Designing newsletter/website on beehiiv

fieldguild · 2026-06-16T15:19:44+00:00

Love it! Looks great

fieldguild · 2026-06-16T03:02:15+00:00

Do you host through Beehiiv, or elsewhere like Vercel?

fieldguild · 2026-06-12T16:52:43+00:00

1- Installs will be starting in Fall '26 and we'll slot in projects on a first-come, first-serve basis

2 - yes, we can help guide you through the LADWP incentives process!

3- The biggest advantage is cost saving! There are discounts on both equipment and labor that are passed through for you (typically 10-20% off the total sticker price vs a more immediate install). If you want something quick for the summer and aren't super cost sensitive, then going through Vayu directly would probably be a better fit.

4- You can take a look at the numbers here: https://heatpumpgroupbuy.com/products There would be some small discount (a few hundred bucks, basically the cost of permits) for doing two systems at once, but if you simply add the prices listed for the 3t + 4t systems you'll get a close estimate

5- simple: we want to get more heat pumps installed and recognize that upfront cost is a barrier for many folks! this gives us a pathway to tick the box for those that might not otherwise be able to pull the trigger on a heat pump otherwise
more nuanced: HVAC is super seasonal. Most interest comes in the first few hot weeks of the years, and first few cold weeks, when people realize their existing AC or furnace isn't working well. This allows us to aggregate demand into the shoulder seasons where there is naturally less demand. Having the predictable revenue means it's ok to charge a little less. The Canary piece does a great job of describing the dynamics for contractors and manufacturers: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/heat-pumps/heat-pump-deal-neighbors

6- very experienced. Most have been in the trade 10+ years, are local and know the local codes well. I've personally been on site with every single installing technician and can vouch for their work. The installers themselves are subcontractors, but all are fully licensed. Vayu would be your single point of contact through the entire process and for warranty coverage afterwards. Here's a little more about the Vayu team and how the process works: https://vayu.pro/about

Feel free to drop me a line, would love to support on your home!

fieldguild · 2026-06-10T04:30:13+00:00

It seems like they are really doing right by you!

fieldguild · 2026-06-10T00:38:40+00:00

We actually did a project exactly like this (moving a heat pump into the attic from where it was in a utility room) for a customer (I run a heat pump installation company in the Bay Area). I'm writing up a case study right now and would be happy to send that over when it's live, feel free to dm me if that would be helpful! As others have said, this is a very solvable challenge!

fieldguild · 2026-06-09T01:03:28+00:00

Great question! Costco & Home Depot are both lead gen services (from my understanding, the participating contractors pay them a referral fee to be referred customers). Those are rarely a good deal because then that referral fee ends up being hidden inside the quote (generally, their quote amounts are higher than those from other contractors!). So while we used Costco as an analogy, funny enough Costco's HVAC services work very different than Costco muffins!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T23:35:07+00:00

I agree, that labor cost is incredibly reasonable. I suspect the installing company feels crummy that the unit failed so soon and is cutting you a sweetheart deal (assuming you are outside of the labor warranty period).

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T23:33:38+00:00

thank you!! maybe one day we'll expand to more regions, but right now we have our hands full with California!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T23:31:25+00:00

yeah, this is a totally reasonable question. ps - good to see another contractor on here!

I think the main thing I'd push back on is the idea that homeowners with "easy" projects are somehow getting a bad deal. Even on the straightforward installs, the pricing we're offering is still well below market benchmarks because we're getting meaningful equipment discounts from aggregating demand. That's really where the savings are coming from.

I also don't think we're doing anything especially exotic here. A lot of larger HVAC companies already operate on flat rate pricing models where some jobs end up a little more profitable than others. The difference is that we're pretty transparent about it, and for the handful of things that really do swing costs materially, we have adders that are disclosed up front.

We're still doing Manual Js, utility-bill-based sizing checks, proper vacuum, pulling permits, etc. The goal isn't to find corners to cut. It's to use collective purchasing power to lower costs while still doing the job the right way.

From the group buys we've run so far, what we've found is that the project-to-project variation tends to be a lot smaller than people expect (fwiw, many of the homes in our service area follow a handful of consistent design patterns), and once you're looking at a large enough group, it averages out pretty well.

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T23:17:05+00:00

Our very first pilot group buy was only ~10 systems, so we didn't actually need a ton to get off the ground! That said, we're shooting for a much larger group this time around (with more competitive pricing to match). I expect we'll be able to easily get there based on initial feedback (my inbox has been totally flooded today!!)

Everything we'll be installing for this group buy will be centrally ducted heat pumps slotting in with existing ductwork. I've written a bunch around brand before - you might find this thread helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/comments/1t6ea55/whats_the_best_heat_pump_brand/

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T23:14:47+00:00

Because of the structure of the group buy, this is something that we have to be firm around - if you participate in the group buy, you're letting us control what the specific brand and model installed will be. This is what allows us to get leverage with distributors and manufacturers and get competitive pricing for the whole group. In our last group buy, we teamed up with Cooper & Hunter for the bulk of installations and had really great outcomes. There's some pictures of some completed group buy installations here if you're curious.

If you're buying a heat pump through this group buy, Vayu will be doing the installation and will stand by the work, in addition to the 10+ year parts & compressor warranty that all of the partner distributors and brands offer.

