The government is budgeting $2 billion over eight years with a target of retrofitting one million homes.
Households below the median income level can get up to $10,000 back on a heat pump purchase, while other homeowners can get $2,000 by switching to a heat pump.
Ottawa is in the process of winding down an existing program to subsidize purchases of heat pumps for homes heated with oil. As of March, the Oil to Heat Pump Affordability program helped to install more than 30,000 heat pumps across the country.
To be fair, only geothermal heat pumps make sense when it gets cold. My heat pump stops doing much around -25C
My heat pump is rated for -25C but it certainly doesn’t become useless past that, it heats enough to keep my house at 23C for a day or 2 at -30 without it’s resistive heating kicking in. There are heat pumps rated for -30 though.
geothermal is great but has its place. that is really costly because of digging yes.
standard heat pump condenser for a residential application is no different then a standard AC condenser as far as install company is concerned. they just inflate the costs because ’ it costs them more’ and they maybe have 1 extra wire for the thermostat.
The “it costs more” is generally relevant to the parts of the country where you also need supplemental heating equipment installed because it stays below -20C for extended periods of time (at those temperatures air source heat pumps can’t keep up with heating demand).
That may not be the case in parts of southern Ontario or coastal BC, but there are large parts of this country that would need the extra heat.
That said, over the life of the system it still costs less when you take into account lower fuel consumption.