Heat Pump Installation

North Texas is good heat pump country. Our winters are mostly mild, with afternoons in the fifties and nights in the thirties, and in that range a heat pump delivers two to three times as much heat as the same electricity would produce through heat strips. The catch is the few nights each winter when an arctic front or ice storm drives temperatures into the teens. A system installed for this climate has to be efficient on ordinary days and still keep the house warm on the hard ones.

W3 Electric Heating & A/C installs heat pumps across Rowlett, Rockwall, McKinney, Garland, Wylie, Forney, and the wider Dallas area, whether you are replacing a worn out heat pump, trading a furnace and air conditioner for one system, or moving an all-electric home off its old strip heat. A heat pump with backup heat is one of the largest electrical loads in a house, and since we are licensed for electrical work as well as HVAC, the panel, breakers, and wiring that feed it are our job too.

Heat pump installation puts in a system that heats and cools through a single outdoor unit, paired indoors with an air handler or, in a dual fuel setup, a gas furnace. It covers replacing an existing heat pump, converting from a furnace and air conditioner, and adding one to a home or addition that never had central heating and cooling. The ductwork usually stays, but we inspect it first, since a new heat pump cannot outperform leaky or undersized ducts, and duct repair is easiest while the old equipment is out.

If you would rather keep gas heat, see furnace installation, and if only the air conditioner needs replacing, see AC replacement. Not sure which suits your house? Working that out with you is the first part of every replacement visit.

A heat pump here has two jobs: cooling through a long Texas summer and heating through a winter that is usually mild and occasionally severe. Three decisions determine how well it does both.

We size every system from a load calculation, which works out how much heat your house gains on a July afternoon and loses on a January night, based on its insulation, the size and direction of its windows, ceiling heights, air leakage, and duct condition. The tonnage of the old equipment is a starting question, not the answer, since it may have been wrong from the day it went in. In North Texas the cooling load usually sets the size of a heat pump, and the backup heat is planned around the coldest nights.

A heat pump draws its heat from outdoor air, and the colder that air gets, the less heat there is to collect, so capacity falls just as the house needs more. Through most of a North Texas winter that gap never appears. On the coldest nights it does, and the backup heat makes up the difference. Variable speed heat pumps keep more of their capacity in cold weather than single speed designs, which helps in a house that runs cold, but every heat pump here still needs backup heat sized for the worst nights, not the average ones.

Most heat pumps here use electric heat strips in the air handler as backup. Their size is a design decision: too small and the house falls behind in a freeze, too large and you pay for circuits and capacity you will rarely use. Heat strips are among the heaviest loads in any home and can need their own large breakers, heavier wiring, and panel space an older home may not have. We check panel capacity during the quote, and if the panel needs work, our electrical panel services handle it as part of the same project.

A single stage heat pump has one speed: on at full capacity, then off. It costs the least and suits a modest, well insulated house. A two stage unit adds a lower setting it uses most of the time, so it runs longer and quieter with steadier temperatures. A variable speed, or inverter, heat pump adjusts its output across a wide range. It is the most efficient and the best at handling humidity and cold weather, and it costs the most up front. We will tell you which fits your house and budget, even when the answer is the least expensive one.

Every heat pump carries two efficiency ratings. SEER2 measures how efficiently it cools over a typical season, and HSPF2 measures how efficiently it heats over one. For both, a higher number means less electricity for the same comfort. In North Texas, where the system cools hard for five months, SEER2 usually drives the payback, but HSPF2 still matters, because every hour the heat pump carries the house alone is an hour the heat strips stay off. We will show you what each step up costs and roughly what it should save.

If your home has natural gas, a dual fuel system pairs a heat pump with a gas furnace instead of electric strips. The heat pump handles cooling and the mild part of winter, and when the outdoor temperature drops below a set point, the system hands off to the furnace, which delivers strong heat however cold it gets. It suits homes with a gas line already in place and owners who like furnace heat on the coldest nights. It costs more to install than a heat pump with strips, and we will tell you plainly whether it pays off for your house.