared to conventional electric water heating. And many in uh plumbers will put them in or even HVAC contractors will install them. Not all, but many will. This is actually getting a little easier. The Mass Safe program is just launching a heat pump water heater marketplace. So, um that'll be interesting to take a look at and see uh how that makes it it may make it much easier to buy a heat pump water heater because they'll figure it out. uh give you a quote and uh line you up with an installer uh right online. And that's the uh link. And again, this these will be these links will uh go out to those of you who are uh
020signed up to uh receive the packet here. And I should have mentioned this, but basically the most heat pump water heaters, not all. You have a conventional uh water storage tank like you would with most storage water heaters, but the little box on top is what contains the heat pump that actually extracts heat from the air in your basement or your mechanical room and heats the water with that with that heat. So, it's all packaged uh before it gets to your home. Uh there's no uh that's why a plumber can put these in without any uh HVAC skills. Okay. Okay. Well, in the next speaker, we'll talk a lot more about cost in terms of first cost and uh some of the incentives that you're eligible for, but I do want to cover uh heating
021costs uh energy costs for heating for typical season. Now, we're looking at the same 2,000 square foot home that we looked at for the carbon pollution here. And a very important piece here, uh, I think you're all under Eversource and even if you're, uh, going through the Ashland or Hopkin Community Choice aggregation program, you're still getting delivery from Eversource. Okay? So, you're still getting an Eversource bill. You will be eligible with a heat pump as of November 1st of this year. you will be eligible for a substantial discount on your electric rate during the six-month period of u November through April. And so these numbers reflect that discount you'll be eligible for. And those discounts are now making heat pumps, air source heat pumps competitive costwise, energy costwise with natural gas. And up until now,
022we've seen heat pumps costing a little bit more to operate. So, this is a break even uh point now, at least for this winter. There are plans for next the next heating season, 2026, 2027, to go even further with these discounts. We don't know for sure that that's going to happen, but the ball is uh rolling in that direction. Uh, I'm using Ashlin Community Choice uh pricing here, but I just learned from Jeff tonight that uh Hopkin is just gotten your uh community choice program uh underway and I think your pricing is quite similar to Ashlin's close enough anyway that I think these charts apply. So, some good news there. But again, there's always caveats. This comparison is really for this heating season. Quite honestly, I'm looking I'm using fossil fuel prices from last winter.
023So, those fossil fuel prices will actually go up. I just don't have the new data yet. But going forward, we don't know. Future years over the life of your equipment, these prices are going to go back and forth and up and down. So don't put super amount of weight on energy costs in your decision but this gives you an idea what to expect in the short term. One more slide on a financial analysis. Um just some cautions. It's great to do a financial calculation whenever you make a big investment, but it's important to use the right inputs, right? So you have to buy heating and cooling equipment for your home anyway. So, make sure that you look at the cost difference between the heat pump and the air conditioning and heating system you would have
024to buy if you didn't buy the heat pump. So, look at the cost differences. Be sure to reflect the rebates, the loans and tax credits you might be eligible for, and we'll hear more about that and in a bit from the Laminer Collective folks. And there are some changes coming up that you you'll need to know about. And depending on your value system, you may want to assign some value to the reduction in carbon pollution. You may want to consider that it may improve the resale value of your home. And there are studies that support the fact that heat pumps do increase resale value. And as I mentioned earlier, the comfort benefits, you know, what benefit, what cost, what value would you place on those? And as I mentioned, we have to accept the uncertainties
025in all these calculations. The energy cost comparisons may vary over time. So just briefly, what should your action plan be? Um, first of all, and this is really the most important thing I have to say tonight, the typical life expecties of most heating and cooling systems, you know, 15 years, something like that. I mean, boilers can last longer, but 15 years is a good round number. Water heating, maybe 7 to 10 years. If your equipment is in this age range or older, uh even though it's very tempting to wait for things to fail, if you wait for your equipment to fail, you will be in an emergency replacement situation and you may not have time to evaluate heat pumps and you even if you wanted to, you may end up putting in conventional equipment because
026you don't have the time. you've got an emergency and you're locked into fossil fuels for another 15 or 20 years. So, please at least do enough research that you're comfortable that you can uh make the decision that's right for you. Don't wait until you've got water in the basement or no heating or a similar crisis in the home. Certainly, if you don't have air conditioning and you want to add it, this is a perfect time to consider heat pumps. And if you're doing a major renovation, doing an addition, or building a new home, absolutely perfect time to put in heat pumps. And heat pumps can cover 100% of your uh heating loads, those situations. To get started, uh this is our website, heatspariance.org. There's lots of other information out there and we link to a
027lot of sources. As I mentioned earlier, make sure you get your nocost mass save home energy assessment and you can sign up at this link. Um, even if you're unable to get a individual coach from a volunteer group like ours, the Massave program offers decarbonization consultations and you can sign up online to request those. Once you've requested a consultation through Mass Save, your consultant can also um authorize a quote comparison and they can do a really terrific job at comparing quotes for you and telling you uh help you evaluate those quotes. We always recommend getting multiple quotes. You're going to learn something different from every installer who walks through your home. They'll have different ideas about how to do things. And this is not just a first cost decision. and this is your home. It's
