Ductless Heat Pumps & Mini-Splits in Kirkland, WA

Is a ductless heat pump the same thing as a mini-split?

Yes — two names, one machine. A ductless heat pump is a mini-split: an inverter heat pump outside, slim indoor heads, and a line set about three inches across between them. No ductwork anywhere. It heats through the winter and cools in August off the same equipment.

The two names describe different halves of the same thing, which is why people search both and then wonder whether they are comparing two products. “Heat pump” is what it does — it moves heat rather than burning fuel to make it, and it runs the same cycle backwards in summer. “Mini-split” is how it is built — the system is split between an outdoor unit and indoor heads, and the heads are small. Neither word is a grade of equipment, and neither one is the expensive version of the other.

The comparison that does matter is ductless against ducted, and your house decides it rather than the wording on the quote. If your Kirkland house has sound ductwork and an electrical panel with room in it, a ducted heat pump is usually the better system and cheaper per square foot. If it has no ducts, or ducts that only ever reached half of it, ductless is not a compromise — it is the answer, and it is the same inverter technology either way.

What a ductless system costs in Kirkland — and where I stop guessing

Most contractors will not put a number in front of you until someone is sitting in your living room. Mine are published on my Google Business Profile where anyone can read them without talking to me first. These are the real figures:

American Standard 2-ton heat pump, side discharge, multi-stage

from $11,264

Ameristar 80,000 BTU 80% gas furnace, like-for-like replacement

from $4,865

A/C coil added during a furnace install (makes the system heat-pump ready)

from $1,435

Honeywell S1200 smart thermostat

from $460

Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium

from $259

Air Scrubber UV whole-home purification

from $1,040

Multi-zone ductless

priced at the site visit — head count decides it

Every one of those is a “from” price, and you will notice there is no multi-zone ductless number on the list. That is deliberate. A single-head system in a bonus room and a five-head system running a whole house are not the same job, they are thousands of dollars apart, and a headline price for “ductless” would only be honest for one of them. I price it after I have seen how many rooms you actually need to solve and where the outdoor unit can go.

What a published price cannot know is your house. A crawlspace you cannot stand up in. An electrical panel with no space left in it. A line set that has to run three times its normal length because the only place the outdoor unit can sit is round the far side of the building. Any one of those moves the number, and I would much rather tell you at your kitchen table than discover it on day two.

So there is no starting-at figure that quietly doubles. I look at the house, I write the number, and the number is the number. If you want options you get good, better and best in writing, and I will tell you what the extra money actually buys — which on some jobs is nothing worth having.

There is a 5% discount for active military, veterans and first responders, and financing is available.

Why so many Kirkland houses end up ductless

A lot of the older housing around Norkirk, Houghton and the streets behind downtown was never built with ductwork. Neither were plenty of the additions, converted garages and bonus rooms that got added to Kirkland houses later, which is why so many of them have one room that has never been the right temperature in either season.

Retrofitting ducts into a finished house is not really an HVAC job. It is a carpentry job with an HVAC job at the end of it — dropped ceilings, lost closet depth, patched drywall, and a bill for all of that before you have paid for a single BTU of heat. In a house with plaster walls and no attic to work in, it can cost more than the equipment.

Ductless skips the whole problem. One outdoor unit, a three-inch line set through the wall, and indoor heads only in the rooms that need them. One head for the bonus room over the garage. Four or five on a single outdoor unit for a house that has never had central anything. It is not a compromise system — it is the same inverter heat pump technology, delivered a different way.

The honest counterweight: if your house already has good ducts, ducted is normally the better system. It is out of sight, everything filters through one filter, and it costs less per square foot of house. If someone recommends ductless without looking in your crawlspace first, they have not answered the question — they have quoted the thing they had in the van.

Ductless mini-splits in Kirkland

Will a heat pump actually keep a Kirkland house warm?

Yes. The equipment I install is cold-climate inverter equipment, rated to keep producing heat into negative temperatures. Kirkland does not get there.

The doubt is fair, because it used to be true. Heat pumps from twenty years ago shed most of their output as the outdoor temperature dropped, which is why so many Puget Sound houses ended up with electric strip heat bolted on behind them, and why plenty of people still remember a heat pump as the thing that ran all night and never really warmed the house.

