Heat Pump Installation & Replacement in Ann Arbor, Michigan

The question we hear most from Ann Arbor homeowners is whether a heat pump can really heat a house here. The honest answer: a modern cold-climate unit can, down to zero and below, and in the dual-fuel configuration we install most often in 48103, your gas furnace handles the handful of polar vortex nights anyway. For the rest of the heating season, which is most of it, the heat pump heats the house on electricity at a cost that beats DTE Energy gas for the mild range. Temprasure sizes it with a Manual J, installs R-454B equipment to spec, and handles the Washtenaw County permit and rebate paperwork.

Ann Arbor houses and what that means for heat pump installation

Ann Arbor gives us almost every housing type in one zip code. The Old West Side and Old Fourth Ward are full of 1880s–1920s frame houses with stone or rubble foundations, fieldstone basements that stay damp, and furnaces that replaced boilers or gravity units sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Many of those homes still have cast-iron radiators fed by a boiler, and a surprising number have both a boiler and a separate forced-air system added for cooling. Burns Park and Ann Arbor Hills houses are larger 1920s–50s builds with plaster walls, so getting a second return or a bigger supply trunk in is slow work. The ranches and split-levels of the west side were built with 80,000 to 100,000 BTU furnaces that are now oversized for insulated versions of the same house. Condos near Briarwood and Pittsfield Village often have furnaces in closets or attics with tight clearances. Student rentals near campus run the oldest equipment in the city, and landlords routinely call us for emergency service and new-purchase inspections.

The ductwork in Ann Arbor is the constraint we check first. Heat pump supply air runs 90 to 105 degrees, cooler than a gas furnace's, so the system depends on moving more air to deliver the same comfort. The pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side in 48103 frequently have one return in a hallway and supply trunks sized for a smaller blower, and a heat pump on those ducts will feel weak and short cycle on defrost. On every Ann Arbor heat pump estimate we measure static pressure on the existing system and tell you whether a return needs to be added or a trunk resized. Sometimes it is a small add-on; sometimes it is the honest reason we recommend a conventional AC instead.

Heating calls from Ann Arbor come in two waves: the first real cold night in November and whatever stretch of January the polar vortex decides to visit. Both times we are 16 minutes away with ignitors, flame sensors, pressure switches and inducer motors on the truck. The pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side around Ann Arbor Hills and Dicken mostly burn DTE Energy natural gas, and the furnaces in them are old enough that a heat exchanger inspection is part of every visit, not an upsell. Near Michigan Stadium and out toward Kerrytown, we also see high-efficiency furnaces whose exterior vents ice over in a storm, which looks like a dead furnace and is a ten-minute fix.

Local details we plan around in Ann Arbor

• A lot of pre-1950 houses have been converted to duplexes or student rentals, which means two systems crammed into one basement and undersized gas lines serving both.
• The city's two historic districts, the Old West Side and the Old Fourth Ward, regulate exterior changes, so condenser placement on a street-facing wall often needs Historic District Commission sign-off.
• Ann Arbor has its own building department with its own mechanical permit process, and inspectors here want to see combustion air, condensate routing and flue sizing done by the book.
• The Huron River cuts a deep valley through the north side of Ann Arbor, and the Northside, Lower Town and Gallup Park neighborhoods feel it as morning fog, heavier dew and basements that sweat in July. The downtown core holds heat with all its brick and pavement, so attics and upper floors there run several degrees hotter than the leafy blocks of Burns Park and the Old West Side, where mature oaks and maples shade roofs and cut peak cooling loads noticeably.