028your comfort. Make sure you consider the reputation of the installer, the value of the equipment they're proposing, your confidence in them to do a good job, as well as the first cost. And uh that's the end of my uh prepared remarks. Thank you for listening. Uh sure. I'll touch on maintenance. Um, it's not that different from heating and cooling equipment you may be using today. Um, generally manufacturers will recommend an annual uh uh service call just to make sure everything's working correctly. Uh, you know, I'm not going to tell you not to do what the manufacturers say, but I personally do it every two years for my heat pump. You know, use your judgment. One thing I will say, if you have fossil fuels in your home, don't skip that step. Make sure you get
029it checked at least once a year by a professional. That could be a safety issue. With your heat pump, it's more an efficiency issue. Maybe it's not working as well as it should be and you don't know. Um, like anything, uh, you know, you do have to re clean or replace air filters periodically and assuming if you can do that yourself, that's less you have to hire professionals to do. Um, but in terms of um, you know, assuming you're thinking of reliability as well, um, I think it's fair to say that heat pumps are generally as reliable as an air conditioner would be. It's really a very similar piece of equipment. But yeah, you can have problems. Um, you can have charge leakage or something like that that you know can happen. So, um, that's
030kind of what to expect. I would I think that's fair. Great question. And you're right to call me out in my oversimplification. I'm really comparing to what you probably have today in your home. But if you're buying brand new equipment and you're willing to pay a little bit of a premium for it, you can get variable speed um variable capacity furnaces, for example, most of them are like two firing rates, but usually they're so oversized you never even use the higher higher firing rate. So they almost are on off. Uh, and if you ask for it, you can get a inverter-driven air conditioner. But if you just ask an installer for a quote on an air conditioner, you will not get that quote. You'll get an on-off system that barely meets minimum efficiency standards. But
031you can match the comfort benefits of air conditioning by buying an inverter-driven air conditioner. But when you do, you're going to pay just as much as you would for a heat pump given the incentives we have to offset the cost difference. So, um there's not much advantage to going with that. It's a high efficiency uh you know, very comfortable air conditioner when you can get a heat pump and get more for your money. >> Just keep me honest. >> No, you're right to do that. Thank you. So yeah, it's it's a bit of a mess right now to be honest. These rates, whether you're National Geared or Unatil or Eversource, are supposed to go into effect on November one. Unatil is the only company that I think is taking uh signups right now. But what
032and and I think I'm jumping the gun a bit. Laminer Collective will probably repeat some of this, but it's worth repeating. Uh most of you have Eversource. Eversource does have a website up, but they're not taking the signups yet. If you had a heat pump installed and you got a rebate from Massave since January 1, 2019, they should automatically enroll you. You'll want to verify that. Other people have heat pumps. You're going to have to enroll, but watch the website and see when uh that comes live that you can actually sign up. They don't have much time left to do that to get you signed up by November one. That's what we're all worried about is a lot of people will miss the opportunity because it's coming so late and not being well publicized. >>
033So, you're considering what fuel are you using for your water heater? >> I have what you call the hydronic system boiler. >> Oh, it's fired off your boiler. >> Natural gas. >> Fired off. >> Yeah. Um, so that probably you probably need that's a good question for the decarbonization consultations. We don't have quite enough time right now to go into all the details we have to talk about to cover that. Uh, a lot of that decision will depend on what other decisions you make about heat pumps for your home. But if you if you did decide to uh for instance just get off a gas and convert over to heat pumps and electric all the way um you know you could use the heat pump water heater. Now in terms of tankless options certainly you
034could put in a gas fired tankless water heater. Um but uh if you want to get the carbon pollution benefits um there's no heat pump option that will no tankless heat pump option that is even practical. You do need a tank to do that. So uh conventionally it is correct to say that electric heat is expensive but that's when we're thinking about electric baseboard that operates at a much lower efficiency than the heat pumps. So, the heat pumps, um, you know, the chart I showed did, I didn't point it out, but it did show electric baseboard on there, and that was like the most expensive option you could pick. Uh, but heat pumps can cut that by a factor of two or three. So, um, if you're, you know, spending $6,000 on electric resistance or
035electric baseboard heat, you might spend 2,000 if you switch to a heat pump. So rough numbers though, you should uh in your case, if you, you know, got a competent installer and if he designed and installed the heat pump system, well, you should be able to match your current energy costs roughly. It wouldn't save you a ton of money, but it wouldn't cost you more to heat your home. Yeah. And that's again, that's another thing the details you can get in. there's compromises. What can you do with one or two heads versus trying to do the whole job? Yeah, there's a lot of trade-offs to be made. Uh, a great question. The answer is yes, there are alternative systems that are split systems where you can put the evaporator as it's called outside. Uh, even
036uh some are considered solar assisted. They put a nice black panel on the side of your home. Um, but those systems are available. They're less common. Uh, I generally recommend those if your water heater is in a small closet area where you can't get proper ventilation around it. Um, to make a long story very short, um, even though the heat pump is extracting heat typically out of your basement and some of that heat is coming in through your house and your heating system and you think, gee, I must be chasing my tail here. this can't work. It actually does work out. When I present the numbers up here on the efficiency and the costs of running a heat pump water heater, I'm taking into account the fact that it's extracting heat from your house that
