HVAC Installation in Portland, ME
A new system here will heat from September through May and cool from July through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Cumberland County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Cumberland County asks a lot of a heating and cooling system
Your new system needs to hold up nine months of heat and two months of cooling, eleven months out of the year with barely a break between them. Winter nights average 15°F from December through February, cold enough that a furnace or heat pump runs long hours to keep up. Summer is short, just July and August, with afternoons around 78°F.
Almost half the homes in this area heat with fuel oil, so if that's what you have now, whoever installs your new system should know oil systems as well as gas and electric. Power is worth planning around too. More than half of Maine households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024, and the region has seen 115 winter storms and 145 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A new install is the time to ask about how your system handles an outage, not after the next one hits.
- 9 months
- September through May, your system heats
- 2 months
- July through August, it cools
- 15°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 78°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- When should I replace my HVAC system?
- Replace it when repairs keep coming back or the system is old enough that the next breakdown is likely to be bigger than the last. A furnace or air conditioner nearing the end of its life tends to run longer to do the same job and struggles more on the coldest or hottest days. Here, heat matters nine months of the year, so a furnace that starts having trouble in fall is worth replacing before the December through February nights near 15°F push it harder. If a contractor has told you the same part has failed more than once, that is usually your answer.
- Should I replace my furnace and air conditioner at the same time?
- If both are old, replacing them together often makes sense, but it depends on the condition of each one, not just its age. A furnace and air conditioner installed at the same time were matched to work together, and pairing an old furnace with a new AC, or the other way around, can mean one part limits the other. A contractor can look at both systems and tell you whether one is close enough to failing that it makes sense to do them together.
- What happens during an HVAC installation?
- A contractor removes the old equipment, sets the new furnace, air conditioner, or both, and connects them to your existing ductwork, gas line, and electrical or refrigerant lines. They check that the ducts are sized right for the new equipment, since a furnace or AC that is too big or too small for the ductwork will not heat or cool evenly. Once everything is connected, they test the system, check for leaks, and confirm it reaches the temperature it is set to. A contractor can walk you through the specific steps for your house and equipment.