Short answer
In a cold climate a heating failure has a second clock behind it: the building's plumbing. Once indoor temperature nears freezing the cost stops being the repair and becomes the pipes, so report the indoor temperature first. And note that oil and propane systems need electricity for controls, circulators and blowers: a power cut stops them with a full tank, which is the most commonly misread failure here. A homeowner who assumes the fuel ran out can lose a day before the actual cause, the outage, is found.
Vermont homes commonly rely on boilers, furnaces, heat pumps, radiant floors, or more than one of those together, so naming the equipment and the symptom together, rather than the general complaint of being cold, is what gets the right technician sent. A heat-pump project deserves its own comparison: a proposal that addresses the building's actual heat loss, the equipment's rated output at your design temperature, and the backup strategy is a different thing from one that simply matches the old system's nominal size.
Services and information
Heating and cooling systems we service
Systems vary a lot by home. Choose the equipment or problem below so the right type of help can respond.
- No-heat repair for boilers, furnaces and heat pumps
- Boiler and furnace repair or replacement
- Ductless, ducted and air-to-water heat pumps
- Central A/C and mini-split cooling
- Thermostats, zoning, ductwork and controls
- Filtration, humidity control, ERVs and HRVs
Cold-weather heating help
Total heat loss is the real danger. Complete heat loss during freezing weather can threaten both people and plumbing. Report the equipment, fuel, indoor temperature trend, which zones are affected and whether backup heat is available.
Heat pump planning for Vermont
Cold-climate heat pumps can serve whole homes or supplement an existing system. Good proposals address building heat loss, low-temperature capacity, room distribution, electrical work, outdoor-unit placement, condensate and backup strategy.
Cooling and indoor comfort
Air conditioning, humidity, filtration, ductwork and ventilation interact. Bigger equipment is not always the fix. A comfort problem may just as easily need airflow or moisture work instead.
Find the service from the symptom
The symptom usually tells you where the fault is before anyone opens a panel, and reporting it precisely is what gets the right person sent with the right parts.
| What you are seeing | Where it usually leads | Establish first |
|---|---|---|
| No heat anywhere in the building | No-heat repair | Current indoor temperature, and whether the power is on |
| One zone or room cold, others warm | Zone, valve or circulator fault | Whether that area has its own thermostat |
| Heat starts then stops repeatedly | Furnace short cycling | The filter: check it before anything else |
| Boiler pressure keeps dropping | Hydronic leak or expansion tank | Whether you have been refilling it, and how often |
| Banging or kettling from the boiler | Boiler service | Whether it is new, and what changed before it started |
| Heat pump blowing cool air in winter | Normal defrost, or a fault | Whether the outdoor unit is frosted or fully encased in ice |
| Ice on the outdoor unit | Heat-pump repair or siting | Whether snow sheds onto it from the roof above |
| Water dripping from an indoor head | Condensate drain | Whether it started after a cleaning or on its own |
| Air conditioning runs without cooling | Airflow, or refrigerant | Whether the filter is clean and the returns are clear |
| Some rooms cool, others do not | Ductwork and airflow | Whether the same rooms are also hard to heat |
| Rooms dry and static in winter | Humidity control | Whether it is the whole house or one floor |
| Damp, musty basement in summer | Dehumidification, not cooling | Whether the moisture tracks rainfall |
| No heat AND no hot water together | Shared boiler | Whether the boiler also makes domestic hot water |
| Gas odour or a CO alarm | Leave and call 911 or the utility | Nothing: leave the building first |
A carbon-monoxide alarm, gas odour, smoke or fire is not a service request. Leave the building and call 911 or the utility from outside.
What heats buildings here, and why it matters
Greater Burlington runs on a wider mix of fuels than most of the country, and the mix determines the failure modes. Older city housing is largely hydronic: a boiler feeding radiators or baseboard, frequently also making the domestic hot water, which is why losing heat and hot water together points at one machine rather than two coincidences. Newer suburban housing is more often forced air, where most complaints that look like heating faults are actually airflow faults.
