Heat pump installation in Tauranga
Your installer will size it right for your house and put the outdoor unit somewhere the salt air won't get to it, so you get low running costs now and a heat pump that's still working properly in ten years.
What it costs
Prices below are supplied and fitted, so they cover the unit, the brackets, the pipework, the drainage, the electrical work and getting it all tidy and quiet. Compare them against a price you've seen online and check the second one includes the fitting, because it usually doesn't.
| Type | Supplied & fitted | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| High-wall bedroom or small room | $2,000 to $2,900 | Around 2.5kW, and the cheapest way in. |
| High-wall main living area | $2,800 to $4,200 | A 5 to 6kW unit. A mild climate means most lounges here sit at this size. |
| High-wall large or open-plan | $3,800 to $5,500 | A 7 to 8kW unit for a knocked-through living, dining and kitchen space. |
| Multi-split 2 to 3 rooms | $5,500 to $10,000 | Two or three rooms off one outdoor unit, so the coast only has one box to attack. |
| Multi-split 4 or more rooms | $10,000 to $14,000 | Enough indoor heads to cover most of a larger home. |
| Ducted whole home | $12,000 to $25,000+ | Hidden in the roof space with only the vents showing. Suits the newer open-plan builds. |
You'll get a firm price once your installer has the right measurements and details of your job. Costs can vary a lot, and the cost page goes into why.
What’s included in the price
Supply and install is handled as one job, so there's no chasing a separate supplier and sparky.
- The heat pump, sized to your room
- Wall brackets or a pad for the outdoor unit
- Insulated pipework and the condensate drain
- Electrical connection and certification
- Commissioning and a run-through of the controls
- A tidy-up before they leave
- Manufacturer warranty on the unit
- Removal of the old unit, if you're replacing one
How a heat pump installation works
A single high-wall is usually about half a day.
Free quote
Send your suburb and the rooms you want sorted. That's enough to come back with options and a price.
Site visit
Your installer measures the room, looks at the windows and insulation, and works out where the outdoor unit can sit out of the worst of the salt.
The install
The indoor head goes up, the outdoor unit onto a bracket or a pad, then the copper pipework and drain are run and sealed and a registered electrician wires it in.
Commissioning
It's vacuumed, tested and handed over, and you get shown how to run it for both jobs rather than just the winter one.
Which type of heat pump suits your home
The bay covers a lot of different houses, and an older bungalow in Welcome Bay wants something different from an open-plan new build in Bethlehem. The other types of heat pump are compared side by side if you're weighing them up.
High-wall
Mounted up near the ceiling and blows down across the room. It costs the least to buy and to fit, and it handles one open living area well.
Floor console
Sits low on the wall like an old radiator and pushes heat out at floor level, so your feet feel it sooner in an uninsulated bungalow.
Ceiling cassette
Sits flush in the ceiling and blows four ways, which suits a wide open-plan room where a wall unit would look out of place.
Multi-split
Several indoor heads off one outdoor unit. Near the water that matters twice over, because it is one box in the salt instead of three.
Ducted
Runs through the roof space and pushes air out through vents in each room, so nothing shows on the walls. It needs the ceiling space for it.
What size heat pump do you need
Tauranga's mild climate is good news for the bill: plenty of rooms here only need a modest unit, which keeps the fitted price sensible.
Bedroom or small room
About 2.5kW.
Living area
5 to 6kW.
Large or open-plan
7 to 8kW.
Those suit a room in reasonable shape. Single glazing, no insulation or a lot of west-facing glass and you go up a size.
Older bungalow or new build?
The single-glazed bungalows around Otumoetai, Greerton and Welcome Bay leak heat through the windows and hold damp all winter, and plenty of them have no fixed heating at all to start from. They need more capacity than the floor area suggests.
The newer builds out at Papamoa, Pyes Pa and Bethlehem are sealed and hold their heat, so they often need less than people expect. What they do need is thinking about, because they're open plan from the outset and one unit at one end of a long room won't heat it evenly.
Why buying big backfires
Too small and it runs flat out and never warms the room. Too big and it races up to temperature, shuts off, starts again a few minutes later and never settles, which costs more to buy and more to run.
The second one matters more here than the cold does. Our winters are humid, so a good part of the job is drying the room out, and a unit that keeps stopping and starting never runs long enough to do it. That's how you end up with a warm room and condensation still on the windows.
The sizing calculator gets you a starting figure, and your installer measures the room rather than guessing.
Replacing an old heat pump
Near the water, replacements come round sooner than people expect, and the reason is always the same one.