037you have to make up. So, I've already taken that rated performance that might be like an efficiency of 400. They call it UEF energy the uh Department of Energy rating factor that might be more like 300% after you account for the impacts on your home heating it's still 300%. Uh as far as I know you're free to keep those. Um, the only reason you might feel encouraged to go fully electric with all that would be you might just say, um, gosh, why should I bother buying gas and paying a fixed monthly cost to have the gas supply if I'm only using a little bit of it? But that would be your choice. The heat pump water heater. Yeah. Um, most of them do require 240 volt service. So, if you don't have that near your
038water heater, you'd have to get an electrician to run that line. Um, >> be run from the panel or does it have to come from the grid? >> Well, it can be run from the panel if you've got the capacity in your panel to provide it given all your other loads. >> Just assuming you don't. >> So, you have two you have two most homes, a lot of homes have 240 volt loads already. Um and um you do have 240 volts available at your panel. >> Okay. >> But um to finish the question to finish the answer, there are some products that have been introduced heat pump water heaters that do run on 120 volts. You can plug them into 120 volt outlet. From what I've seen, the manufacturers are not necessarily recommending them in
039New England. But I don't know why they wouldn't work as long as you size the tank appropriately. So, but the short answer is yeah, generally you do need to account for the cost of wiring if you don't have it in place already. So, for a central ducted heat pump, uh yes, it would work the same way as a conventional furnace or conventional air conditioner in that respect. Well, um, heat pumps do get a bad reputation because, you know, decades ago, the products available that were installed typically did not work well in cold temperatures. If you buy something that is uh qualified under the Mass Safe program, it's probably or will be a a cold climate heat pump and um it should operate well down to low temperatures. Now whether it will do your entire heating
040load or just most of it that depends how the you ask the installer to size it also depends in how well did you do with your air sealing and insulation before you switched over to heat pumps. So it's a it's a conditional yes you can do everything with a heat pump. Um but yeah it depends a lot on how how the heat pump is sized and designed you know how the installer sizes it. Okay. >> Okay. >> Hello everybody. Hi. Uh my name is Hanan. I'm from Laminar Collective, one of the founders. And first of all, I'm really happy to see how many people are here in the room who care about heat pumps. This is what me, Rohan, and my other co-founder Kit do every single day all day. And it's what we love
041to do, what we love to talk about as well. And so you had a question for Bob. You were like, "What does it cost to get a heat pump?" And that's what we always ask all the time and that's the first question we get when we tell people hey you should get heat pumps and you cannot find the answer for how much this costs to get a heat pump right you look online people say oh range anywhere from 20 to $100,000 yeah that's helpful helpful so we got we started our this organization lear collective to answer that question and we did by two ways the first thing we started by doing pricing benchmarks so what we did is we took a home of a friend of ours who want to get heat pumps and said,
042"Okay, instead of doing three quotes, which is recommended, let's go all the way. Let's get 30 quotes and see what the actual spread of the pricing is for a heat pump." And imagine this is the same home recommending the same amount of equipment and the range spread anywhere from 20,000 to $60,000. How you know which one's the right price? Of course, there's the Abode price comparison or quote comparison tool that you could submit or call Abode. It's fantastic. Um, but it's a lot of work, right? Everyone here is busy. He has stuff to do. It's hard to figure out. Um, so yeah, this that's what we do all day is publish research. You can look us up on Google. Um, we publish uh breakdowns of the pricing of heat pumps, what it should cost for
043different types of homes, and also we run bulk buying deals. So Rohan here is going to sort of share a pricing menu that we put together. So order to sort of verify or to prove how much he pumps should cost, we run these bulk deals where if we get 50 people to 100 people to all b to all buy together at the same time, we could then guarantee prices around 20 to 30% below market rate. It's sort of a cost model. Um but what we found, it's also great for negotiating with contractors. So, if you're getting a heat pump on your own because, you know, our both deals are pretty limited and we don't really run as often, you can show your contractor saying, "Hey, I saw someone else here can offer a price at
044this level. Why is it higher?" Right? The contractor should be able to answer those questions. A lot of times what we found is that they don't have an answer, right? And that means you're probably being priced out of a heat pump or they're trying to take advantage of, you know, where you are uh or or what your needs are. Yeah. So, we've been doing this for two years. We have a newsletter that we publish all of our articles on, our research. We have around a hundred or around a thousand members who subscribe. We have even and we've sort of we created or done 200 installations in the Boston metro area. So that means we get a bunch of homes together around 50 people price negotiate together with a contracting or contracting partner and say okay
045contractor in exchange for a lower price heat pump you we guarantee you this amount of work. We found that people or contractors love it especially in the shoulder seasons. So if you ever talk about pricing um as Bob said a lot of people get their heat pumps or their new heating equipment in times of distress. It's the summer, heat wave has hit, your AC is to put or it's winter, blizzard hits, your heating system is gone. Now you need a heat pump. What are you going to do? You're going to call the contractor who's probably getting 100 other calls and the contractor contractor will probably say, "Hey, I could do this, but it's going to cost more." So, a lot of people are getting price out or priced during the most vulnerable periods of of
