Getting a heat pump took some effort. Here’s what I learned.

Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. Canary thanks EnergySage for its support of the column.

The home inspection report painted a pretty bleak picture. We were about to close on a charming 1940 colonial, but it turned out that most of the appliances that came with it needed replacement.

The water heater was not long for this world, the AC was busted, and the sump pump was shot. One bright spot was the cast-iron gas-fired boiler. Estimated by our home inspector to be about 50 years old, it had been built to last. Inefficient, yes, but it could be depended on to keep us warm. This was welcome news, since it was December and winter nights here in New York’s Hudson Valley routinely plunge into the teens.

But our reliable old gas-fired boiler did come with costs.

The steepest one was financial: Our first gas bill for the house, in the winter of 2023, was over $600. And that was before we’d even lived in our new house full time — for the most part, we had just been setting the thermostat high enough to prevent our pipes from freezing.

More disturbing was the toll our fossil-gas-burning boiler — and the millions of others like it across the U.S. — was taking on the climate. Home heating creates a significant chunk of U.S. carbon emissions, and though gas is cleaner than oil, it’s hardly a sustainable option for the planet.

We weren’t thrilled about the potential health risks either. Gas heating emits lots of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that creates smog and is harmful to inhale. In addition, an inspection of the boiler’s chimney flue revealed that it was lined with a porous material — concrete — meaning there was a chance carbon monoxide could seep through it and into our basement. The quote for fixing that problem was about $4,000. Perfect. Just what we wanted to hear.

There was one clear path forward, for our finances, the climate, and our health: We had to get an electric heat pump, a reversible air-conditioner that can both heat and cool a home. And it’s a path that all 140 million U.S. homes will need to go down over the coming decades if we’re going to successfully quit using fossil fuels.

I’m happy to say that as of this August, we’re officially heat pump owners. But the process was not as smooth as we expected. Here are the biggest lessons I learned along the way.

Getting an energy audit is worth it 

Alison F. Takemura, who usually writes this column, has detailed the many good reasons to get a home energy audit. I’ll add one more to the list: Sometimes an energy audit tells you exactly what you want to hear.

That was the case with our free, state-funded energy audit, which was conducted in March 2023. It took a few months to get the results back, but when they came in, the recommendation was crystal clear: We could save 50 percent on our annual energy bills by switching to an efficient heat pump. 

We already knew that getting a heat pump would benefit the planet. But the energy audit also helped give us peace of mind that the major investment we were about to make would pay off financially.

Figuring out how to tap into incentive programs can be a slog, but it pays off

My experience with New York’s low-interest loan program for electrification projects was more complicated.

We were excited to learn that New York’s Residential Financing Program offers rates as low as 3.49 percent for solar, heat pump, and energy efficiency projects. It’s a really, really good deal, and it made getting a heat pump far more affordable. A local installer offered us a nearly 10 percent interest rate.

New York’s not the only state that offers below-market loans for heat pumps. Look through the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency to find programs from your state. Check in with your town or local utility too, both of which may offer loans or rebates of their own. Oh, and don’t forget to claim the federal heat pump tax credit.

Using New York’s program meant we had to work with a contractor from a state list of pre-vetted companies — and none were available in our area.

So I called a few local installers, got quotes, and told them our situation: We were ready to buy a heat pump, but only if we could use our state loan. If they were willing to submit the paperwork necessary to get on New York’s contractor list for this program, they’d have our business. One said yes. That was in September 2023.

After months of follow-ups, it was suddenly June 2024 and that contractor was still waiting for final approval. It had now gotten very hot — remember, our AC was broken, and purchasing a heat pump was our plan for remedying that. We were also getting dangerously close to the expiration date of our loan, which was good for only 12 months.

In desperation, I checked the state’s list to see if any new heat pump installers in our area had been added, and lo, one had been. I called up the newly added installer, had them come out for a quote, and got an appointment on the books.

Nearly a full year after we received our loan from the state, we got our heat pump. 

The upshot? Even if you have to go through some hassle to use incentives like the Residential Financing Program, it’s worth sticking it out. Just look at our situation: We now have a heat pump that’s almost guaranteed to pay for itself in energy savings all while being good for the climate. We just had to be patient — and persistent.

The work doesn’t end once the heat pump is installed 

Thanks to our shiny new heat pump, it was pleasant in our house for the first time all summer. The air inside was cool, comfortable, and even celebratory.

But our adventure was not quite over.

A few days after our heat pump was installed, we noticed water dripping from the ceiling of our upstairs bathroom. It turned out that the heat pump’s air handler, located in our attic, had been installed incorrectly, causing it to leak into the tray under it. In theory, any water that ends up in that tray is supposed to drain out of the house through a pipe. But our contractor didn’t replace the drain pipe for our system — and the old one turned out to have a huge crack in it.

Thankfully, we caught the leak pretty quickly, so the damage to our bathroom ceiling was limited. The contractor graciously paid for the small repair that was needed, fixed the pipe and installation issues, and we all moved on with our lives. But it could have been a disaster if we hadn’t been home.

Here’s the moral of that story: Triple-check your heat pump equipment in the days after it’s been installed, and definitely ask your contractor questions if anything seems even slightly off. We had noticed a small amount of water in the catch tray the day before but assumed it was just part of how the system worked. 

Our other item of unfinished business is getting Central Hudson, our utility, to shut off our gas service.

Because we replaced our gas water heater with a heat pump version back in 2023 and inherited a solid smooth-top electric stove from our home’s previous owner, we were 100 percent done with gas once the heat pump was installed.

My wife called Central Hudson to let them know we’d like to discontinue our gas service. Days later, it dispatched a worker to come over to yank the ancient gas meter off our basement wall and cap the line. But we’re still connected to the gas main itself. At some point in the near future, a crew is supposed to come dig up the street in front of our house and sever the connection to the pipeline completely, though the city just recently repaved our road and we’ve been warned it might slow-roll this last step as a result.

For now, our gas connection remains intact but unusable. At least in our home, there’s no longer anywhere for the fossil gas to go. 

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