Heat Pump Installation in Smithville, ON — Sizing It, Siting It, and What to Ask First

In Smithville, a heat pump installation puts two boxes in, one outdoors and one inside. Three things decide how well they work, and all three are settled before the equipment arrives: where they sit, how big they are, and how the house was heated before. This page covers those decisions. If you are still weighing a heat pump against a gas furnace, choosing between a furnace, a heat pump and the two together comes first. We are TSSA-certified, family-owned since 2014, and we have put in more than 300 heat pump conversions.

What to Settle Before a Heat Pump Goes In

Five things, and Natural Resources Canada publishes them as the questions to put to your contractor. (1) Ask each one before you sign anything:

• What is the model and the AHRI number of the system you are recommending?
• How will you make sure it is sized properly and can move heat through the whole house?
• Where will the indoor and outdoor units go?
• Is it quiet, and what is the sound level rating?
• What is the warranty, and is there a warranty certificate?

None of the five is a trick question. A contractor who has done the work can answer all five on the spot.

Getting the Size Right, and Why Bigger Is Not Safer

With a furnace, an oversized unit mostly wastes fuel. Oversizing a heat pump costs more than that, because the same machine is also your air conditioner, so it runs most of the year instead of half of it.

NRCan is blunt about it: “Undersizing or oversizing can result in more costly and less efficient systems.” (1) An oversized heat pump reaches the set temperature quickly, shuts off, and starts again, and a system that short-cycles wears its compressor while delivering uneven heat.

NRCan raises a second point here that almost nobody else does. If you are also insulating, replacing windows or air sealing, do that work first, or at least size the heat pump for the house you will have afterwards. (1) A house that has been tightened needs less heat than the one that existed when the quote was written. Sizing to the old house is how a system ends up too big on the day it starts running.

Sizing also has to settle what happens on the coldest nights. NRCan notes that standard air-source models may need supplementary heating — an electric furnace, baseboard heaters or a boiler — while cold-climate versions are rated to keep running at much lower temperatures. (1) Which of the two you are buying changes the size of the machine, and changes what has to back it up on the coldest nights. If a quote does not say which of the two you are getting, it has left out the answer that matters most in January.

NRCan also publishes a Toolkit for air source heat pump sizing and selection, written for contractors rather than homeowners. (2) You will not need to read it. You can ask whether it was used, and the answer tells you whether the size came from a calculation or from the old equipment being taken out.

Ducted, Ductless, or Both

The biggest choice in a heat pump installation is not which brand goes in. It is whether the heat travels through ducts or arrives in each room on its own.

A ducted heat pump uses the ductwork the house already has, so one indoor unit serves the whole building and the vents stay where they are. That makes the ducted version the least visible option and usually the least disruptive, as long as the ducts can carry the airflow. A heat pump moves more air than a furnace does, so ducts sized for a furnace are worth confirming at the quote stage rather than once the order is placed.

A ductless system puts a wall unit in each area it serves, fed by refrigerant lines instead of ducts. Houses with no ductwork are the obvious case, and so are the additions, converted attics and finished basements that the original ducts never reached. Each unit is controlled on its own, which suits a house where some rooms get used and some do not.

Both together is common in older Smithville houses. The ducted system covers the original floor plan, and a wall unit handles the room somebody added later.

NRCan’s advice on choosing is to start the conversation with a contractor, because the answer follows the heating and cooling requirements of your particular house rather than a general rule. (1) That sounds like a dodge until you have seen two houses on the same street need different systems.

In practice, the ductless version means more indoor equipment and more refrigerant line to run, and the ducted version means the ductwork has to be up to the job. Neither one is automatically cheaper.

Where the Two Units Go, and What That Decides

Two pieces of equipment go in, and both need somewhere sensible to live.

The outdoor unit runs all winter, and that is what people do not picture. It has to sit clear of drifting snow, and clear of where snow slides off a roof. It needs air moving freely around it. And it produces condensate that has to drain somewhere that will not turn into a sheet of ice by the back door.

