Consider a heat pump

Here in the Heights, we’ve experienced a pretty cold winter, with temperatures dipping below zero in January.

In the middle of that cold snap, a Cleveland Heights friend’s natural gas furnace quit, and she was forced to make what she called a “less-than-ideal decision.” She wanted to explore replacing her gas furnace with a heat pump, but her furnace company actively discouraged her. With her house growing colder, she reluctantly purchased another natural gas furnace, thus locking in her house’s methane and carbon heating emissions for the next 15 years.

We homeowners often purchase our appliances in emergency situations. When our furnace or water heater quits, we need to get back to normal operations quickly.

Nationally, U.S. homeowners’ kitchen table decisions directly affect 42% of U.S. energy-related emissions.

The recent Cleveland Heights Climate Action and Resiliency Plan analyzed our city’s greenhouse gas emissions. It determined that the residential energy sector produces the majority of our emissions (60%).

It’s my intention to be ready to swap my gas furnace for a heat pump when my furnace quits. My partner and I want to do this for several reasons: We want to reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions, reduce our energy consumption overall, and improve the resale value of our house.

I have been researching what we need to do. The best resources I found are at Rewiring America—a nonprofit dedicated to helping homeowners electrify. I was so impressed with the online resources at www.rewiringamerica.org that I took the organization’s Electric Coaches course in October 2024. I was trained as a volunteer peer-to-peer coach to help fellow homeowners “get their kitchen tables ready.”

I’ve learned that any electric machine (heat pumps, induction stoves or electric vehicles, for example) are about three times as energy efficient as fuel-based systems. This is because of the inefficiency of combustion, which loses a lot of energy in waste heat. And this three-times efficiency gain for electric machines holds even when you take into account that some of our electricity is still produced by burning fuels.

A heat pump doesn’t burn fuel. Instead, it “pumps” heat from one place to another. Your refrigerator and air conditioner use this method. A heat pump just reverses the direction: it pumps the residual heat from the outdoors into your home. Modern heat pumps can do this effectively in very cold weather. Only 2% of locations in the continental United States are so cold that a modern heat pump can’t work effectively and efficiently.

It can take some time to get ready for the switch. It’s usual to need a home energy audit, to do some air sealing (which is different than just insulating), and to figure out the capacity of your current electric panel. But you’ve got time. You just need to be ready when your furnace needs replacing.

Homeowners often find identifying a well-trained and experienced contractor to install their heat pump is the hardest part of the process. As part of my Electric Coaches course, I compiled a guide of resources for our local area, including those contractors. If you have had a good experience with a local contractor, I’d like to hear from you. If you want to be kept up to date as I work on my own home and share what I’ve learned, e-mail me at electrifycle@icloud.com.