After years on the back burner, heat pumps go mainstream with sizzling hot sales
CBC
Luise Cox is upgrading her 1960s bungalow in Mississauga, Ont., this week by tearing out and hauling away the old air conditioner and natural gas furnace. Instead, crews are replacing those units with a brand new heat pump (and some extra insulation in the attic, too).
"We needed to upgrade, and environmentally it's better," the 85-year old said. "We're spending a lot on heating and cooling, so hopefully this will help."
Heat pumps, which have been promoted for years, have failed to gain traction with the public. But that's starting to change with rising temperatures, improved technology and government rebates, among the reasons why.
HVAC specialist Peter Messenger says they've gone from 10 per cent of his company's installations to about half almost overnight.
"I'm surprised at how quickly the general public's mindset has changed on heat pumps," said Messenger, owner of A1 Air Conditioning and Heating in Oakville, Ont., west of Toronto. "I always knew it would happen, I just didn't know it would happen this quickly."
He said heat pumps accounted for about 10 per cent of his sales last year but now make up about 50 per cent.
Sales are growing so quickly that Messenger said he wonders whether heat pumps could even wipe out the sales of new air conditioners in homes in a few years and put a significant dent in the number of natural gas furnaces.
A heat pump often looks like an air conditioner and can function the same way. They cool a home by absorbing the heat inside and releasing it outside. But unlike an air conditioner, they can reverse the process in winter — heating a cold house without the need of a burner like a furnace, by transferring heat from where it's not needed to where it is: inside.
"We won't sell air conditioners. Everything will be a heat pump" in a few years, Messenger said. "People may still keep their gas furnaces, but as time goes on, I think we're going to see less and less gas meters on people's homes."
Heat pumps existed for decades, and more than 400,000 were installed in Canada in 2000, but
Aggressive patients and lack of security are making nurses feel unsafe in a rural Western Manitoba emergency union, says the Manitoba Nurses Union.
Saskatoon resident Delynne Bortis knew her commute to work Tuesday morning would be particularly difficult.
WARNING: This story contains details of abuse and intimate partner violence:
The amount of money it takes for people to earn a living wage has increased across the province, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.