Heat pumps and mini splits in South

The houses in South

The South neighborhood occupies the ground between downtown and Fairhaven, above Boulevard Park, and its housing is mostly early-century: two-storey wood-frame houses on the bluff streets built to look at Bellingham Bay, with basements cut into the slope. Later infill added mid-century houses and some newer multi-family closer to the water and the rail line. The best rooms in these houses are the ones with the most glass facing west, which is also where the heat loss is.

What is probably heating yours right now

Older South houses typically run a gas furnace descended from an oil or coal conversion, with the basement trunk still doing most of the distribution and upper rooms supplemented by baseboard. The newer multi-family units are electric resistance. West-facing glass means these houses can be cold in a January easterly and genuinely overheated on an August afternoon, which is the argument for a heat pump rather than another furnace.

What makes a South install different

The bluff is the wrinkle. Lots fall steeply toward the water, so the level ground for a condenser is usually at the street side while the mechanical room is at the bottom of the house, and that means a planned lineset run with the manufacturer’s lift limit checked rather than assumed. Exposure to the bay brings salt-laden air and the west wind straight onto the outdoor unit, so corrosion-protected coils and a sheltered placement are worth specifying. Retaining walls, stairs and shared driveways make access a real line item; we look at how the equipment gets to the pad before we quote the pad.

Sizing for 19°F

Every Bellingham address shares the same code design temperature — 19°F at station Bellingham 2 N, colder than Sea-Tac's 24°F. What differs street to street is the envelope. A 1910s one-and-a-half storey with knee walls and original single glazing carries a very different load from a mid-2000s two-storey built to a modern code, even at identical square footage. That is why we run the load rather than multiplying square feet by a constant.

We know the streets

If you are near Boulevard Park, Taylor Dock, the South Bay Trail, we have worked nearby. Ask and we will tell you honestly what we have run into on that side of town.