Heat pump changeout and duct repair in Wake Forest

The scope

A 2004 house in Wake Forest with the original heat pump, which finally failed in the first week of June with the compressor locked. The owners had been running it in auxiliary heat for two winters and knew the bill they were paying for that.

The challenge

The easy version of this job is a straight swap: pull the old equipment, set the new equipment, hook it up, leave. It takes a day and it is what most of the market sells.

It would have been the wrong job here. The attic ductwork was original flex, sagging between supports into long dips, with unsealed boot connections at four registers and a return that was undersized for the equipment that had been on it, let alone for anything modern. A new variable-speed system on that duct system would have been a very efficient way to condition an attic.

Duct leakage in a Triangle attic is not a small loss either. Air escaping into a space that runs above forty degrees hotter than the house in July is the most expensive air in the building.

What we did

Dana Whitfield sized the replacement from a load calculation rather than from the label on the old unit, which came out a half tonne smaller. Twenty years of equipment upsizing based on the last equipment installed is how houses end up with systems that short cycle and never dehumidify.

The duct work went first: two supply runs resized, every boot sealed with mastic rather than tape, the sagging runs resupported at proper intervals, and the return enlarged with a second grille added in the hallway. All of it done before the new equipment was set, so the system was commissioned against the duct system it will actually live with.

Then the changeout: new outdoor unit on a level pad, new air handler, new line set insulation, a proper condensate trap and a float switch, and a thermostat with the auxiliary heat locked out above a set outdoor temperature so it stops running strips on a mild morning.

The outcome

Three days on site rather than one. Static pressure came in inside the manufacturer's range on commissioning, which it almost never does on a straight swap onto old duct, and the supply temperature split is where it should be.

The owners will see the difference in a January bill rather than a June one, because the auxiliary heat lockout is worth more than the efficiency rating on the box. The equipment carries its manufacturer warranty, registered in their name at installation, on top of our own labour warranty.

Finished 12 June 2026.