Call the B.E.S.T. — Bellingham's Energy Savings Team
Heat pumps and ductless mini splits, installed right, in Bellingham
Bellingham's design temperature is 19°F — colder than Seattle's 24°F. We size for that, not for a rule of thumb, and we tell you what it costs before anyone comes out.
- PSE pays $1,500 to replace electric baseboard — $2,400 with PSE Efficiency Boost for income-qualified households
- Owner-operated in Whatcom County since 2020
- We pull the mechanical permit and meet the inspector
- Certified refrigeration techs — rare in this county
- WA L&I #BELLIHC808NM Active registration — verify it with the state
- $30,000 bonded Surety bond on file with L&I
- $1,000,000 insured General liability coverage
- Local since 2020 Owner-operated in Whatcom County
- We pull the permit City of Bellingham or Whatcom County, and we meet the inspector
Read this before you get a quote
The federal heat pump tax credit is gone. The Bellingham rebates are not.
Most HVAC sites in Whatcom County still advertise a $2,000 federal tax credit for a heat pump. It no longer exists. The One Big Beautiful Bill terminated the §25C credit for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025, and the IRS has confirmed that paying for a system in 2025 does not preserve the credit if the installation finished afterwards.
What is still real, and what most quotes leave off:
- $1,500 from Puget Sound Energy to replace electric-resistance heat — baseboard, wall heaters, an electric furnace or radiant ceiling cable — with a ducted or ductless heat pump. $2,400 if your household income-qualifies, and PSE says roughly half its customers do.
- Up to $2,000 more through the Community Energy Challenge for moderate-income households in homes built before 1990.
- $450–$750 in Daikin manufacturer rebates on ductless systems purchased by September 30, 2026.
And one gotcha nobody local publishes: Cascade Natural Gas, not PSE, is Bellingham's gas utility. Every PSE rebate that requires PSE natural gas service — the hybrid heat pump rebate and the $4,000 moderate-income fuel-switching rebate — is unreachable from a Bellingham address. If a contractor quotes you one of those, they have not checked.
- Every Bellingham rebate, with the source and the date we checked it
- Is the federal heat pump tax credit still available? — and what happened to the §25D credit that covered geothermal
- How to actually claim the PSE heat pump rebate
- Is a heat pump worth it here? and what HSPF2 and SEER2 mean when you are comparing two quotes
Where the money actually is
- PSE electric-resistance conversion
- $1,500–$2,400
- Community Energy Challenge
- up to $2,000
- Daikin ductless instant rebate
- $450–$750
- PSE heat pump water heater
- $1,000–$1,100
- Federal §25C tax credit
- $2,000
Verified 2026-09-04. Amounts and rules change — each figure links to its program on our rebates page.
Ask what you qualify for — (360) 592-3824What we do
Heat pumps and mini splits first. Everything else because you asked.
Ductless and ducted heat pump work is the core of the business. Water heating, filtration and refrigeration are real services we do well, not filler.
Ductless Mini Split Installation
Heat and cool the rooms you actually use, without tearing your house apart to add ductwork.
$3,000–$ 10,000 Details →
Heat Pump Installation
One system that heats through a Bellingham winter and cools through a smoke-season August, sized to your house rather than to a chart.
$4,000–$ 8,000 Details →
Heat Pump Replacement
Replace a tired system once, correctly, instead of paying for a third repair on equipment that will not see another winter.
$2,793–$ 10,058 Details →
Furnace to Heat Pump Conversion
Use the ductwork you already have to get efficient heating plus air conditioning, and keep the furnace only if it is genuinely earning its place.
$4,000–$ 8,000 Details →
Heat Pump Repair
Find out what is actually wrong, in plain language, with the repair price and the replacement price side by side.
Details →
Heat Pump Maintenance
An hour of attention each year keeps the capacity you paid for and finds the cheap failures before they become the expensive ones.
Details →
DIY Mini Split Kit Commissioning
Do the labour you are capable of doing, and pay a professional only for the part that needs gauges, a vacuum pump and a licence.
Details →
Water heating & water quality
Air quality & commercial
Does it even work here?
Bellingham's heating design temperature is 19°F
The honest version of the "do heat pumps work in the Pacific Northwest" question is arithmetic, not opinion. Washington's energy code publishes an outdoor heating design temperature for every town in the state. For station Bellingham 2 N it is 19°F — colder than Sea-Tac's 24°F, and well inside the range a modern cold-climate heat pump handles at full rated capacity.
What that means in practice: a properly sized cold-climate system carries a Bellingham house through a normal winter without leaning on backup heat, and the few genuinely cold mornings are the reason we spec equipment by its capacity at 5°F rather than its nameplate at 47°F. Head north to Blaine and the design temperature drops to 17°F; up the Mount Baker Highway at Glacier it is 13°F. Same county, different equipment decision.
Where a heat pump genuinely struggles is when someone sizes it off square footage, skips the load calculation, and leaves the auxiliary heat strips running all winter. That is an installation problem, not a technology problem.
Straight pricing
What a Bellingham heat pump actually costs
Installed price ranges, before rebates, with the source for each one.
Installed, before rebates. Ranges benchmarked against published Whatcom County pricing — see the cost pages for the sources and worked examples.
Where we work
All of Whatcom County, and we know the difference between the towns
Not a city-name-swap list. The utility, the permit office, the design temperature and the housing stock all change as you move around this county — and all four change the quote.
- Bellingham 19°F design temp
- Lynden 17°F design temp
- Ferndale 19°F design temp
- Birch Bay 17°F design temp
- Sudden Valley 19°F design temp
- Blaine 17°F design temp
- Marietta-Alderwood 19°F design temp
- Everson 17°F design temp
- Geneva 19°F design temp
- Sumas 17°F design temp
- Nooksack 17°F design temp
- Point Roberts 17°F design temp
- Kendall 13°F design temp
- Custer 17°F design temp
- Deming 13°F design temp
- Peaceful Valley 13°F design temp
- Lummi Island 19°F design temp
- Mount Vernon 19°F design temp
- Burlington 19°F design temp
- Sedro-Woolley 19°F design temp
- Anacortes 24°F design temp
- Glacier 13°F design temp
- Maple Falls 13°F design temp
Bellingham, neighborhood by neighborhood
A 1920s Sunnyland bungalow on baseboard heat and a 2004 Cordata two-storey with existing ductwork are completely different jobs. These pages say which one you have.
Where we are based
1050 Larrabee Ave, Suite 104, PMB 761, Bellingham, WA 98225 — a mailing address, not a showroom. We are a service-area business: we come to you, anywhere in Whatcom County. Open in Google Maps
Talk to the person who will do the work
This is a small, owner-operated shop. When you call (360) 592-3824 you are not going through a call centre, and the person who quotes your job is the person who is accountable for it.
Estimates carry the standard $89.99 trip charge, refunded as company credit when you accept the bid. That keeps us honest about which visits are worth making and means we are not padding install prices to cover free quotes.
Get a free estimate
Five fields. We call you back — usually the same business day.
Ready for a straight answer on your house?
Tell us what you have now and what you want it to do. We will tell you what fits, what it costs, and which rebates you actually qualify for — before anyone comes out.
Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM · Emergency calls answered 24/7