Heat pumps and mini splits in WWU

The houses in Western Washington University

The WWU neighborhood is the campus plus the blocks of housing immediately around it, and almost all of that housing is rental. Older two-storey houses have been split into three, four or five bedrooms with shared kitchens; between them sit purpose-built student apartment buildings from the 1960s through the 2010s. The houses are pre-1940 wood frame with plaster, shallow basements and steep approaches off the hill; the apartments are small units with one or two exterior walls.

What is probably heating yours right now

Electric resistance heat is the rule: baseboard in every bedroom so each room can be controlled separately, wall heaters in halls and baths, and occasionally an electric furnace in the larger converted houses. Cooling is usually a window unit or nothing, which is increasingly a problem in late August. All-baseboard buildings are the clearest PSE electric-resistance conversion rebate candidates in the city, and an owner replacing baseboard with ductless heads also gets cooling out of the same project.

What makes a Western Washington University install different

The scheduling window is the real constraint. Occupied student housing cannot be opened up mid-quarter, so the work happens in the gap between summer and fall or over winter break, and that means committing to equipment and permits earlier than a homeowner would. Many of these properties are held by owners who do not live in Whatcom County, so decisions and payment run through a manager — we put the scope, the placement and the unit count in writing before we mobilise. Panels in the converted houses are often already loaded by the room-by-room baseboard circuits, so panel capacity gets verified early and any service work goes to a licensed electrical contractor.

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 Western Washington University, Old Main, the Performing Arts Center, Red Square, we have worked nearby. Ask and we will tell you honestly what we have run into on that side of town.