The heat wave drove many in Whatcom County to make this change to their homes
Bobbi Kreider stepped away from her cell phone for 10 minutes last Monday, during the hottest day of the heat wave. When she returned, the president of Lynden Sheet Metal had 17 voicemails from people desperate to install cooling systems in their homes.
“It actually crashed our phone system Monday morning,” Kreider said. Her company fielded at least 150 cooling system requests two weeks ago, either regarding installation or maintenance. “We had so many incoming lines.”
Whatcom County is known for its relatively cool summers, with the average high in July sitting at a comfortable 72 degrees. It’s for this reason exactly that many buildings throughout the region aren’t outfitted with cooling systems. But June’s record-breaking heat wave seems to have brought many of the area’s homeowners to a both a literal and figurative boiling point, pushing them to install air conditioning or heat pumps.
Since the pandemic began last April, HVAC companies have seen an increase in business, as housebound residents poured their money into home improvements. Pair that with a lively real estate market — Whatcom County home prices are up 26 percent compared to last year — and it’s an ideal time for property owners to invest in assets that will further add to their property values, said Jacob Marr, owner of Marr’s Heating and Air Conditioning in Bellingham.
Houses in the county are selling for a median price of $530,000, compared to $391,000 in July 2018, according to analysis by real estate brokerage Redfin. They sell after a median of six days on the market, compared to 20 days last year.
But there’s also another likely culprit behind the regional clamor to install cooling systems — human-caused climate change. The planet is getting warmer, and Whatcom County isn’t exempt. The Pacific Northwest’s average temperature has increased more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, with most of that jump occurring in the last four decades. At the same time, extreme heat events are happening more often and lasting longer.
“In the last five years, every year, we break our record for air conditioning and heat pumps installed,” Marr said. “The heat wave in particular put it over the top.”
The rising temperatures are partially what pushed Shirley McConnell to install air conditioning in the Point Roberts home she purchased about six months ago. The retired homeowner was born in Washington state and has lived in Point Roberts for 15 years, and she’s never seen temperatures quite like the ones she’s experienced in recent summers. Plus, the main living room in her new home has enormous windows, making it unbearably hot when the sun is out.
“Everything is changing, and it’s getting hotter,” she said. “We thought we might as well have a good AC system.”
HVAC companies scramble to keep up
For HVAC companies, the heat means a boom in business, but it also brings challenges. There are delays in the equipment supply chain and a lack of qualified workers to install cooling systems. At Lynden Sheet Metal, these factors have tripled the wait time for appointments.
“For our sales calls, usually we run two weeks,” Kreider said. “Right now we are six weeks out to get an appointment.”
There are nationwide shortages of cooling system equipment and components, such as copper and steel. The price of refrigerant has nearly doubled, Kreider said, and she is seeing estimated delivery times for parts stretching into the late fall. The pandemic sent supply chains reeling and a recovery has yet to come — Marr said that shortages are actually worse this summer than they were last year.
“Before COVID, a unit was in Tacoma or our region,” Marr said. “Now, we are lucky if it’s even in the region.”
And it’s not just an equipment shortage companies have to deal with — there are also not enough qualified workers in the HVAC business. Both Marr and Kreider said they would like to hire more employees to manage the uptick in customers, but they simply can’t find them.
“I would love to if they existed. They just don’t,” Kreider said. “There’s not enough people going into the trade to replace people retiring.”
Due to the lack of qualified workers, she said, wages for HVAC technicians have gone up roughly 20%. An entry-level technician can earn $17 to $20 an hour, Marr said, and an experienced journeyman can make over $40 an hour. Both Lynden Sheet Metal and Marr’s have resorted to hiring young people and training them in-house. Marr’s went as far as to replace their fireplace showroom with a training room for heat pump installation.
“We could use a little help in the high schools getting people into trade-oriented classes earlier and using tools,” Marr said. “It’s helpful when you get someone in who has general mechanical abilities and can work with tools.”
To heat pump or not to heat pump?
You’ve decided you can’t stand another day that turns your home into a suffocating greenhouse, but now you have a decision to make: Will you install a heat pump or traditional air conditioning?
Heat pumps use electricity to transfer heat between the indoors and outdoors, moving warm air inside during the winter and outside during the summer. They are significantly more efficient than traditional heating and cooling systems, making them better for the planet and reducing customers’ utility bills.
Heat pumps function best in climates where temperatures don’t dip below zero, making the Pacific Northwest one of the best regions in the country to own a heat pump. In recent years, local companies have seen a continuing increased interest in this type of cooling system.
“We are absolutely seeing more heat pumps sold,” said Michael Grossman, who handles communications for the Ferndale-based industrial company Andgar. “Awareness of them is increasing, people are more environmentally conscious.”
Heat pumps have outpaced traditional air conditioning systems among Andgar customers, with more than 60 percent investing in heat pump technologies.
The downside to heat pumps is that they have a higher upfront installation cost, making them inaccessible for those with less disposable income. Heat pumps typically take upwards of five years to begin paying for themselves in utility savings, Marr said, but he expects that timeframe to steadily shrink as heat pump technology becomes more efficient and natural gas prices potentially increase.
“Natural gas is probably not going to get cheaper,” Marr said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to our grid, but it’s a pretty safe bet to assume (natural gas) prices won’t go down.”
This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
