In response to the Jan. 7 article on heat pumps, I want to add my experience [“Public slow to warm to heat pumps,” Recorder, Jan. 8]. Overall, air-source heat pump options aren’t that complicated. If you have existing forced hot air ducts, you can likely just (1) swap out your furnace for a central heat pump as we did. If you don’t have air ducts, you can (2) get mini-splits throughout the house or (3) a central heat pump and a whole new ducting system, which admittedly can be expensive. Those are pretty much the three common options covering the vast majority of cases. If you have hot water radiators, there are air to water heat pumps, but I don’t believe those are commonly installed around here yet.

I also want to add that the $57,000 to $97,000 quote I saw in the article was mind-blowing. We got five quotes in 2021, none as high as those, and our total cost ended up being $17,750 to swap out our oil furnace for a central heat pump and add ducting to two bedrooms upstairs. We got the $10,000 MassSAVE, so our total out-of-pocket cost was $7,750. Now we have a heat pump rated to work down to -5°F and it has electric heating coils as a backup in case it’s colder than -5°F outside, which is rare. We haven’t been cold in our house during the winter since it was installed in February 2022, and the central air conditioning in the summer is a nice bonus, too.

Travis Drury

Greenfield