The outdoor unit is a copper coil threaded through hundreds of thin aluminium fins, and those fins are how it sheds heat. If you're along the ocean front at Mount Maunganui, Papamoa Beach or Arataki, salt settles on them every day and eats in, and a corroded coil loses efficiency long before it fails outright. So yours gets quietly worse for years rather than stopping.
If yours is ten or more years old, struggling, or throwing error codes, replacing usually beats repairing. The pipework and cabling can sometimes be reused if they're the right size and in good condition, which takes a chunk off the price, and that gets checked rather than assumed. Pipework contaminated with the old refrigerant gets replaced, because leaving it shortens the life of the new system.
A replacement is also the moment to fix the position. If the old unit sat where the spray hits it on a wall facing the sea, moving the new one somewhere sheltered will do more for the next ten years than the extra kilowatt would, and a salt-rated model is a choice you only get to make at install time.
Worth knowing up front: your installer services and repairs the systems they install, not other companies' work. If someone else fitted yours they'll still come out, look at it and quote a replacement.
Consent and electrical work
A standard heat pump install doesn't need building consent, because it counts as minor work. A ducted system going into a new build or a major renovation is usually covered by the consent for that job rather than needing its own, and Tauranga City Council is the authority if anything about yours is unusual.
The electrical work is done and certified by a registered electrician, and the refrigerant work by someone holding an approved filler licence, which is a legal requirement in New Zealand. Both are part of the install and you get the paperwork.
If you're in a unit, a townhouse or anything under a body corporate, check the rules about what can be fixed to an external wall before you book. On a coastal site that matters more than usual, because the sheltered position is often the one the rules don't allow.
Looking after your heat pump
Two things work against a heat pump here, and neither of them is the cold. Humidity grows mould on the indoor coil and the barrel fan, which is where that musty smell comes from, and rinsing the filters won't shift it because it's deeper in than the filters reach. Salt does the other half, outside.
Once a year suits most homes, heading into autumn before you start leaning on it. Coastal places at the Mount or Papamoa want looking at more often than that, and a wash-down of the outdoor coil with fresh water every few months does more for its life than anything else you can do yourself.
The filters are yours: pop the front cover, slide them out, rinse them under the tap and let them dry, every few weeks through the months you're using it hardest. Book a service for the rest of it, or see what's involved.
Common questions about heat pump installation
How much does heat pump installation cost in Tauranga?
Supplied and fitted, a high-wall runs about $2,000 to $2,900 for a bedroom, $2,800 to $4,200 for a main living area and $3,800 to $5,500 for a large or open-plan space. Multi-split systems are $5,500 to $14,000 depending on how many rooms, and whole-home ducted starts around $12,000.
How long does it take?
A single high-wall is usually about half a day. A long stretch of pipework, a two-storey site, or a multi-split or ducted system stretches it to a full day or more. You get told what to expect before anyone starts.
Do I need a salt-rated unit?
Along the ocean front at the Mount, Papamoa Beach and Arataki, yes. Salt settles on the outdoor coil's fins and eats into them, and a corroded coil loses efficiency for years before it actually fails. A corrosion-treated model costs a little more up front. Inland it makes no practical difference.
What size do I need?
It depends on the room's floor area and ceiling height, how much glazing it has and how well insulated the house is. The mild climate here means many rooms only need a modest unit, but a single-glazed older room needs noticeably more than a sealed new build of the same size.
Will one unit heat an open-plan living area?
In the newer Papamoa and Pyes Pa builds, often not from one end. Those spaces run kitchen through to lounge, and a single unit at one end leaves the far end cool no matter how hard it works. Either size it for the whole volume and place it to throw down the length, or look at ducted.
Does it cool as well?
Yes, and if it's the humid afternoons driving you to buy, that's the half you'll use most. It's the same unit running the other way, so there's nothing extra to buy, and it pulls moisture out while it cools, which is what takes the heaviness out of the air.
Do I need consent?
Not for a standard install, since it counts as minor work. The electrical side has to be done by a registered electrician and the refrigerant work by someone licensed for it. If your job involves structural changes, check with Tauranga City Council first.
What does it cost to run?
A correctly sized unit heating a living room through a Tauranga winter typically adds somewhere between $25 and $60 a month to the power bill, depending on the hours you run it. Heat pumps return roughly three to four units of heat per unit of electricity, which is why they cost less to run than any plug-in heater.
Get a price for your place
Send your suburb and the rooms you want sorted, and your local installer will come out and give you a fixed price.