Heat Pump Installation in Valdosta, GA
A new system here will heat from November through March and cool from May through October every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Lowndes County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eleven months of work a year for your heat pump
Valdosta only gets a real break from heating or cooling for about one month. Winters stay mild, averaging 41°F on December through February nights, but summer afternoons hit 91°F for six months, May through October. That is the long side of the job. Your heat pump will spend far more hours moving heat out of the house than putting it in.
A new split-system heat pump installed here has to meet the federal minimum of 14.3 SEER2 for cooling and 7.5 HSPF2 for heating. In Lowndes County, the cooling side of that rating is what will get tested, month after month, most of the year.
- 5 months
- November through March, your system heats
- 6 months
- May through October, it cools
- 41°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 91°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Georgia requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The state board tests contractors before they can hold this license, and the license belongs to the contractor, not to any one job. That means the same license has to cover every installation that contractor takes on, in Lowndes County or anywhere else in Georgia.
For this job, that license is what stands behind the work, since Georgia is a licensing state. Alongside it, a heat pump installation in most cities and counties still needs a permit from the local building office, with an inspection once the work is done. That inspection checks the installation itself, separate from whether the contractor is licensed to do it.
Source: Georgia Secretary of State
- Is a heat pump better than a furnace?
- A heat pump does both jobs, heating and cooling, where a furnace only heats. Winters here average 41°F at night, mild enough that a heat pump can keep up without much strain. Most homes in Valdosta already heat with electricity, so a heat pump fits the same setup a furnace would need. Which one makes sense for a given house still depends on the ductwork and equipment already in place, and a contractor can walk through that.
- What's the difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner?
- An air conditioner only moves heat out of the house. A heat pump can run that same cycle in reverse, pulling heat from outside air and moving it in, so it heats the house in winter too. The outdoor unit on a heat pump looks almost the same as an air conditioner's, but inside it has a reversing valve that lets it switch direction. In a place like Valdosta, with 6 months of cooling and 5 of heating, one heat pump covers both instead of pairing an air conditioner with a separate furnace.
- Does a heat pump work in cold weather?
- Yes, a heat pump pulls heat from outside air even when it's cold, as long as the air is above the point where it can no longer extract enough to be useful. Winter nights in Valdosta average 41°F, which is well within the range a heat pump handles without trouble. Federal rules now require new split-system heat pumps to meet a 7.5 HSPF2 heating rating, a baseline for how efficiently they produce heat in winter. Homes in much colder climates sometimes need backup heat for the coldest nights, but that's less of a concern here given how mild the winters run.