046the home's life. So, definitely if you're trying to switch or thinking about switching, get it done before something breaks. and even better get it done during a shoulder season. So yeah, I'll share a bunch of trends. So this is an example. We try to do pricing breakdowns for the most typical type of homes in New England. We do colonial homes. We just released a research paper on Cape houses. Cape houses is a typical square box, bedrooms on top, living room and kitchen on the bottom. That's pretty much it. Easy. Um what we found is the typical is three bedrooms has five zones. So that's five mini splits in the home and no dark work needed. And the price what it should come down to is around $24,750 pre-rebate. So postrebate that's around $15,000. That's what
047it should be. Right? We found again it could range anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 just for that install which is not really doesn't really make sense as you see with the menu pricing that we pass around different houses also require different types of setups. So a lot of times when we publish this research we get some feedback or great feedback from contractors saying hey you really this this can't really be an applesto apples comparison and we're like absolutely made sense right I'm sure everyone here has a different house from each other someone lives in 1800's house someone lives in the 1900s or or 2000s and of course based on how it was built and based on the structure it's going to take more or less work to get done but this pricing menu that we've
048broken down gives a good guidance into sort of what it takes to install the uh the system and what we also figured out is that we were able to negotiate or pin down the price of a complexity adder. So this is let's say you're on a third story uh unit of a triple decker or a multif family unit that's going to cost a little more right people need to get down ladders people need to climb up it's extra time for the contractor and what we found also is that contractors are not really good at communicating that right they give you one price and like here's the price what it takes to get a heat pump take or leave it where we really focus on transparency we want to tell you heat pump should cost this
049much and this is the exact reasons why here's the equipment here's the overhead head and what we found is that equipment should cost around 45% of the job labor is around 25%. And then for a fair price for the contractors, they want 30% overhead, which means that's what it takes to pay their sub their workers, pay for their vans, pay for their insurance, pay for their tools. And this is like a fair price. Again, if you you should feel free and empowered to ask the breakdowns of heat pump or heat pumps when you get the quote. It should equal to around, you know, 45, 25, 30 split. Yeah. And going back to what Bob said is when things go bad, try not to panic. Try to test your systems early during the solar seasons where
050you can live with, you know, no heat or no AC for a few weeks or hope hopefully as short amount of time as you can. But we found there are trends in pricing. So contractors are sensitive to demand. If they're being booked out for months and they're getting a call every day, they're going to price you higher, right? Because if they're getting enough demand, why why lower the price? We found the two peaks are in this the middle of summer. This is June, July, August, when heat waves are hitting, you're in your house, and you're like, "This is not for me anymore. It's time to get some AC or time to get a heat pump." The prices will be on average around 30% higher than what they should be. And you also get a peak
051during around the first cold spike of the winter. That's when people turn their ACs on. It's like, "Oh no," or sorry, turning their heaters on and saying, "Oh no, it's not warm air is not blowing out of here. What do I do?" Most contractors are booked out for months after that. So you have these sort of two dips in demand. You have one in right now around springtime or sorry the around the beginning of fall time and you have also around springtime when winter's over. So everyone who had broken heaters got them fixed and now there's not a lot of work for contractors and that's also where we do our negotiation for our bulk deals. So we go to a contractor and say hey you probably have no work and and they're like yeah you're
052right you know we're waiting for the the next wave to come by. It's like, well, we'll guarantee you work for the next five months if you'd grant us lower price. And that has shown, you know, a lot of success in in our bulk deals. I'm also here to talk about a little about some policy changes going on. Um, if you guys are keeping on track with the Massave incentive program, the Massave incentive program, um, it's on a you get a rebate based on a per ton basis basis. Per ton is based on the size of your system. You can talk to your contractors about that. Um, right now it's $3,000 per ton and now it's being decreased around 12% to $2,600 per ton. And the total maximum rebate you could get is decreasing from 10,000
053to $9,000. Yeah, it's pretty much the most important key. So you will have you also see at the at the end of the year a lot of contractors contractors trying to sort of have a sales push saying hey rebates are about to decrease due pump now lock it in and else is going away forever don't worry about it it's only decreasing by 10%. So it it's worth more to wait until shoulder season instead of trying to get it right before the year ends. Yes, the new winter rate. I think we had a question on this. Um, we have a numbers. So, Lamar Kleta was actually one of the only of two people who spoke at the DPU, the Department of Public Utilities to try to push for these rebates. And it was a year and
054a half battle, but we finally got it. So, we're really, really happy about it. Uh, yeah, huge win. Huge win. Because before when we worked with people and said, "Hey, I have a gas system. I want to get heat pumps. I want to like get off the gas." Would say, "Hey, we're all about affordability. We're like I and me and Rohan and Kit, we care about the environment a lot. We're we're little hippies, but it can't be at a higher cost than what's out there, right? I'm a big believer in that, right? So, before gas was cost competitive or even cheaper than running a heat pump, but now with these rates, so if you want Eversource, I think Ashlin is on is a Eversource uh town, you will expect a 23% decrease in your bill.
