👋 Are you looking to chat with business owners? Locals? Someone else?

I'm happy to chime in as a frequent user of the pedestrian mall. @ericmbudd.com might have thoughts as well.

And a final update now that temperatures have recovered. Heat pump held the house at 60-65 for three days of mostly continuous sub-0 F temps. Recovered to easily holding the house at 70 as soon as the outdoor temps went back above 20 or so. Given how rare these temps are, I consider this a success!

This install is 3 years old at this point. I've heard there are some newer air handler heads that have higher output now, so that might be an option for you. But the mini splits would definitely do the job as well.

For me, ducts are the walls and floors, not attic. Air handler is in the basement. We added the mini splits to the upstairs bedrooms mainly for the summer AC use case where the central air handler similarly struggles to cool those rooms, but there's one week each winter where we use them to heat.

Yeah, this is an air source just pump. Ground source wouldn't have any issues in this weather, but costs an order of magnitude more here.

Yeah, having reasonably good insulation and air sealing definitely helps here. So I'd focus on improving those before adding a heat pump. This is 1999 construction with 6" exterior walls and fairly decent insulation (but certainly not as air tight as today's construction).

The air handler and original ductwork is the limiting factor in this case. That ductwork was sized for a furnace that puts out much hotter air than a heat pump so needs less flow. I think they have higher flow air handlers available now that would help. But for a few sub-0 days each year, it's fine.