Outside the villages, delivered oil and propane dominate, and they bring problems a natural-gas home never has: running the tank dry, sediment drawn into a fuel line after a run-out, a filter that clogs at the worst moment. Natural gas service exists in parts of the area and not others, which changes both the equipment options and the running-cost comparison against a heat pump.
Cold-climate heat pumps are now common as either a supplement or a replacement, and they have introduced a genuinely new local question: what happens during an extended power cut. A heat pump produces nothing without electricity, while an oil or propane system needs only a few hundred watts for its controls: a far smaller generator than one that could start a heat pump.
Heat pumps in a cold climate: the number that decides it
Rated capacity is measured at conditions warmer than a Vermont design temperature, and output falls as it gets colder, which is exactly when the building needs the most. The figure that matters is therefore capacity at the local design temperature, stated explicitly, together with a plain statement of what covers the remainder on the coldest nights. A proposal that quotes only nameplate capacity has not answered the question.
Two further traps are specific to this area. On multi-zone systems the rated capacity is shared and derated across the indoor heads, so the sum of the units is not what you get with all of them calling at once. And siting matters more here than the brand does: an outdoor unit needs to sit above local snow depth, clear of where snow sheds off the roof, with drainage beneath so defrost water does not freeze into a pad that gradually lifts it.
- Capacity at the local design temperature, not at rating conditions
- A room-by-room heat-loss calculation, and which rooms the design does not cover
- What heats the building on the coldest nights, and at what outdoor temperature the handover happens
- Electrical service and panel capacity, priced as its own line rather than assumed
- Outdoor mounting height, roof-shed clearance and drainage beneath the unit
- For ducted systems, whether the existing ductwork was measured rather than assumed adequate
Incentives change the arithmetic, and they depend on your meter
The largest single variable in what a heat pump costs here is not the equipment. It is which electric utility serves the address. Burlington Electric Department offers heat-pump rebates to its residential customers with no income test. Green Mountain Power's heat-pump rebate is limited to households at or below 80% of Area Median Income. Efficiency Vermont's discount applies statewide either way.
The federal Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit is no longer available for equipment placed in service now, and a great deal of published advice has not caught up. If a proposal still applies a federal credit, that line is out of date. The incentives page carries every current figure with the date the issuing organisation published it, and the calculator works out what applies to a specific address.
The heating and cooling year in Vermont
Almost everything expensive in this category is seasonal and therefore schedulable. Pre-season service finds the components that fail under load while technicians still have open schedules and parts are in stock. The same fault in January competes with every other no-heat call in the county.
| Season | What comes up | What to do ahead of it |
|---|---|---|
| Late summer / early autumn | Pre-season service, fuel contracts, replacement planning | Book heating service now; settle pre-buy or cap arrangements; run the system for an hour on a mild day |
| Late autumn | First cold snaps, ignition and control failures | Confirm the fuel level; test carbon-monoxide alarms; check backup heat actually works |
| Deep winter | No heat, frozen pipes, outage-driven failures | Know what a generator can actually carry; monitor unoccupied buildings remotely |
| Spring | Heat-pump planning, cooling preparation, maintenance | Clean or service ductless heads. Assess cooling before the first hot week |
| Summer | Cooling faults, humidity, replacement projects | Separate a humidity complaint from a temperature one before buying equipment |
Comfort problems that are not equipment problems
A significant share of heating and cooling complaints are solved without touching the equipment, and a company that reaches for a bigger machine first will sell you one. Uneven temperature between floors is usually duct sizing, leakage or return air. A thermostat near a supply register, in direct sun, or in a hallway rather than the room it governs will hold the wrong temperature regardless of what it is connected to. A basement that feels clammy at an acceptable temperature has a moisture problem, and air conditioning barely runs down there.
Oversizing deserves its own warning because it is counter-intuitive: a cooling system with too much capacity reaches the setpoint quickly and shuts off before it has removed much moisture, leaving air that is cold and clammy. Bigger is not better, and a load calculation is what tells you which is which.
Reading a heating or cooling quote
As with plumbing, two quotes routinely describe different work. For equipment replacement in particular, the single most expensive assumption is sizing the new unit from the label on the old one.