Noise is a siting decision, not a product decision, and NRCan’s own field guidance for installers puts it plainly: “airflow and noise are factors in placing outdoor units.” (3) That is why NRCan’s question list asks for the sound level rating. On a rural West Lincoln property with room on all sides, noise rarely matters. On a Smithville lot where the neighbour’s bedroom window is nine metres away, it decides which wall the unit goes on.

The indoor unit goes where the ducts already are, if the house is ducted. If the house is not ducted, the wall units go where the heat is actually needed, and that is a room-by-room decision rather than a single placement.

Both decisions are easier to change on paper than after the refrigerant lines are run.

The Heat Pumps We Fit

We fit Rheem heat pumps and hold Rheem’s Pro Partner designation. Where a house needs wall units rather than ducts, we also install Mitsubishi Electric equipment.

Neither name changes what the rest of this page has argued. Sizing, siting and ductwork decide how a heat pump performs in a Niagara winter, and a model number decides much less than most quotes imply.

What Affects Heat Pump Installation Cost in Smithville

The install price and the running cost depend on different things, and only one of the two appears in the quote.

The install price comes down to four things:

• whether the house is ducted, or needs wall units
• how far the outdoor unit sits from the indoor one
• whether anything is coming out before the new equipment arrives
• what the electrical side needs to carry a load the house never had

The running cost follows the electricity market, and in Ontario you get a say in how you are billed for it. The Ontario Energy Board sets the rates, “once a year on November 1”, and residential customers can choose between three plans: Time-of-Use, Tiered, and Ultra-Low Overnight. (4)

Ultra-Low Overnight is the one that matters here. With Time-of-Use and Ultra-Low Overnight, in the OEB’s words, “the price depends on when you use electricity.” (4) Running a heat pump through a January night uses electricity at exactly the hours those plans price differently, and the OEB says you “can choose to switch between” the three. (4)

Nobody is going to raise this with you at the quote stage. Spend an evening on the OEB’s own calculator before the system goes in, rather than after the first winter bill.

Heat Pump Installation Questions From Smithville Homeowners

How disruptive is installing a heat pump? It is a two-part job in two places, so expect work outside and work at the indoor unit. A ducted house where the new equipment goes into the space the old one used is the least disruptive version. Running new refrigerant lines, or fitting wall units room by room, reaches further into the house.

How long should a heat pump installation take? The house decides this, not the equipment. Dropping a unit into ductwork that already exists is one job. Fitting wall units and running line sets through a house with no ducts is another, and the electrical side can add a step of its own.

Do I need a bigger electrical service? Sometimes, and it is worth settling early rather than on the day. A heat pump adds an electrical load a gas-heated house never had, and any work on the wiring falls to a Licensed Electrical Contractor rather than to a heating technician.

Will it still heat the house when it is really cold? Cold-climate models are made for it, and NRCan gives their operating range as low as -30°C. (1) Standard air-source models are a different case and can need supplementary heat well before that, which is one of the things sizing has to settle.

Can I keep my furnace and add a heat pump? Yes. NRCan calls that a hybrid system, and the heating installation page linked at the top of this page sets out how the two take turns. A hybrid suits a house with a gas furnace still in good order, where replacing it outright is not the point.

Book a Heat Pump Quote in Smithville

Have the five questions above in front of you when anyone comes to look, ours included. That is the fastest way to tell a measured quote from a guessed one.

What these systems cost to run once they are in is the wider picture, including how they hold up through a Niagara winter. Once yours is running, keeping the outdoor coil clear through the seasons does more for efficiency than anything else you can do yourself.

References

1. Natural Resources Canada, Heat pumps, natural-resources.canada.ca
2. Natural Resources Canada, Heat pump resources and tools for HVAC professionals, natural-resources.canada.ca
3. Natural Resources Canada, Best practices in heat pumps (LEEP), natural-resources.canada.ca
4. Ontario Energy Board, Electricity rates, oeb.ca