055So, if you're getting a heat pump that that rate is applied between November 1st to December 31st, they haven't determined the pricing after December 31st yet, but we estimate it's going or estimate it's going to be around the same number. If not, we're going to go complain and hopefully keep those rates. Um, and it's applied to your whole entire house. So, I think you Mike had a question about keeping your gas stove or keeping your gas dryer. Um, this also is a good incentive to switch over if you want to. Again, you don't have to. There's nothing saying once you get a heat pump, you get no more gas. But now your operating costs for anything electric in your home will also go down, which is big a big big win for uh for heat
056pumps. And yeah, in summary, so prices vary by house, they vary by system. We tried breaking it down as much as we could into this pricing menu to give you a better understanding, but we believe information empowers homeowners. So, if you have the this information and bring it to a contractor, maybe they'll it'll help you. Maybe the contractor will be like, "Oh, Baham budge. These guys don't know what they're doing." We we have a So, on our on our articles that we post, we have a comment section. And we've been called very colorful things by other contractors, like uh clowns who have never touched a wrench before, but now we're touching wrenches, so we're we're getting better. Um, rebates are declining. So, namaste rebates are on target to decline every year by 10% until they
057are gone, but they'll be there on a yearly basis and seasonal and and you know, get your your heat pumps during the off seasons when you can, you have the negotiating power to get much cheaper prices. So, you know, know your value, know where you stand with the contractor and just push hard, push back. I mean, you need to push hard, just push back a little bit. you you could secure anywhere from a 20% discount to 30% discount and that's made you know a heat pump even more attractive. Um yeah, if you want more information go to our website laminarcollective.com all of our nerdy articles are up there and thank you for for listening. Thank you for coming out everybody. Really appreciate it. Any questions? Uh yes absolutely it would be. So, the question was,
058if you have a pre-existing system that is in an attic that is already heating and cooling the house via ducts, can you install a heat pump? Yes, absolutely. So, the heat pump, I'm sure Bob went over this, is two different units. You have the outdoor unit and the indoor unit. The outdoor unit is the the more most important part that needs the space and the air flow to allow the exchange of heat. And the inside unit, it could be it it just has to fit in a space. If there's an AC unit, there is most likely an outside unit. Well, there's an AC. >> Yeah, >> perfect. So, you just you take that unit, that existing AC unit, take it out, put a new heat pump unit in, and you're done. >> It's the same
059device. So, all it does is switches the little valve in there and turns the heating mode. So, think of it as like a, you know, AC's make inside cold, outside hot, right? When you go out, if you touch a or go near condenser, AC condenser, there's a lot of hot air. It just reverses that that that that operation. So instead of making inside cold and outside hot, you make outside cold and inside hot. >> Yeah, it's very very cool. Yeah. So yes, great question. We'll get a little technical for for 30 seconds here. Um you talked about there's little copper pipes that go from outside unit to inside unit. What is that? That is a refrigerant. So that is super cold or superheated uh liquid that goes from the outsour outside unit to the inside
060unit goes through this like uh this sort of radiator blows air through it and that air goes back into your building or to your home. So that air could be cold or it could be hot if you depending on cooling or heating. Okay, good question. So what does our company do is what Rob said. Um we're always trying to figure that out. Um, so on the side of of research and posting articles and publishing pricing benchmarks, we also organize bulk deals, which is getting a town like Ashlin or Cambridge or or NATIC to come together and say, "Hey, let's put a list down. If whoever's interested in buying a heat pump, put your name there." And then we just go to a contractor and say, "Hey, contractor, we have 20 or 30 or 40 willing
061people to um get a heat pump right now. what are what's your best rate possible? So, what we do is we coordinate that discussion between the contractor and the homeowners. Plus, what we've been doing now is we have personal rel relationships with the manufacturer. So, we got set we got big enough where we can now negotiate the equipment price on behalf of the bulk deal. So, now we're trying to pull levers on the pricing of labor and the pricing of the equipment. Yeah. So, pretty much you come to us and say, "Hey, I want to operate. I want to do a bulk deal." And we're like, "Great. will connect you to the people and facilitate and make sure you get the best price. That that's our job is if there's a high price, we come
062in there and say, "Nope, you're not paying that. You should be paying this." >> Yeah. >> Also, I want to hop in real quick. We can do this on the town level, but also individually like it's not only like just municipalities or towns like individual people will aggregate a bunch of demand together and then, you know, go to a bunch of different municipalities or towns and help install people. So, >> yep. Just want a tap. >> Correct. Absolutely. I mean, we we found that the minimum amount of people to negotiate a very good rate is 20 people. So, 20 homes, 20 mini splits or or 20 outdoor condensers, you could negotiate around 15% uh lower. But what we found is also the greater number that you have of people the more negotiating you have. Think