- Whether sizing came from a heat-loss or cooling-load calculation on this building
- The exact model proposed, and its capacity at the local design temperature
- Whether existing ductwork or radiation was assessed rather than assumed adequate
- Electrical, venting, condensate and permit scope, itemised
- Commissioning: which readings are taken at startup and recorded
- For dual systems, the switchover temperature and who can change it
- Which specific incentive programmes any quoted rebate assumes
Common questions
What does HVAC include?
Heating, ventilation and air conditioning. It includes boilers, furnaces, heat pumps, mini-splits, A/C, ductwork, controls, ventilation and indoor air quality.
Do heat pumps work in Vermont?
Cold-climate systems can work at low outdoor temperatures when they are selected and installed for the building. Capacity and backup planning matter.
Can I keep my boiler and add a heat pump?
Yes. Supplemental and dual-system designs are common when the building or owner benefits from keeping existing heat.
Do you help businesses and multifamily properties?
Yes. Include the building type, equipment size, access and operating constraints in the service request.
My heat pump is blowing cool air in winter. Is it broken?
Often not. Defrost cycles briefly reverse the unit to clear the outdoor coil, sometimes with visible steam and a pause in heating: that is correct operation. A genuine fault looks different: the outdoor unit encased in ice rather than frosted, water indoors, repeated shutdowns, or a system that has stopped reaching temperature at conditions it used to manage.
The power went out and my oil heat stopped. Why?
Because oil and propane systems need electricity for controls, circulators and blowers: a full tank does not help without power. If you have a generator, check what it actually powers. One running the lights but not the heating circuit produces exactly this symptom and is very commonly misread.
One room is cold and the rest are fine. Is that the boiler?
Unlikely. Heat elsewhere means the heat source is working and the distribution to that room is not: a thermostat, zone valve, circulator, or air trapped in that loop. Report it that way and it narrows the diagnosis considerably before anyone opens a panel.
How often should heating equipment be serviced?
Annually is the usual manufacturer requirement for fuel-fired equipment, and some warranties depend on it being documented. What matters more than the interval is whether readings are recorded, combustion figures, temperature rise, static pressure, because a number written down this year is what makes next year's number mean anything.
What is a fair price for a new heating system?
There is no honest single figure, so no single price is quoted here. Installed cost depends on the building's heat loss, the distribution you already have, electrical capacity, venting, access and what is found once panels come off. What can be done honestly is telling you which fields make two quotes comparable, and computing the incentive side exactly, which is knowable.
Is there still a federal tax credit for a heat pump?
No federal credit applies to equipment placed in service now. The IRS states the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit applied to property placed in service before 31 December 2025. Vermont's utility and Efficiency Vermont incentives are separate programmes and are unaffected.
Does my utility change what rebate I get?
Substantially. Burlington Electric's heat-pump rebates are open to its residential customers with no income test; Green Mountain Power's is limited to households at or below 80% of Area Median Income. Two nearly identical houses two miles apart can qualify for very different money on the same equipment.
Should I replace my furnace and air conditioner at the same time?
Often it is worth pricing together, because a shared coil and shared ductwork mean the labour overlaps and the two are matched. It is also the natural moment to ask whether a heat pump should replace both, since one machine can do both jobs.
Why is my upstairs always hotter than downstairs?
Usually distribution rather than capacity: duct sizing, leakage, a closed or crushed run, or return air that cannot get back. Replacing the equipment with something larger reproduces the same symptom with a bigger bill, and oversizing brings its own humidity problems.
Do you service commercial and multifamily buildings?
Yes. Include the equipment type and location, how it is safely reached, which areas are occupied, when the system can be taken offline, and who can authorise work if the diagnosis changes the scope.
Which towns are covered?
Burlington, South Burlington, Colchester, Essex, Essex Junction, Williston, Shelburne, Charlotte, Milton, Richmond, Westford, Jericho, Underhill, Cambridge, Jeffersonville, Fairfax, Winooski and Hinesburg, each with its own page covering local fuel, terrain and access conditions.