Heat Pump Installation in Ypsilanti and Southeast Michigan

Five years ago we would have steered most Southeast Michigan homeowners away from a heat pump as a primary heat source. The equipment then lost most of its capacity below 25 degrees, and a Washtenaw County winter spends a lot of nights below that. The equipment now is different. Cold-climate heat pumps with inverter-driven compressors deliver useful heat at zero and below, and when paired with an existing gas furnace in a dual-fuel arrangement they handle the mild two-thirds of the heating season cheaply and let the furnace take over on the polar vortex nights. Add DTE Energy rebates and the federal 25C tax credit, and a heat pump is now the right answer for a lot of homes that are due for a new air conditioner anyway. Temprasure installs them, and we are honest about when they fit and when they do not.

The most common installation we do is dual-fuel. Your central air is 15 years old and due for replacement, your gas furnace is sound, and instead of a new condenser we install a cold-climate heat pump outdoors with a matched coil on the furnace. In summer it cools like a high-efficiency air conditioner. In fall and spring and on 30-to-45-degree winter days it heats the house on electricity at a cost that beats DTE gas rates for most of that range. Below a balance point we set based on the equipment's capacity curve and current utility rates, the furnace takes over. The homeowner gets a new AC that also cuts the gas bill, and the furnace lasts longer because it runs fewer hours.

Standalone installations, where the heat pump is the only heat source with electric strips or a hydronic coil for backup, make sense in specific cases: homes without a gas main, which includes rural pockets of Augusta, York, Sumpter and Salem townships running on propane, houses where the furnace is also at the end of its life and the owner wants off gas entirely, and additions or accessory dwellings. We size those systems to carry the house at the Ann Arbor design temperature, roughly zero degrees, with the backup sized for the handful of nights that go below it. We do not install heat pumps that will lean on strip heat for a quarter of the winter, because that defeats the purpose.

Sizing and airflow are where heat pump installs succeed or fail. A heat pump delivers supply air at 90 to 105 degrees rather than the 120-plus of a gas furnace, so the house needs more airflow for the same comfort, and the ductwork in 1950s to 1970s ranches and colonials was often built for a furnace with a single hallway return. We run a Manual J on every installation, measure static pressure on the existing ducts, and tell you if a return needs to be added or a trunk resized before the system goes in. We install R-454B equipment to the manufacturer's spec, with a new line set where the old one is undersized or contaminated, a deep vacuum, a weighed-in charge, and a thermostat that actually understands dual-fuel staging and outdoor temperature.

Estimates are free and come with no pressure. We will tell you plainly if your house is a better candidate for a conventional AC replacement, and we will tell you if a heat pump is the better long-term buy. The written quote is one flat number covering equipment, coil, materials, labor, permit, haul-away and commissioning. We identify which equipment tiers qualify for DTE rebates and the 25C credit and provide the AHRI certificate and invoice detail to claim them. If you are comparing our quote against another installer's, bring it; we will give you an honest read on the sizing and the scope.