063of it as think of it as like the Costco model where you know Costco is all wholesale and you get a much much better rate. So that we we like to think of ourselves as like offering the the Costco hot dog of heat pumps. Yeah. Yes. So what we found in our research right now the the the standard of technology there's almost almost no difference between manufacturers and how they operate. So I think you asked the question do they operate in low temperatures? Yes they do. And now that it has become industry standard among almost all heat manufacturers. So we as I said we had good negotiating power with manufacturers. Dyky and LG are the two sort of I would say they're like develop the newest product out there. They're willing to get their product
064out out there um and they're willing to get better pricing. Mitsubishi does not want to play ball. They never did want to play ball because they were actually the first ones to create this cold climate equipment. So they got their foot in the in the Northeast or especially Massachusetts first and they're not moving on price. So, because they also have such a good uh brand name, I'm sure everyone here has a neighbor or has someone who has got a Mitsubishi heat pump and they're like, "That's the best thing in the world." This is what I recommend, which is it's fair. It does the job. But what we found research, everything else does the same job, so why pay more just for a brand name. Some people like it, some people can. So, that's why we
065offer it at a 10% increase, but Yeah. Yeah. So if so what we've found is that also if you have duct work already in your home around 30% of those ducts are not suitable to have a heat pump connected to it. So we we do duct tests. So we partner with clear results if they probably did your mass save home assessment to go in the home do blower tests. So like put fans in your duct and measure how much air is lost and based on that uh loss percentage we say hey let's fix it by duct taping a big hole that we found. or if you have 80% loss, let's get new ducks because maybe it just disintegrated or disintegrated over time, which we've seen happen. >> So, yeah, noisy ducks, that's that's a big
066issue where people undersize Dutch and they're like, "Oh, it'll cool the space. It'll heat the space enough." But then we figure out that whistles also happen. >> I'm Nicole Simpson. I I live in Hopkin. I'm part of the sustainable green committee in Hopkin. >> Hold the mic close to your mouth. >> Sure thing. Okay. Can you hear me now? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, and I got a um ducted system. Uh, it's two zones in my house. And so we we added that I forget exactly when, two or three years ago um for yeah to do the heating and cooling. Did not leave any backup fossil fuel system. Went fully heat pump. Um yeah. So I'm I'll I'm sure I'll answer questions about that later. >> Hello. Um so my name is Jeff Roland. I'm
067chair of the Hopkin Sustainable Green Committee. Uh just a quick thing about our committee. We're a 15 person town committee. Um our goal is to educate and advise the town uh both the municipal and residents as as far as uh sustainability goes goes. Um um my home situation. Uh so we have a heat pump um for part of the home. We did an addition in 2020 um when it went with a ductless mini split there. So there's two um ceiling units in each of uh the addition rooms. Um unique situation actually. We had a bit of a lemon with our heat pump. So you know it's a complex technology. Occasionally they do fail. After about 3 years we'd had occasional times where in the winter it would switch um to essentially air conditioning. What we
068eventually found out was that there was a faulty valve inside of it that would get stuck in you know the reverse mode. Um but they replaced it uh you know full cost covered um and it's been working beautifully since. So you know things do happen uh just like you know everyone's had a furnace fail at some point too. >> Hi I'm uh Todd Chang um from Ashland kind of uh looking to join the sustainability committee very soon um hopefully. So yeah moved to Ashland in 2018. um had our heat pump installed in April of 2020, which was an interesting installation process. That's not important, but um yeah, no, it's been phenomenal. And we got solar panels back in 2022. And kind of with the, you know, after the panel installation, one of the one of
069the great things kind of with our battery system is I was able to kind of monitor the fluctuations in electricity and just is really really phenomenal the just how little energy the heat pump is using kind of whether it's cooling in the summer or heating in in the the winter. You know, it's comparable to like in in our house, we kind of have two floors. First floor we have kind of an open layout. So that's kind of where we have our ductless mini split. The power, the electricity amount that it takes to power our first floor um is pretty much exactly the same as it would be for one window AC unit in one of our upstairs bedrooms. Um, and similarly like if we, you know, use a space heater because we have little kids,
070it's almost the same as like a single space heater on like a high enough temperature for a little kid to kind of sleep well through the night, which, you know, you kind of don't spare expense on that. Um, but yeah, no, I just love our heat pump system overall and would highly recommend. >> I think you all know me by now, but uh, >> you know, how do we get paid? It's a great question. We're still trying to figure that out. Um, this is a definitely a a passion of love. We started with a mass save grant. We had a a $25,000 grant that we started our first research and now we take a small percentage of the bulk deals that we organize, a 3% organization fee, and that's how we've been getting paid. Not
071not well, but it's it's it's it's enough to keep doing what we're doing. We love it. And we love meeting people like you and and helping heat pumps get adopted. My question is on the noise. I hate noise. >> Bob said a duckless mini split is about the same level of noise as a window AC. >> No, no, no, no, no. Much quieter. >> Much quieter. That any any modern heat pump, duckless or ducted, will be way quieter than your window air conditioner. Way way way way quieter. >> So with the mini splits, I'd need one in every room probably. Yes. >> Oh, >> that's correct. Yes. Sometimes if you have a open uh open space layout like some new newer homes have like the dining room and kitchen and living room in one big
