You’ve probably heard a lot of hype around heat pumps. States (e.g. New York, Maine, California) are setting aggressive targets and encouraging more heat pump installations because they are a big part of how we can meet climate goals.

But at this year’s Building Performance Conference in Minneapolis I heard about all the ways we might slow down the energy transition with shoddy heat pump retrofits. Heat pumps require more precision from a contractor than a gas furnace. Proper duct sizing, load reduction, and system controls all matter a lot. A bad heat pump retrofit can cause a homeowner’s bills to go up instead of down. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We just need to take a minute and learn how these systems work.

Starting today, for a limited time, “Heat Pump System Fundamentals” is free for HeatSpring Members. It’s a two-hour technical training course that is approved for BPI CEUs.

This course provides an overview of heat pump systems, configurations, applications, and how heat pump performance is measured. Instructor John Siegenthaler created this course as a launching point for HVAC engineers, salespeople, and technicians.

After taking this course you’ll begin to see where the low hanging heat pump fruit is, and where it isn’t. If you decide to pursue advanced heat pump training, the course is part of a stackable curriculum that will take you as deep as you want to go.

Building a culture of learning

HeatSpring Membership is a bundle of learning opportunities that would otherwise cost a lot more. You get access to “Heat Pump System Fundamentals“, but also:

1. Extended access to paid courses. Wll of our courses come with 1-year of unlimited access. Sometimes people get busy and don’t finish, but they don’t want to pay for the class again. This is original reason we created HeatSpring membership. Now you can pay the small monthly fee for as long as you need to finish the class and get your certificate of completion.
2. Certificates of completion for all free courses. We have lots of teams that use our free courses for learning and professional development. If earning certificates of completion help with tracking and motivation, then membership is a really affordable tool to get better results for your team.
3. Member access to premium courses. With membership you get access to a bunch of premium courses that you would normally have to pay a lot more to take. Sometimes they carry CEUs. We try to add a new course every month to keep it fresh. Like all of our premium courses, once you’re enrolled you have a full year to take the course.

Membership is intended to lower the barrier to learning so you can make professional development a regular habit.

Membership is also available to Teams. Team discounts are applied automatically and team memberships have all of the same benefits as the individual memberships.