Replacing Cadet Wall Heaters With a Heat Pump: Costs and Comfort

If your house was built in Western Washington between about 1960 and 1985 and nobody ever added a furnace, you probably live with wall heaters. A metal grille low on the hallway wall, a dial thermostat in each room, and a distinctive dusty-hot smell the first week of October. Cadet is the name on most of them around here — the company has been building them in Vancouver, Washington for decades — but the brand matters less than the technology. Every electric resistance wall heater works the same way: it converts a kilowatt of electricity into exactly a kilowatt of heat, then blows it at one room.

A heat pump does not do that. It moves heat instead of making it, which is why one kilowatt in can produce two to three kilowatts of heat out. That is the whole argument, and it is a good one. Here is what the swap actually involves, what it costs in this region, and the parts of it people are not told until install day.

Why wall heaters feel the way they do

The complaints are always the same, in the same order.

• Hot in one spot, cold everywhere else. Resistance heat has no way to move air through the house. Every room is its own island.
• Expensive. Electric resistance is the most expensive common way to heat a home in Washington, even with our relatively cheap hydropower.
• Loud and dusty. A small fan pushing air across a glowing element picks up whatever settled in the can over the summer.
• No cooling at all. June 2021 made that one permanent in people's memory.
• Furniture rules. You cannot put a couch, a bed, or a curtain in front of a wall heater, which quietly dictates the layout of half the rooms in the house.

A ducted or ductless heat pump fixes all five at once, which is why wall-heater conversions are some of the most satisfying jobs we do. It is also why they are not cheap. You are not replacing an appliance; you are giving the house a heating and cooling system it never had.

The two replacement paths

Ductless mini-splits — the usual answer

Homes with wall heaters almost never have ductwork. That single fact decides the design. Retrofitting ducts into a finished 1970s rambler or split-level means opening ceilings, building soffits, and losing closet space, and it adds $3,000 to $8,000 of ductwork scope on top of the equipment.

So the standard answer is a multi-zone ductless mini-split system. An outdoor unit sits on a pad or wall bracket, small refrigerant lines run through the exterior wall, and indoor heads go where the heat is actually needed. Varsity installs Mitsubishi as the primary ductless line, with Daikin and Hitachi as alternatives.

What surprises people: you do not need a head for every wall heater. Resistance heat had to be per-room because it could not move air. A mini-split head throws heat across an open area, so the typical Puget Sound conversion is two to four heads — main living area, primary bedroom, and one or two secondary spaces — not seven.

A ducted heat pump — when the bones are already there

If the home has a usable duct system from an old forced-air unit, a crawlspace or attic that can take new trunk lines cleanly, or you are already down to studs on a remodel, a central ducted heat pump is worth pricing. One thermostat, nothing on the walls, and quieter indoor operation. It runs $12,000 to $18,000 installed in standard markets, before any duct work.

For most wall-heater houses, though, ducting is the expensive, invasive answer to a problem mini-splits solve in a day.

What it costs in Puget Sound

Single-zone systems sit at the bottom of the mini-split range. Three and four-zone systems sit at the top. Affluent markets include Seattle, Maple Valley, Normandy Park, Black Diamond, Steilacoom and Fircrest; luxury means Bellevue, Gig Harbor and Fox Island.

Want a number before anyone comes out? The instant estimate tool asks seven questions about the home and returns Good, Better and Best starting prices in about a minute.

Rebates: this is the best-case conversion

Utility heat pump programs were designed around exactly this scenario — a home heated by electric resistance moving to a heat pump. That is the conversion utilities most want to pay for, because it cuts winter peak load.

The catch is that rebates follow the meter, not the county. Roughly half a dozen electric utilities bill Varsity's 45-city service area, and each runs its own program with its own dollar figures and equipment minimums. Tacoma Power customers in Tacoma, Fircrest, University Place and Fife have their own programs plus a 0% loan option. Seattle addresses are on City Light. Gig Harbor and Fox Island are on Peninsula Light, a member-owned co-op. Parkland and Spanaway are on small mutual utilities. Everywhere else, it is your local electric utility, and the amount depends on what is being replaced and the efficiency of the equipment installed.

Programs change, they pay only through their own contractor networks, and a figure quoted for one city is often wrong one town over. We read the utility off your bill, confirm what it currently pays, and file the paperwork as part of the job. Our Washington heat pump rebate guide walks through who pays what.

One thing to be clear about: the federal 25C tax credit ended December 31, 2025. No 2026 installation qualifies, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling.

The parts nobody mentions until install day

The holes in the wall

Pulling a wall heater leaves a rectangular opening and a dead circuit. The can comes out, a licensed electrician disconnects and makes the circuit safe, and then somebody has to patch, texture and paint. That finish work is usually the homeowner's or a finish carpenter's, not ours. We tell you that during the estimate, not after the crew leaves.

Some homeowners leave one or two heaters in place in a back bedroom or a bathroom as cheap spot backup. That is a legitimate choice, and it costs nothing to keep them.

Electrical

Good news here. Wall-heater homes already have real electrical capacity dedicated to heating. A mini-split zone needs a 15–30 amp 240V circuit; a ducted heat pump needs 30–40 amps. Most homes with a 100-amp panel or larger can absorb that, especially once resistance circuits come off the load. We coordinate electrical scope rather than perform panel work ourselves.

Head placement

This is the real design conversation. Indoor heads should go high on an interior-facing wall with a clean exterior run behind them, not centered over the couch where the airflow annoys you. Line-set routing, condensate drainage, and where the outdoor unit sits relative to bedroom windows all get decided on the walkthrough.

When wall heaters should stay

Honesty is the brand, so: if you are heating one 600-square-foot cabin you visit six weekends a year, the payback math on a $9,000 system does not work. If you are selling in under a year, the upgrade may not return what it costs. And if the house is a rental with wide-open insulation gaps, the insulation is the better first dollar.

For a full-time home in Federal Way, Kent, Olympia, Tacoma or anywhere else in Puget Sound with wall heaters in every room, the comfort change is dramatic and the operating cost drops by 30 to 50 percent against resistance heat. That is the job worth doing.

What the visit looks like

A technician measures the home, runs a real load calculation, checks panel capacity, and walks every room where a heater lives to figure out how few heads can actually cover it. You get a written proposal with Good, Better and Best tiers, a confirmed rebate figure rather than a guessed one, and a 10-year parts and labor warranty on whatever gets installed. Most single-zone installs are done in one day; multi-zone systems sometimes take two.

Ready to price it? Request a free in-home estimate or call (253) 785-4622, Monday through Friday, 8 to 6.