Services
The four trades of the swap
01
The swamp-cooler retirement
The box off the roof, the pad sealed, the pump and float recycled — and in its place a ducted or ductless heat pump that cools at 108°F without adding humidity to a monsoon week. The roof penetration is flashed by us, not patched by whoever is available.
02
The propane wall-furnace exit
Tank buy-back negotiated with the supplier, the line capped and documented for your insurer, and the headache of “will they deliver before the weekend” retired with it. Winter heating moves onto the heat pump, with the math printed: most Verjo Flats houses cut heating cost by more than half.
03
Mini-splits for the adobe and the addition
High-wall and slim-duct heads for houses with no ducts to speak of — one-to-four zones, each room its own setpoint, sized room by room so the sun-struck west bedroom stops negotiating with the shaded north one. Line sets run hidden, condensate pumped to grade.
04
The monsoon service contract
Two visits a year timed to the seasons that actually exist here — pre-heat before June, pre-cool before the monsoon — plus a dust-filter change that matters more in Sagewash than anywhere upstream. Coil coatings for the alkaline dust are standard, not an upsell.
Fourth July weekend, monsoon humidity, and the swamp cooler was adding water to a house that was already wet. They had the ducted heat pump running by Friday evening and the cooler off the roof by Saturday noon. The propane tank left in August. I watched the July bill fall from $310 to $142 and I still check it sometimes, for the feeling.
Before & after
Roofs after the boxes came down
Six swaps from the last two seasons, from the first shingle cut to the commissioning sheet — every one a house that used to schedule its comfort around a water line and a gas gauge.
Services & rates
The swap, itemized.
A conversion company that hides its prices is doing the phase-out a favour. Ours is printed: every line is the installed figure — equipment, crane day if the roof asks for one, refrigerant, permit and the rebate paperwork — with the co-op money subtracted before you are invoiced, never mailed to you later.
Manual J, desert-rated$195
Against 108°F design cooling and 14°F design heat — yours to keep
Ducted heat-pump swapfrom $9,300
Cooler off, tank out, heat pump on — one day where possible
Ductless single zonefrom $4,400
One head, hidden line set, monsoon-rated drainage
Ductless multi-zone, 2–4 headsfrom $10,200
Each room its own setpoint, sized room by room
Propane tank buy-back & cap$240
Negotiated with the supplier, documented for your insurer
Monsoon contract, two visits$19/mo
Pre-heat and pre-cool, dust filters, coil check
How it goes
One swap, dawn to dusk
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Before dawn
The staging
Equipment on site by six, crane booked for the hour the roof is cool, drop cloths down and the cats shut in. The day is choreographed the evening before against your house’s actual layout.
Morning
The box comes down
Cooler off the roof, penetrations stripped and re-flashed, the pump and float out for recycling. By mid-morning the roof is watertight with nothing on it.
Midday
The new machine goes in
Condenser set on the shaded wall the Manual J preferred, line sets run hidden, the air handler or heads mounted and level. The house is never without a working system overnight.
Afternoon
Commissioning in real heat
Charge weighed against the ambient temperature, airflow verified at the furthest register, zone setpoints loaded. The commissioning sheet records the numbers at whatever the desert is doing that day.
Evening
The handover
Thermostat walkthrough, filter calendar on the fridge, rebate forms signed and filed by us. The old propane account closes itself in the following weeks.
Next monsoon
The first service visit
Included in the first year: alkaline-dust filters changed, coils checked, the drainage that monsoon weeks test. The sheet from commissioning is the yardstick we measure against.
CO-OP REBATE DESK: Sagewash Basin Electric pays $1,000 on a qualifying cold-climate unit and $600 more on a heat-pump water heater. We file both, deduct them from the invoice, and carry the difference ourselves while the co-op processes.
Cooled at 108°, guaranteed
If a system we commissioned fails to hold your setpoint through a design-day afternoon, we return and fix the shortfall — a second head, a re-balance, whatever the re-run of the numbers says — at our cost.
The one-day promise
The swap is choreographed to finish in a day wherever the roof allows it, and if we run long, we finish in the dark rather than leave your house open. Only crane-day weather moves it, and we call the night before if so.
The tank leaves first
The propane buy-back, the cap and the insurer letter are handled inside the same week as the swap — you never make one more call to a gas company on our account.
Asked under the porch shade
Do heat pumps handle a desert winter?
The cold-climate units we install hold full output well past the basin’s design temperature — 14°F is a mild morning for them — and the Manual J is run against both extremes, not an average. Backup strips go in only where the arithmetic asks, which for most insulated adobe and frame houses it does not.
What happens to the humidity a swamp cooler added?
It leaves, and that is half the upgrade: evaporative cooling works beautifully at 8 percent humidity and miserably in monsoon weeks. A heat pump dehumidifies as it cools, so August stops feeling like a wet towel regardless of what the dew point is doing.
Why itemize the propane exit?
Because retiring a tank is the part of the conversion that quietly defeats people — supplier phone trees, buy-back paperwork, the cap inspection an insurer wants on file. We do it weekly and we do it inside the project price. The only propane decision left for you is what to plant where the tank stood.
Roof-mounted or wall-mounted condenser?
Whichever the survey and the shade study prefer. Wall mounts on the shaded elevation run cooler and quieter; roof mounts save yard space on the small lots. Both get the alkaline-dust coil coating as standard — the desert is hard on bare aluminium, and we price for the desert we have.
What if my house has never had ducts?
Then it is a ductless house, and a good one: one to four high-wall or slim-duct heads, each room sized individually, connected to a single outdoor unit. Roughly half our swaps end up entirely ductless, and they are the quietest houses we serve.
Price the swap before the tank runs out.
Send the house — year, roof, current cooler and gas setup. The reply carries a ballpark from real installs, the rebate math and the next survey date. July books out by May.