Yes this is actually the worst – when open minded people get a heat pump for "the right reasons" and then have buyer's remorse. Completely backfires the transition. Do you have a ducted or ductless heat pump? Sounds like ducted, and if so that might be part of it too. The air cools down in the ductwork and if that's not accounted for - i.e. you reuse ductwork that was meant for a furnace – you run into issues like this. And you also need a cold climate heat pump.
(disclosure/transparency I'm the founder of Quilt, a ductless heat pump manufacturer)
Hi Paul - I'm a big fan of Quilt from Vancouver Island.
It seems to me that you're helping to close the loop on some of the quality concerns that the parent commenter has. Inappropriate sizing/installation and poor product selection seem like common issues from HVAC installers that aren't particularly well versed on heat pumps.
Wishing you continued success, and that hopefully it'll be available in Canada at some point! And also I remember you from the Scala meetup in Vancouver :)
Also sorry I missed this, not only are we in Canada, we just signed our first partner on Vancouver Island – in Victoria, Pacific Heat Pumps: https://www.pacificheatpumps.ca/
We'll have a partner in Nanaimo very soon as well.
We account for duct losses at Electric Air when sizing. It’s baked into industry standard Manual J sizing calculators and other methods. ManJ isn’t perfect find for this purpose.
In this case, contractor should have advised the heat pump would not keep up and recommended a different solution.
When we had our ducted heat pump installed, we also had the ducts in the attic covered with extra insulation, as well as spray foam at the top of the foundation to seal that completely. This all really helped.
The latter was a surprising (to me) source of heat leakage. As part of the whole effort we had the house examined in detail for heat and air leakage, including using IR imaging and one of those things with a fan that replaces an exterior door to change the internal pressure to find/quantify air leaks.
(disclosure/transparency I'm the founder of Quilt, a ductless heat pump manufacturer)