Inverter equipment changed that. The compressor varies its speed instead of banging on and off, so it holds capacity much further down the temperature range and spends most of its life running slowly. Running slowly is what makes it quiet — which matters more in a mini-split, because the indoor head is in the room with you rather than down in a crawlspace.

The Eastside's problem was never extreme cold anyway. It is the length of the season: a long, wet, forty-degree winter where the heat is on for months. That is the exact condition a heat pump is best at and a furnace is worst at, because a furnace only knows full blast and off.

One thing worth asking when you are comparing quotes: get the rated heating capacity at 17°F and at 5°F. It is printed on the manufacturer's data sheet for whatever is being proposed. A contractor who will not show it to you has told you something useful.

Ducted, ductless, or both — what I'd put in your house

There are three honest answers and they depend on the house, not on what I would rather sell.

Ductless on its own. No usable ductwork, or ductwork that only serves half the house. Heads go where the rooms are, and you can stage it — do the two rooms that are actually a problem now, add to the same outdoor unit later if it is sized for it. Ask about that sizing before you buy, because it is the decision that either leaves the door open or closes it.

A ducted heat pump. If the ducts are sound and the panel has capacity, this is usually the better system and often the cheaper one per square foot. One unit outside, one inside, heating and cooling from the same equipment.

Both, on one house. More common than people expect. Ducted equipment handles the original part of the house, a head or two handles the addition the ducts never reached properly. It is not a bodge; it is the right tool in each half of the building.

And there is a fourth answer that costs you nothing: the system you have has another season in it. I will tell you that too. I would rather come and look at it again next August than sell you something you did not need this week.

Heat pump installation in Kirkland

What the install actually involves

Most jobs run two to four days. Here is what those days are:

Before anything — the site visit

I measure the house and run a load calculation. Not square footage off the listing. I look at the panel, the crawlspace, where the outdoor unit can physically go, and how the line set gets there without running across the front of your house.

Day one — the old system out

Old equipment removed and refrigerant recovered properly rather than vented. On a ductless job this is also when we settle exactly where each head goes, because a head in the wrong wall is a decision you live with for twenty years.

Day one to two — the new system in

Outdoor unit set on a level pad with proper clearances and vibration isolation. Heads mounted and line sets run, with the penetrations sealed and the exterior line-hide kept straight and tight to the building rather than looping across the siding. Condensate routed somewhere that makes sense and will still make sense in ten years, and a weatherproof disconnect within sight of the outdoor unit, sized and grounded to code.

Day two to three — vacuum and charge

The refrigerant circuit is pulled down to a deep vacuum and charged to specification. This is the step that decides whether the system runs for twenty years or fails in its third summer.

Last — commissioning and the walk-through

System run, airflow and charge verified, controls configured for your specific equipment, and then I show you how to actually use it. Most people never touch half of what they paid for because nobody ever sat down and explained it.

The part that decides whether the system lasts is the vacuum and the charge, and it is the one nobody watching from the kitchen can evaluate. That is where a refrigeration journeyman's licence stops being a line on a website.

Permits in Kirkland — a different jurisdiction from my Snohomish work

I hold a general contractor's licence as well as a refrigeration journeyman's licence, which means I pull the permit myself instead of subbing it out or quietly leaving it off the quote.

Kirkland is King County, and the mechanical permit goes through the City of Kirkland rather than through Snohomish County the way most of my work does. The fee is set by the city, so it is a real line on your quote and I will have the actual figure for you at the site visit — not a number I guessed on a webpage in August.

Why it matters more than it sounds: an unpermitted install is the thing that surfaces when you sell the house, and unpermitted electrical work is the thing your insurer asks about after a fire. It also means somebody other than me looks at what I did, which is the point.

Rebates and tax credits — what I'll tell you, and what I won't

I am not putting a rebate figure on this page.

Utility programmes and tax credits change, they have eligibility rules that turn on your exact address and on how your house is heated today, and a number I type in August is worth nothing to you in February. A rebate figure printed on a webpage is only ever as good as the day it was written, and the homeowner is the one who finds that out at the end.

Kirkland makes that worse, not better: it is a different county and a different utility from most of the area I work in, so a programme that applies to a house I worked on last month may have nothing to do with yours.

What I will do instead is tell you at the site visit what actually applies to your address and what it is worth — including when the answer is nothing — and then you should go and verify it yourself before you plan around it. That is a better use of your money than trusting a webpage, mine included.

