Heat Pump Installation in Greenwood, SC
A new system here will heat from November through March and cool from May through September every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Greenwood County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Ten months of work a year for your heat pump
Greenwood asks for heat from November through March and cooling from May through September. That is ten months where your heat pump is the thing keeping the house livable. Winter nights average 35°F, mild enough that a heat pump can carry the heating load without much strain. Summer afternoons average 90°F, and the same system has to pull that heat back out of the house.
Most homes here heat with electricity, so when the power goes out, the heat goes with it. Nearly half of South Carolina households lost power for a day or more in 2024, and this area has logged 53 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A new heat pump installed today has to meet a federal minimum of 14.3 SEER2 for cooling and 7.5 HSPF2 for heating, so that baseline efficiency is set before you even choose a model.
- 5 months
- November through March, your system heats
- 5 months
- May through September, it cools
- 35°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 90°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- Is a heat pump better than a furnace?
- A heat pump does something a furnace can't, it cools your home in summer as well as heats it in winter, so one system covers both jobs instead of two. Winters here average 35°F at night, well within the range a heat pump handles on its own. A furnace only burns fuel to make heat, so you'd still need a separate air conditioner for the 5 months a year homes here need cooling. Which is the better fit for your house depends on your ductwork and your electric service, and that's worth having a contractor look at directly.
- What's the difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner?
- An air conditioner only cools. A heat pump does the same cooling in summer, but it can also run in reverse to pull heat from the outside air and bring it inside during winter. Mechanically the two are close cousins, both use a compressor and refrigerant to move heat rather than generate it, but the heat pump has a reversing valve that lets it heat your home too. That's why a heat pump can replace both your furnace and your air conditioner, where a standard AC only replaces the cooling half.
- Does a heat pump work in cold weather?
- Yes. A heat pump pulls heat out of outdoor air even when that air feels cold, because there's still heat in air well below freezing. Winter nights here average 35°F, which is mild enough that a properly sized heat pump keeps up on its own through the whole December to February stretch. The colder the air gets, the harder the system has to work to extract that heat, but 35°F isn't the range where that becomes a problem.