Heat pumps and mini splits in York

The houses in York

York is the small, dense residential district immediately east of downtown, dropping toward Whatcom Creek — mostly modest early-century houses on narrow lots, packed close together, with a number long since converted to duplexes and small apartment buildings. Houses are one and a half or two storeys with shallow basements, and front porches sit within a few strides of the sidewalk. Because downtown is walking distance, a lot of these properties have been rentals for decades and show it.

What is probably heating yours right now

What is installed in York depends on how many times the property has changed use. Single-family houses that kept their duct system are on gas furnaces; every conversion to two or more units added baseboard, because per-room electric heat was the easiest way to make separate units work. Wall heaters are common in the small units. Buildings that are entirely on baseboard or wall heaters meet PSE’s existing-heat requirement for the $1,500 conversion rebate.

What makes a York install different

Space between buildings is the binding constraint in York — on some lots there is barely five feet from wall to property line, which puts service clearance, sound at the neighbour’s window, and condensate routing ahead of equipment preference. Wall-bracket mounting for the outdoor unit is often more practical than a ground pad, and on multi-unit buildings a single multi-zone condenser serving several heads keeps the exterior clutter down. Older converted buildings frequently have one undersized service feeding what are now several units, so panel capacity gets checked first and any upgrade 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 the Whatcom Creek Trail, the Ellis Street corridor, Old Town across the creek, we have worked nearby. Ask and we will tell you honestly what we have run into on that side of town.