Envelope Improvements and Heat Pumps: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together!

If you were in this industry in 2009-2014, you remember the ARRA days and the push to create as many Home Performance Contractors as possible. The motivation for this was to have a single contractor focused on envelope improvements and HVAC together. Did that work well where you live? The idea is sound, lower the peak and seasonal loads first (or at the same time) and then size and install a heat pump. This has been successful in some places, but not others. Yet, this combination of projects is even more critical when we're focused on heat pumps as the primary system. This session will dig into the rationale for combining weatherization with heat pumps installation. We will explore other ways to combine this work if you are in a market that lacks full-service contractors. This sure-to-be-exciting session will demonstrate the benefits of Wx before HVAC from both research and customer experience lenses, the challenges and opportunities in front of contractors and programs, and what, if any, requirements for sequencing are arriving in utility and IRA program requirements.