Heat Pump Installation in Kirkland, WA

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.

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, and gas stops being part of your heating bill.

A heat pump and a gas furnace together — dual fuel. The heat pump does the everyday work and the furnace takes the coldest handful of days. It costs more up front because you are buying two pieces of equipment, and it is the right answer more often than people expect.

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

And 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.

Ductless mini-splits in Kirkland

Published prices, before anyone sits in your living room

Most contractors will not put a number in front of you until someone is at your kitchen table. Mine are published on my Google Business Profile. These are the real figures, all of them “from” prices:

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

from $11,264

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

from $1,435

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

from $4,865

Honeywell S1200 smart thermostat

from $460

Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium

from $259

Air Scrubber UV whole-home purification

from $1,040

Mechanical permit

set by the City of Kirkland — the actual figure goes on your quote after the site visit

What a published price cannot know is your house — the crawlspace, the panel, where the outdoor unit can physically sit, and how far the line set has to run to get there. Any of those moves the number. 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.

Where the outdoor unit goes — a real Kirkland job

On one Kirkland installation the obvious locations for the outdoor unit would all have eaten into the patio, and the homeowner did not want a condenser dominating the yard. The unit went underneath the deck instead — hidden and protected, but positioned for proper airflow and with service access kept clear, which is the part that makes it a design decision rather than just hiding something.

That is worth raising early rather than late. Where the outdoor unit sits affects the line set run, the condensate route, the electrical, how much of it you can hear from the kitchen window, and whether anyone can service it in eight years without dismantling something. It is a five-minute conversation at the site visit and an expensive one afterwards.

Clearances are not negotiable, whatever the location. The unit needs air in and air out, and a unit boxed into a tight corner or buried in planting will run harder for its whole life to do the same work.

See the hidden heat pump job 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, and it is also what holds the house at one temperature instead of swinging four degrees either side of the setpoint the way a single-stage furnace does.

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.

The three things that decide whether it can be done at all

Before equipment, before brand, before price, three things about your house decide what is possible. I check all three at the site visit and you hear the answer before you get a number, not after you have signed.

The electrical panel

A heat pump needs a dedicated circuit and the panel needs room for it. If it does not have room, that is a service upgrade and it is a real cost that belongs in the conversation at the start. This is the single most common reason a quote turns out not to be comparable to the one next to it.

The ductwork

Undersized or leaky ducts throttle a new system no matter what you paid for it, and a heat pump moves more air at lower temperature than the furnace it replaced — so ducts that were adequate before may not be. I would rather fix that than sell you equipment that cannot perform.

Where the outdoor unit can physically sit

It needs clearance, a level pad, a sensible line set run, and somewhere for condensate to go. On a tight lot this occasionally decides the whole design.

The heat-pump-ready middle option

If you are leaning towards a straight furnace replacement but you are not certain, there is a middle move most people have never been offered: put the heat-pump-ready A/C coil in at the same time as the furnace, from $1,435.

The indoor half is then already done. Whenever you decide to add the outdoor unit it is a smaller, cheaper job than doing the whole thing later, and you have not paid for a heat pump you were not ready to buy. That is on my published price list for exactly that reason.

It is the move I would make in a house with a healthy furnace and a bad August.

Furnace repair and replacement in Kirkland

What the install involves

Most jobs run two to four days.

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, the ducts, where the outdoor unit can 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 most jobs this is also when the sheet-metal transitions get fabricated to fit what is actually there, because what is actually there is never what the catalogue drawing shows.

Day one to two — the new system in

Outdoor unit set on a level pad with proper clearances and vibration isolation. Indoor unit set and connected with the transitions sealed. Line set run, condensate routed somewhere that 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, thermostat configured for your specific equipment, and then I show you how to actually use 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, so 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.

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.

A heat pump job, in the customer's words

Two Google reviews, quoted exactly as they were written:

“We went with ExactAir for our heat pump because Rylan seemed knowledgeable, and gave us a few options/ideas that other HVAC companies hadn't even mentioned. We're very happy with how the install came out and the care Rylan took in the details and getting everything right. Would 100% recommend to anyone considering an HVAC install.”

— Anh H, 19 June 2026

“They installed a variable-speed American Standard heat pump along with a Platinum variable-speed, two-stage American Standard furnace, and the system has been incredible. The comfort level in our home is noticeably better, and the efficiency has exceeded our expectations.”

— Paula Allen, 4 January 2026

Read the rest on Google

Rebates — 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 turn on your exact address and on how your house is heated today, and a number I type this month is worth nothing to you in February. Kirkland is a different county and a different utility from most of the area I work in, so a programme that applied to a house I worked on last month may have nothing to do with yours.

I will 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 verify it yourself before you plan around it.

Who is actually turning up

ExactAir Home Comfort is one person: me, Rylan Utter. I am based in Everett, not in Kirkland. Kirkland is inside the area I serve and I take work there, but I am not round the corner and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

The person who quotes your job is the person who installs it. I am reachable 7am to 8pm, seven days a week.

Ducted and ductless side by side for a Kirkland house