Services
Six disciplines, one fleet
01
Cold-climate heat pumps
Units rated to hold full output at −22°F and run at −40°, installed in pairs so one can sleep while the other carries the shoulder season. Sizing comes from the load study and the twenty-year weather file for your stretch of coast — never from a brochure map.
02
Diesel-to-heat-pump retrofits
The island’s old fuel boilers become backup, then get retired. We stage the conversion around the weather so the house is never uncovered, handle the tank decommissioning, and file the territorial rebate — which we deduct from the invoice, not mail to you later.
03
Ventilation & heat recovery
A tight arctic house needs air that arrives warm. HRVs balanced to the house, ducted to the rooms that actually need them, defrost strategies that survive a real January — because an ERV that ices solid in week two was specified for somewhere else.
04
The winter watch
Every system we commission reports home: temperatures, defrost cycles, energy per degree-day. We watch the telemetry through the dark months, and a drift triggers a visit before a failure does. Clients get a one-page solstice report, plain language, every June and December.
05
Boilers & glycol loops
For the harbourside buildings that keep hydronic heat: glycol mixed to the real design temperature, loops balanced to the real building, and controls that know the difference between a cold night and a cold week. We stock the circulators that fail in February — before February.
06
Service & rapid response
Two trucks winter on the island full-time. Emergency response for any system we have commissioned is guaranteed inside four hours, and for monitored systems the call usually comes from us first: "We saw it before you felt it."
How it goes
How an arctic install goes
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 0
The survey
Structure, orientation, the wind channel your site actually sits in, and twenty years of weather data for your stretch of coast. A house two kilometres up the shore can need a different machine.
Day 1
The load study
Room-by-room heat loss at the design temperature — −60°F for the exposed side of Halden Island, −45° in the shelter of the bay. The document is yours regardless of who installs the system.
Week 1
The engineering review
Two engineers read the study independently and argue about the backup. The disagreement is the point: electric strips, a retained fuel boiler or a second heat-pump stage get priced side by side, honestly.
Install week
The build, weather permitting
Staged around the forecast — the house is never uncovered. Snow-day clauses are in the contract, and the crew that measured the house is the crew on the roof.
Commissioning
The coldest-night baseline
Charge weighed, defrost verified, every room’s recovery time recorded at the lowest temperature the season offers. These numbers become the yardstick the telemetry is watched against for the next decade.
Every solstice
The re-measure
June and December, a one-page report against the baseline: uptime, energy per degree-day, drift. Systems age on the record, and the record is yours to keep.
Everyone told us heat pumps were for the south. Solstice ran the study, showed us the −40° capacity curve, and our diesel boiler has not fired since October — at sixty below, the house held seventy and the telemetry said we would.
The winter watch is the part nobody else offers. They called us about a defrost drift in November, replaced a sensor on the next calm day, and the failure I would have found at 2 a.m. in January never happened.
Two engineers argued about our backup heat for a week and then sent us the argument. That document did more for our confidence than any brochure — we understood exactly what we were buying and why.
Asked before freeze-up
Do heat pumps genuinely work at sixty below?
Not alone at that number, and anyone who says otherwise has not wintered here. The cold-climate units we install carry full load to about −22°F and keep running, derated, to −40°. Below that, the engineered backup takes the difference — which is why the load study sizes the pair together instead of selling one hero machine.
Why keep a fuel boiler as backup at all?
Because on this coast diesel backup is sometimes the honest engineering answer: a retained boiler carrying the worst 40 hours of the year can make the heat pump two sizes smaller and still cut your fuel bill by seventy percent. The study prices all three paths; you choose with the numbers in front of you.
What happens if the power goes out in a storm?
Heat pumps need electricity, so the plan includes it: we size for a modest generator to carry the essential loads, or design the backup to run without the grid. Outages are the design case here, not an afterthought.
What does monitoring cost?
The first three years are inside every commissioning — the winter watch is how we keep the fleet honest. After that it continues at $14 a month or stops, your call, with the solstice reports as the renewal reminder. No system is ever bricked by a lapsed subscription.
How long is the wait?
The season books out — typically eight to twelve weeks from signed study to install, longer before freeze-up. Emergency service for commissioned systems is never queued behind installs; the trucks and the calendar are kept separate on purpose.
Begin with the study, not the machine.
The load study is a fixed price and it is yours whoever installs the system. Send the house; the reply includes what the study will measure and the earliest date an engineer can stand in it.