New construction and remodels

If you are building or gutting a house in Kirkland, the HVAC decision wants making early, while the walls are still open and the mechanical space is still negotiable. Designed in at that stage it is a straightforward job. Retrofitted afterwards it is the most expensive version of itself.

I am SpacePak certified for small-duct high-velocity systems, and as far as I know I am the only one from where I live through Seattle who holds it. High-velocity moves air through small flexible tubing instead of large rigid trunks, so it fits into a finished ceiling or an old house without dropped soffits and oversized registers. It is genuinely the right answer for some remodels and plainly the wrong answer for others, and I will tell you which one you have.

One condition, and it is not negotiable: I only do high-velocity in new construction. I do not retrofit it into finished houses. If someone has offered to, ask them a lot of questions.

I pull permits under my own general contractor's licence and sequence around the other trades rather than expecting them to work around me.

New construction HVAC in Kirkland

The cooling half nobody asks about

Everyone buys a heat pump for the heat. Then July arrives.

A heat pump is an air conditioner that also runs backwards. There is no separate cooling equipment to buy, no second outdoor unit, no extra install. For most of the houses I work in, the heat pump is the first air conditioning that house has ever had — which is why the people who bought one for the winter are the ones telling their neighbours about it in the summer.

This is a bigger deal in a ductless house than a ducted one. A house with no ductwork has usually never had any way to cool itself at all beyond opening windows and buying a box fan every few years. The mini-split solves a problem the owners had stopped thinking of as solvable.

Air conditioning in Kirkland

Kirkland jobs I can show you

Two Kirkland jobs on this site, both real, both photographed.

A heat pump installation where the outdoor unit went underneath the homeowner's deck. The obvious locations would all have eaten into the patio, so the system got designed around the house instead of the other way round — hidden and protected, but still with the airflow clearance and the service access it needs, which is the part that makes it a design decision rather than just hiding something.

A two-stage gas furnace replacement, with a filter cabinet added for cleaner air and easier filter changes and a new thermostat set up to run the equipment properly. Two-stage heating spends most of its time on the low, quiet stage and only goes to full output on the coldest days, so you get even temperatures instead of the blast-on, blast-off cycle of a single-stage furnace.

Neither of those is a ductless job, and I am not going to imply otherwise on a page about ductless. One is a ducted heat pump and one is a gas furnace. What I can point you at for multi-zone ductless is a customer's own write-up of a five-zone system I installed in a 1930s house — his words, on my Google profile, not mine.

Read the five-zone ductless review

Who you are actually hiring

Rylan Utter. About six years in the trade, and ExactAir has been mine since November 2024.

I hold a general contractor's licence and a refrigeration journeyman's licence. Installs are the work I care about and the work I am best at — I quote them, I do them, and I am the one you call afterwards if something is not right.

I am open 7am to 8pm, seven days a week, and the number on this page is my cell. When you call at 7:40 on a Sunday evening you get me, not an answering service taking a message for Monday.

Every review on my Google profile is a five-star review. I would like to keep it that way, which is a better guarantee of how your house gets treated than anything else I could write here.

More about how I work

Common questions

Do you actually come out to Kirkland? Yes. I am Everett-based, so I am not going to claim I am five minutes away — but Kirkland is inside the area I serve and I quote and install there. There are two photographed Kirkland jobs on this site if you want to see the work before you call.

How long does a ductless installation take? Two to four days on most houses. Head count and how the building is put together decide it, not the size of the outdoor unit.

How many indoor heads do I need? Fewer than most people are quoted. A head per room is a way to sell equipment, not a way to design a system. I would rather solve the rooms that are actually a problem and leave you the option to add later.

Are they loud? An inverter system spends most of its life at low speed. Indoor heads are quiet; where the outdoor unit gets placed matters more than which badge is on it.

Will my electrical panel handle it? That is one of the first things I check. If it will not, you hear about it before you get a price, not after you have signed.

Can I keep my gas furnace and add ductless? Yes, and for some houses that is the cheapest good answer — the furnace keeps doing what it already does and the heads solve the rooms it never reached.

Do you do the work yourself? Yes. Every time.

What if the answer is that I don't need a new system? Then that is what I will tell you, and it costs you nothing.