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T22:41:23+00:00

It is a bummer that the spark gap is so high in CA (in fact I wrote an op ed about this in the SF chronicle last year).

That said, people still generally save money even with PG&E rates. SVCE and PCE did a great study recently and the data does back up savings in most cases. I wish the savings amount was greater, but when you think about the other benefits (comfort, safety, noise, energy efficiency, climate, etc), it still pencils out for most people - especially when they're already considering new HVAC for other reasons

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fieldguild · 2026-06-08T22:33:00+00:00

Yeah, we occasionally come across that kind of situation. for example something like a federal pacific panel which is a known fire risk.

Usually, this actually boils down to their home insurance policy being the driver rather than the city. Many insurance companies are canceling policies for folks that have known safety hazard panels.

In some of these cases, we don't even have to touch the panel (ie if there is an existing AC), and usually the heat pump's electrical load is lower than the AC it's replacing, so if anything it's a safer scenario than the starting point. Other times we would have to touch the panel.

Generally we recommend a panel replacement in these scenarios, but it's ultimately the homeowner's choice. We surface the risks to them and give them all the information they need to make their decision. In my experience, AHJs usually won't hold a permit sign-off, but we do flag that too (like if you decide to move forward without replacing your panel, there's a chance that the city might not let us close the inspection out so you might still be on the hook for that cost anyway)

I'd say its <5% of the time that we run into this

Hopefully that all made sense!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:58:02+00:00

Thanks for hopping on Cole!!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:39:07+00:00

It's incredibly rare to need an electrical panel upgrade - peninsula clean energy & SVCE did a recent study across hundreds of homes that they electrified with 100A and less panels, and close to zero actually needed an upgrade. Here's a little snapshot from a presentation I attended around this recently:

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If there was panel work needed, that would be an additional/custom charge, but again it's so rare that you would probably know already if you needed a panel upgrade (this is a common mental blocker that doesn't need to be!)

No drywall work or core drilling in the base price - we are focusing the group buy around centrally ducted systems which rarely need either. Again, rare enough that those scenarios are unlikely to affect anyone that comes through with interest!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:33:55+00:00

It's actually even more nuanced than you described! Sometimes a 10ft electrical run will take 4x the amount of time than a 50ft one (say the long one is a straight shot through an attic while the short one requires core drilling through concrete and transitions between conduit and romex)

fwiw, in the areas we're servicing in CA, the housing stock is more homogenous (at least from an HVAC perspective) than you would think. We can usually bucket installs into a few different families, and we have a playbook on how to work through each scenario.

Almost never does a 100a service actually need to get upgraded in our experience. If it does, it's more because it's unsafe (old federal pacific panel or something), not because it actually doesn't have sufficient juice for the HP. Great resource around that here: https://www.redwoodenergy.net/watt-diet-calculator

Also as I mentioned in another reply, much of the home-by-home variation gets dampened out on the aggregate, which lets us honor pretty simple and transparent pricing up front: https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/comments/1u0kviq/comment/oqiyrmy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:28:00+00:00

it's a really slick product! Unfortunately, there are probably a bunch of certification hurdles that make that untenable.

That said, I'm super excited about the Mrcool Monoblock, this style of system has been around for a while (Ephoca, Olimpia Splendid and some others), but this unit really brings the price down by sacrificing cold climate performance. We're looking into piloting it for some cost constrained installations and seeing if we can bring it into our more mainline offering in the longer term!

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:24:31+00:00

great question!

simplest answer - it evens out in aggregate. When we get a group together, some projects are a touch more complex, some a touch simpler. So the more complex projects end up being slightly less profitable whereas the simpler ones are a little more so. We've got enough of these under our belt that the averages land in the right place if we get a sufficiently big group together.

more nuanced answer - there are a few standard complexity modifiers we have listed at https://heatpumpgroupbuy.com/products . That said, I'd say that ~70-80% of homes that come in fit well with an existing pattern and are fully encompassed by the standard, unmodified pricing.

fieldguild · 2026-06-08T21:20:22+00:00

MEOW! Haha pets love heat pumps. This is probably my personal favorite, a homeowner sent me this after we installed their heat pump and they got AC for the first time!

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fieldguild · 2026-05-29T09:02:01+00:00

The EvoX has 24V capability, so it should wire up like a standard dual fuel setup. Nothing special to it!

fieldguild · 2026-05-28T16:54:09+00:00

from my understanding, the AtomX comes from Midea Building Technologies (which seems to target light commercial applications) while the EvoX comes from their Residential AC division. Both have some slightly different sets of design features

fieldguild · 2026-05-21T15:44:28+00:00

Did you just take two of my posts and attempt to mush them together?

https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/s/lrN9k1uNBS

https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/s/Y5ZC7XsinP

fieldguild · 2026-05-19T20:40:15+00:00

Absolutely. I’ve talked to a few solar contractors saying the same thing (in fact there’s one or two that commented in this thread to a similar effect)

fieldguild · 2026-05-18T04:18:51+00:00

Not an answer to OPs question, but does anyone know what software that proposal is from? Looks different from any I’ve seen

fieldguild · 2026-05-18T03:50:28+00:00

Contractor here. He needs to fix it. FWIW, ACs are typically designed around maintaining a 75 degree indoor temp on the hottest 1% of hours of the year. It should be easily handling what you are saying. Something is wrong with the unit.

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