Heat Pumps

Heat pumps use a reversible refrigeration circuit in combination with a forced air distribution system to heat and cool your home. In the cooling mode, heat pumps operate in a similar manner to a cooling-only system. In the heating mode, heat pumps use the heat in the ambient air to heat your home during the cold months.

Important Note
As the outdoor air temperature falls, the performance of the heat pump drops. Therefore, the design and installation requirements of heat pump systems are critical. Because the critical requirements of heat pumps are often not met, the use of heat pumps in colder climates such as ours has led to performance issues for many homeowners.

As with all heating equipment, the product and installation must meet the necessary design criteria for good performance. We make this note due to the abundance of improperly installed heat pumps systems and the understandable, albeit sometimes inaccurate, categorical dismissal of these systems. We argue that heat pumps have their market and they should be considered when appropriate for the design.

Design Factors
We do specific calculations in order to determine how much heat your house absorbs each hour during the summer months, and how much heat your house loses each hour during the winter months. The major factors determining heat gain and loss are the size of your house, the number and compass orientation of windows, and the amount of exposed roof area.

Installations

The Outdoor Base
We prepare a base for the new outdoor heat pump unit. This base will be installed at a location chosen jointly by you and our staff. Most often, we dig a hole to provide a layer of rock gravel approximately 4 inches thick, and then pour a 3-inch concrete slab on top of the gravel underlayer. We invest extra time and effort in preparation of the condensing unit base, because we have found that the less vulnerable the outdoor unit is to frost heaves, the longer it lasts.

The Outdoor Unit
We place the new outdoor unit on the base we have prepared. The capacity (B.T.U. rating) of the outdoor unit is determined by the measurements we take of your home.

The Indoor Coil
We place the properly matched cooling coil inside your duct system. This coil will be placed on top of your existing or new furnace, or inside a dedicated blower unit. If you will continue to use your old furnace, we may remove a section of ductwork and install a new specially fabricated ductwork plenum to contain the new cooling coil. We may also install a new more powerful blower motor inside the furnace itself. If we need to take this step, we will have included the new blower motor in our quotation to you.

The Refrigeration Piping
We install two new copper pipes (parallel to each other) to connect the indoor coil and the outdoor unit. One of the pipes will be wrapped in special insulation to keep it from sweating moisture. These pipes contain the refrigerant gas (Freon) which takes the heat from your home to the outdoors.

The Condensate Drain Piping
We install a separate drainpipe from the indoor coil to either a local drain, or to the outside of the house. This drain line transports the moisture which is removed from the indoor air at the coil during summer operation. We may also install a small pump to assist this drain depending on the route of the drain line piping.

The Thermostat
We install a sub-base under your existing thermostat. This sub-base will have a switch, which allows you to choose "cool", "heat", or "off."

National, State, and Local Safety Codes
Our experienced and licensed staff believes that these codes are a valuable system to ensure systems are installed properly. At Keyes North Atlantic our work always meets or exceeds the code requirements. If you'd like to know more about our licenses and credentials, we welcome you to the Insurance and Licenses portion of our Credentials section.

Insurance
We are fully covered for workers compensation insurance, and we carry two million dollars of general liability insurance. We are happy to forward certificates of insurance coverage to you for your records. Or view them right here in the Insurance and Licenses portion of our Credentials section.

Warranties and Guarantees
We provide a full one-year guarantee on our work, equipment, and materials. This guarantee is provided in addition to the warranties, which the manufacturers provide on the equipment that we install in your home. Click here for more information on our workmanship warranty.