Hot off the presses, there’s a new resource available for volunteer heat pump coaches in Massachusetts! The HeatSmart Alliance has published a pioneering Heat Pump Coaching Handbook, which is a distillation of what it has learned from hundreds of coaching visits, presentations by HVAC professionals, and collaborating with other organizations that promote electrification.

Whether you’ve already put your knowledge of heat pumps to good use by advising homeowners on what might make sense for their residence, or you’re still relatively new to coaching, the Handbook is full of valuable information. The Alliance also hopes the Handbook will serve as a template for community-based organizations that want to provide volunteer energy coaching to residents.

Based on the Alliance’s Coaching Model, the Handbook is organized around the process we expect our volunteer coaches to follow when helping homeowners and renters. The Handbook covers the client engagement process from start to finish, including first contact, meeting with a client in their home, preparing a post-visit report, and following up with clients on installer selection and post-installation issues. The Handbook also provides general information on heat pumps and sample emails and text that coaches can use when communicating with their clients.

The core of the Handbook is the section on preparing a post-visit report.  Here, it provides guidance on a variety of topics, including weatherization, heat pumps, heat pump costs, financial incentives, heat pump installers, and heat pump water heaters. It covers heat pump options based on the existing heating system, such as a boiler with baseboard hydronic heat or a furnace with ductwork. Options are also provided for homes where the heat pump will be the sole heating source and homes that will have supplementary or back-up heat from a fossil-fuel system or electric resistance.

This is just a beginning. We hope to receive lots of helpful feedback from users and will draw on that to improve the handbook.