The Seattle Air Collective is a club of homeowners in the Seattle Metropolitan Area who help each other buy and install air conditioners. We got tired of racing to Home Depot every summer to buy portable air conditioners (only to find them sold out)—and wanted more permanent air conditioning in our homes. However, getting an air conditioner installed seems:

• Confusing
• Expensive
• Unclear where to start
• Uncertain who to trust or where to get a good deal

Last year's heat wave was terrible, and climate change is here to stay. So we formed this group when we realized that more or less everyone in Seattle is in the same boat. The benefits of joining our club:

• Getting advice and pooling our research on the best air conditioners to buy, specific to Seattle's climate and specific to the layout of our homes
• Understanding the air conditioner installation process from start to finish
• Buying air conditioners in bulk as a collective so that we can get better prices and save money
• Dealing with installers as a group so that we can find the best installers, get reliable service, and protect each other from bad contractors
• Discussing climate change and energy efficiency to reduce energy bills
• Adopting modern air conditioner technologies such as heat pumps that are extremely cost effective and good for climate change
• Making friends and chitchatting about home improvement!

We basically just want to make getting air conditioning as pain-free as possible.

Heat pumps are a technology that we are particularly excited about! They are extremly common in Europe, Asia, and Australia, and have been used for decades. There are many types of heat pumps, but the type that we are interested in (air-source) are essentially just air conditioners that are also capable of heating your home.

Air conditioning works by moving hot air out of the house:

Heat pumps can do the same but also can reverse the direction, thus heating the house by moving hot air in:

This is great because it means you can simultaneously replace your antiquated natural gas, oil, or electric resistance heating with a single heat pump system that can do both heating and cooling. This can save you a lot of money (even versus electric resistance heat) and also massively reduce your carbon footprint. According to Rewiring America's Home Electrification Guide, 25% of your home's carbon emissions come from heating. The top 3 are your car at 50%, heating at 25%, and water heating at 10%.

Also, according to the King County's Assesor's office, "55% of Seattle’s existing single-family houses were heated by natural gas in 2018, while 28% percent used oil and 16% used electricity" (source). So there is a huge opportunity for us to make a difference with climate change right here in Seattle!

Lastly, heat pumps happen to be perfectly suited to the temperature ranges of the Pacific Northwest. Watch this video for a better exposition on heat pumps:

Are you a heat pump enthusiast or expert? We'd love to get in touch!

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