empower+ anyone go through them? Looking for Heat pump install from Natural gas.

Thanks Greenwoodgoblin, that is something to look out for. The house is circa 1915, but was gut renovated. So still somewhat small rooms, but not as small as originally. Was thinking of zoning but more along lines of basement/parlour floor/tenant floor.

Thanks for sharing the info, will looking into getting a J load calculation.

Would love to hear more as you move along!

mmyers@heliogram.com

in Heating and Cooling 9 months ago

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mmyers@heliogram.com | 9 months ago

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Navigating the NYSERDA site – my head is ready to explode.

Aside from the difficulty in application if you are an Owner/occupier. –
finding a Empower+ contractor – good luck. 27 listings for my zip, some which were NOT contractors, but community service orgs, some way out of the zip code like Schenectady. Not filtered by what you want done – most provides audits/insulation/solar. The few that did provide heat pumps only one was BBB accredited. No reviews to be found. Kawi group was the only one with BBB credit, but not much else in reviews.

SO – if you have navigated this – I would love your insight. From talking to the NYSERDA folk, it would probably be a savings of 7.5K to 10K. Which is not chump change.

If you switched from gas to heat pumps, I would love that insight too and contractor recommendations. We did go solar, with Brooklyn Solar works and they were great with the paperwork and financing.

Looking at Arnica, Mr AirNYC and Vigilante (a neighbor of a friend likes them, but they didn’t do the actual installation, just maintainance.)

Sorry for the vent.

greenwoodgoblin | 9 months ago

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I’ve spent the last year on this, limping an old steam system along after buying last summer. We started by installing solar, too. Most major contractors can get the decommisioning rebate for you. The specifics are complicated. We got quotes from Arnica and Prime Air, both were responsive and have good local reviews and gave comparable quotes. However most companies want to do the system through minisplit heads/cassettes only. This is nice for zoning a system, but in an older house with small rooms you quite easy wind up with oversized equipment and many condensers, which is not good for cost or efficiency or aesthetics. I finally got a manual J load calculation from an outside vendor and assessed my actual heat needs. I landed on TF O’Brien as my contractor; they came out this week to help us design a correctly sized, partially ducted system. That way I’m not, e.g., dropping a 9k btu minisplit head into a tiny bedroom. It will be rebate eligible. Happy to share more with the caveat that we haven’t yet installed.