072room, you could get you could get away with one or two mini splits, but definitely for bedrooms, you want one for each bedroom. >> Yeah. >> And but there, you know, there are um hybrid solutions. You know, you might you could just keep your upstairs on your fossil fuel system, go heat pumps downstairs in the winter, you know, maybe a little that heat will loft up to the upstairs and offset some of that upstairs load. And you may find that you could cover 60, 70, or even 80% of your heating with the heat pumps, but saved yourself a bundle by not having to put a head in every single bedroom upstairs. Um, basically what we normally do is obviously you want your mini split to be on an exterior wall. Um, just it's easiest for
073the, you know, installer to run refrigerant line set up the side of your house and punch into a wall. What we can do though is often time when people have their only open exterior wall is in the front of their house. oftentimes is we'll kind of you can run it up the side and then you know punch it you know either one if there's enough space in between the wall you can go within the wall and kind of punch a little bit of line set just within the wall and have your mini split still in that you know wall that's facing the front of the house without having line set on the front of your house >> the other option is that you have a little bit of um interior line set. So what that
074means is that um you'll come up the side so Um, this is the wall. Imagine this is the wall and this is the front of your house. This is where your mini split needs to go. We'll run a line up the side and then punch in. And we'll put this mini split ideally close to the corner so you get like a little bit of exterior line set, which this is not bad. This is not a safety hazard or anything. There'll be a line cover, you know, all that kind of stuff. It just will there'll be like a little white bar right next to the mini split connecting the refrigerant lines. But it's definitely doable. >> Yeah. And to add to that, uh, many modern condensers or heat pumps can have one outside unit and then
075connect to up to six in inside units. So you don't need one rectangle outside for each inside unit. Yeah. >> And another point on your prior question, as far as noise, it's more like a a gentle fan, maybe like an air purifier sound as far as like how loud it is. >> You know, that was definitely a issue with early adopters and heat pumps. you had all these, you know, not really uh pretty line sets running all over your house and no one likes that. And and I also agree. So these people manufacture manufacturers have pushed for very pretty slim profile colored line sets. So if anything they look like at worst a gutter, at best like nothing. Do you want to add that? What did you guys do? >> Yeah. So um so for
076us it we've been electrifying everything. It was pretty important to us to get rid of fossil fuels and you know used some online research some talking to the contractors of is is this reasonable for us to fully get rid of the other system. My preference is not to maintain multiple systems when you you don't need that. Um that has expense to it as well. Um it felt really good to not have any more gas in our home. Um from a safety perspective, from a health perspective, and also and certainly for a climate perspective, I dress for the occasion. That's important to us. Um but um but yeah, now we have no no gas bill remaining. And um and as far as performance, you know, it's done just fine. We're comfortable in our home. um have
077done some of the massive insulation work, have have done our windows. It's a a a home that was built in the early 90s. So um so not as good as current newly built homes, but maybe not as not as bad as some some of the older homes might be for for draftiness, but you know, when we've had those really extreme days, you could see the performance decrease and the it doesn't stop working. and it just might not maintain the temperature as well. But that's pretty rare. Like I'd say there are one or two occasions when that's ever happened and it's not where we were freezing. It just didn't quite maintain it in the same way. I think that's probably true of any system that you would have on those days and frankly there there are
078fewer of those days that are are happening now. So I mean um so no regrets with going with that. I I think for different homes, you might get different advice just based on the zones and um how well insulated it is and you know all of those different aspects. Oh, and one more point with that um you can get the maximum rebates as well when you have um you're fully going allin versus maintaining that hybrid system. The the incentives are a little different. I think it's a good time to add regardless of your heating system, take advantage of the mass save program. Air seal and insulate your home as much as possible. So, you know, whether you're going electric or you're sticking with gas or oil for a while, that's going to bring down your
079costs and save emissions. >> Yeah. And and kind of we've we've kept a hybrid system. So, we do have uh when we moved in in 2018, um kind of our our boiler natural gas boiler was only a few years old at that point. So, it didn't quite make financial sense for us at the time when we installed the mini split to also kind of replace the boiler. And there are some days, you know, where it's five degrees out where, you know, having both we find does keep things a little more comfortable for us. But, you know, as much as we can, we try and rely on the mini split for sure. >> Say one more quick point is I do recommend, as you said, everyone here go through the massive program if you can. It's
080an amazing program. It's com you get 75% off on any installation work for your home. It's also a prere requisite for getting the rebate. So if time comes you're like, "Oh, I'm ready for a heat pump or maybe something bright your system brakes and now you want to get a heat pump." If you don't have a massive uh work done on your home, you got to go all the way into back to the line and to get that rebate, which has been pretty hard for some of the people we worked with. >> So if it's less than five years, yes, if it's more than five years, you have to get them out come out there again. And usually they come out, they look at the work like, "Okay, it's the same as it was before.
