Introducing Heat Pumped

Welcome to Heat Pumped! Whether you’re curious about heat pumps or ready to make a change, this newsletter is your go-to resource for understanding why they matter and how they can transform your home.

Why you should care about Heat Pumps

If you’re new to heat pumps, I’d recommend starting with this basic primer on what they are, how they work, and why they’re important.

In short, space heating and cooling is the single largest energy consumer in a home. Most Americans still heat their home with a gas furnace - we are quite literally burning dinosaurs to keep warm. Much like with your car, switching to electric is one of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Between residential solar and increasing proportions of renewables on the grid, this will only become a smarter choice over time. There’s a whole host of other benefits too, including air quality and safety.

Why switching to Heat Pumps is so hard

If Heat Pumps are such an obvious choice, why aren’t they more common? There are a whole slew of challenges: cost, installation, permitting, misinformation, and just plain apathy. I’ve seen all of these factors play out firsthand in my time as an HVAC contractor. There is good news though - just recently, sales of Heat Pumps outpaced gas furnaces for the first time in US history.

Who I am and why I care about Heat Pumps so much

My background is in Mechanical Engineering, with experience building race cars in college and nearly a decade designing rockets and spacecraft. I never planned to focus my career on building electrification.

As with most things in life, what got me started on heat pumps was a boring technical paper from the 1980’s - namely ‘Computer Modeling of the Vapor Compression Cycle with Constant Flow Area Expansion Device’. As I started digging in, I realized this was just another mechanical system that compresses and expands a liquid, using a combination of tubes and heat exchangers. The fundamentals of the racecar engines and rocket engines I had been working on translated over perfectly.

What excites me most about Heat Pumps isn’t the engineering—it’s the challenge of deployment. The biggest hurdle isn’t technology; it’s getting these systems into millions of homes. That requires thousands of skilled technicians helping homeowners understand why upgrading that gray box in their attic is one of the most impactful ways to reduce their carbon footprint. We just need to get it done.

So that’s what I set out to do - I started a Heat Pump installation company, raised venture funding, and installed dozens of Heat Pumps across California. Along the way, I learned just how tough - but necessary - this work really is.

What you can expect from this newsletter

If you’re a homeowner thinking about installing a heat pump system, you’ll be better informed about the installation, equipment, costs and incentives, and how to best work with your contractor through the process.

If you’re an HVAC contractor, perhaps my perspective might spark some new ideas on how we could deploy systems more effectively.

If you’re an electrification enthusiast, I hope you’ll gain insights into the roadblocks to widespread Heat Pump adoption - and perhaps even pick up a few fun facts for your next dinner party!

Please feel free to reach out with any thoughts or questions - I’d love to hear from you!