Heat Pump & Rebate FAQ

Only for the whole-home rebate, where heat pumps become your only heat. If you’re keeping your boiler or furnace as backup — the partial-home track — no assessment is required and no weatherization work has to be done first. We can measure, price and schedule straight away.

Even for whole-home there are three ways to satisfy the weatherization requirement: your home was built in 2000 or later, an assessment finds under $1,000 of work needed, or you already completed recommended weatherization from 2013 onward.

One exception: if you want the 0% HEAT Loan, an assessment is required either way, and the loan authorization has to be issued before work starts.

• Whole-home: $2,650 per ton, capped at $8,500. Your fossil-fuel heat has to come out and the home must be weatherized.
• Partial-home: $1,125 per ton, capped at $8,500 — plus a $500 sizing bonus and a $500 weatherization bonus that exist only on this track.
• Basic: $250 per ton, capped at $2,500, where you aren’t displacing fossil or electric resistance heat.

If you’ve read that the rebate is $10,000, that was the old number — it dropped for 2026. Income-qualified households can reach $16,000, and the lowest tier may qualify for a no-cost installation. Full detail is on our rebates page.

No. The 25C credit — 30% of the cost up to $2,000 — ended on December 31, 2025, along with the 25D credit that covered geothermal. Nothing replaced them. Any guide still promising 30% back on your taxes was written before the change.

One case still pays: if your system was installed and running on or before December 31, 2025 and you never claimed it, you still can. It goes on IRS Form 5695, Part II, filed for the year it was installed, and you’ll need the manufacturer’s QMID number — we can pull that for you. If you already filed, your tax preparer can amend.

A separate regional program that stacks on top of Mass Save — roughly $650 per outdoor unit, up to two per home, plus $300 on a heat pump water heater. It runs through 2029.

It isn’t a rebate you apply for. An enrolled distributor discounts the equipment and your contractor passes it through on the invoice. Worth asking anyone quoting you whether their distributor is enrolled, because if they aren’t, that money simply doesn’t appear.

Mass Save allows six to eight weeks for processing once the paperwork is in. With us you don’t wait for it. We take the rebate off your price at signing and handle the application, the Manual J, the verification form and the AHRI certificate ourselves. It’s a discount, not a reimbursement you chase.

Mass Save financing at 0% interest, up to $25,000 over seven years, through participating lenders. It covers heat pumps, weatherization and water heaters — but not fossil-fuel equipment.

Two things to plan around: it requires a Home Energy Assessment, and the authorization has to be issued before work begins. Tell us early if financing matters so we can sequence it properly. See our financing page to run the monthly numbers.

2026 rebates apply to equipment installed between January 1 and December 31, 2026, with paperwork due by February 28, 2027. Mass Save sets these amounts annually and they’ve moved every year lately — the 2026 figures are lower than 2025’s, so waiting hasn’t been paying off.

A properly sized cold-climate system will. A badly sized one won’t — and the number that tells you which is one most quotes never show.

Every system is sold by its nominal tonnage, but what matters is how much heat it still makes at 5°F. Across the equipment on the Mass Save qualified list, that ranges from about 70% of rated capacity to over 140%. Two systems can both say "4 ton," earn the identical rebate, and one delivers 35,400 BTU on a design night while the other delivers 54,000.

Ask any contractor for the capacity at 5°F and the Manual J heating load. If the system covers the load, you’ll be warm. If they can’t tell you either number, that’s the answer to a different question.

No ducts needed. Hot water baseboard and radiator homes get ductless indoor units — the wall-mounted heads — and that’s the majority of what we install on the South Shore.

But if you have a boiler for heat and central air conditioning for cooling, you already own the more valuable half. Those AC ducts can carry a ducted heat pump, which is usually cheaper than a head in every room, doesn’t put equipment on your walls, and installs faster. It’s the setup we most often see people not realize is an advantage.

No. Plenty of homes keep the boiler as backup for the coldest stretch, and that’s a perfectly good design — it’s the partial-home track.

What it costs you is money. Whole-home pays roughly double per ton, so on a typical South Shore colonial the difference is several thousand dollars. Worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.

If you keep oil or propane heat, Massachusetts requires an integrated control from the Mass Save qualified list — it decides when the heat pump hands off to the boiler instead of letting both run. Leaving it out is one of the most common reasons a partial-home rebate gets denied.

Not the whole-home or partial-home amounts. Mass Save doesn’t pay those when a heat pump replaces a heat pump — you’d fall to the basic rebate, $250 per ton up to $2,500. Worth knowing before you commit rather than after.

Most likely refrigerant. As of January 1, 2026, R-410A systems came off the Mass Save Qualified Products List entirely. Only R-32 and R-454B equipment earns a rebate now.

There’s still R-410A inventory in the market at attractive prices. If a quote looks unusually cheap, check the refrigerant — the savings won’t cover what you lose in rebate.

Up front, on its own, yes. But a boiler only heats, and Mass Save pays nothing toward gas, oil or propane equipment — the 0% HEAT Loan doesn’t cover it either. That changed under the 2021 Climate Act, and income-eligible households are the only exception.

So the honest comparison isn’t boiler versus heat pump. It’s boiler plus a new air conditioner versus one heat pump that does both. Priced that way, the heat pump usually comes out several thousand dollars ahead — and it’s one system instead of two.

You can, and sometimes it’s the right call. Understand what it costs you: a cooling-only system earns zero from Mass Save. The rebate exists only for equipment that heats as well as cools.

In practice the gap is smaller than people expect. On a typical job a heat pump runs about a thousand dollars more than a straight AC swap once the rebate comes off — and it heats the house, which is where the fuel savings live. If your AC is dying and your boiler is old, doing both at once is almost always cheaper.

Your electric bill goes up and your fuel bill goes away. Whether that’s a win depends on what you burn now, and we’d rather tell you honestly than oversell it.

• Electric baseboard: the biggest win by far — a heat pump does the same job for roughly a third of the electricity.
• Propane: a clear win, usually around a thousand dollars a year on an average home.
• Oil: roughly a wash at today’s prices, better on the seasonal heat pump rate. The real gains are the rebate, the air conditioning, and no more deliveries or tank.
• Natural gas: the hardest case. At standard electric rates a heat pump can cost slightly more to run. The seasonal heat pump rate with discounted winter electricity is what closes that gap — ask us to price both.