081You're good. I think another benefit we haven't added is the mass safe heat loan process which is a 0% loan. It's incredible. >> Absolutely worth doing. >> Yeah, >> great great question. Um this is what we've been pushing for a lot for a lot of our land collective members. So there was a new refrigerant change that came out uh the beginning of this year. So January 1st, 2025. So right now the industry standard is on this new refrigerant called R32 or R454V. So if you get that, it's if the refri if the refrigerant leaks, god forbid, it's a much less or much lower greenhouse gas uh potential and also it's actually more efficient. So your systems will run around >> and cheaper. Yeah, it's also Yeah, way cheaper. Um cheaper to run, cheaper to it's
082also more efficient at colder temperatures. So if you do get a quote Yeah, great great point. If you do get a quote from a contractor, make sure you ask them, "Is this the new refrigerant?" Because also what what's happening now is that by law in 2026 contractors cannot install the older refrigerant models by law. So right now they're trying to get the they're trying to sell it as quickly as they can try and get it out the door. But if they get it to you install one and if you just waited uh a month or two or if you asked for the new refrigerant you would have saved 20% more on the operating costs which is a good amount. >> Yeah. I'll u just put a little different spin on that slightly. If on the
083other hand you run into installer has a nice backlog of the previous the current refrigerant the 410A and they give you a great price on it I would consider it because um the current refrigerant R410A will be available for the foreseeable life of your equipment. Now, towards the end of the life of your equipment, if you have a major leak, you may find it's more expensive to uh repair. And some of you may have had the R22 air conditioners and already run into this situation. It's a very similar uh situation, but the the um restriction on the use of refrigerant applies to newly installed equipment. You'll still be able to get the current refrigerant for 10 or 15 years, at least in the future. prices will start to go up if you need it for
084service or repair. And there, yes, there's definitely a little bit of a performance different in the in the equipment. Uh you do a little better with the new refrigerants, but all all the old refrigerant and the two new refrigerants all contained R32, so they're not as different as they sound. The old refrigerant is 50% R32. the new refrigerants either 70% R32 or 100% R32. So, they're just different blends. Um, yeah, and they just brought down the the global warming potential. The key thing is making sure you get a good installer who's going to do the joints right so the system doesn't leak. That's the key. >> So, you have to you have to do what they recommend and they'll only recommend what is there right now. So, we had times where Yeah. people want the
085attic to finish and they're like, "Nope. in order to get it covered, just add it or insulate it. >> Just a clarification, and correct me if I'm wrong in this, but my understanding is, okay, there is there's two ways to get a a rebate through the Mass program. One is a quote unquote whole home rebate and the other is a partial home depending on whether you're converting all or most of your heating load. If you're leaving in your legacy uh heating system, you're going to be getting the partial home incentive. And I think under that um I know for the whole home rebate, you definitely do have to have the mass save uh in uh assessment and do the insulation measures. I think for the partial uh home, you don't. Is that fair? >> That
086is correct. >> Yes. Thank you. I just want to make that clarification. >> Yes, that's correct. And the and the partial home is half of the whole home pretty much. So whatever you would get rebate on a whole home if you don't insulate or don't or keep your old systems expect half of that savings. >> How do you judge whether who's the best installer? >> Well, I the short answer is sign up for the decarbonization consultation through Massave and ask your consultant to do a quote comparison. And you know, short of that, honestly, um, it's getting referrals. Get get multiple quotes and you're you're a good judge of character. You know, just see what they're saying. Do these people know what they're talking about? Are they answering your questions? Did they provide a complete quote
087with all the information that you wanted in it? Did they are they answering your questions that you have about the quote? you know, do you think they're going to actually do things on the schedule they promise? So, there's a lot of things to just our own, you know, natural business skills can help us through in addition to those uh professional sources. >> So, I can add a little bit to this because this is was our biggest issue when trying to find contractors to partner with. How do you know they're a good contractor? How do you know? Because there's one thing to to see their judge of character, but a lot of times they have salespeople who are perfect at this, right? They know exactly how to answer, how to compliment you. And then the installers
088come and they are totally different. Totally the back house versus the front of the house. So what we do, we actually vet contractors on our on our website on our ranking based on their installation quality. So we actually go out to installs and I got my Hback license just for this organization. I went through the classes. I come from engineering background. I worked at IBM. Um so pretty try to be detail- oriented. And then we rank them based on their quality. We check everything from how do they connect how do or what procedures do they take for connecting all the heads to the units and what we also have for you guys as a self-insert on our website we have a five questions to ask contractors. So have they done a manual J? A manual
089J is a heat load calculation to make sure that they size your home correctly. Um again you don't need to understand what this means but if you go on the website and just ask the question if they have an answer for it that's a good that's a green flag. If not say sorry let me talk to someone else. Um, also I'm curious what you guys like when you p when you got your heat pump installed. What were you looking for in a in an installer or how did you find your installers? >> Um, I think we got three different quotes. Um, and I don't remember the details of it, but I think there was a a range of quotes. They were also offering different equipment um different manufacturers. So trying to to also figure out
090which which um products seemed to be the better fit for what we needed. Um, but I think a lot of it came down to price and then um and then yeah, also that sense you get from them coming in and um you know what their reputation is. >> I I probably have the least helpful answer here. So, we did a renovation and a general contractor was handling the uh the heat pump aspective for us. >> Uh we just posted something to kind of our our personal social media feeds asking our friends if they had had any installers in the area do it and had a few people respond. called them out for quotes and got good vibes about one of them and the product's been working great ever since. >> That's why I found one
091one of the better ways to do it. Trust your neighbor. I'm sure everyone here knows someone who's got a heat pump and they could talk to their experience, especially the after like when you don't talk to a saleserson and you went through the whole process, you really know how an installer operates and how much how much they care about the homeowner. So, personal reference is one of the best ones. >> Yeah.