My spouse and I went for it by working with a company called Sealed who did ALL of the legwork and laid out all the money for it. They started by analyzing our energy sources and usage history, home layout, and existing insulation. Then they sent out contractors to do things like re-insulate the attic (because our shit was old and not getting the job done adequately anymore) before actually installing the heat pump.

Repayment of the loan from Sealed is done based on how much our energy efficiency improved over our old furnace and insulation. The bill is pretty low in summer when we keep the house cooled and use a lot of power, but we see much larger bills in winter because of how much our efficiency has improved over past years–we’ve eliminated a lot of our waste there. (Sealed offers a balanced billing option where they average a year’s cost and spread it out over 12 months.)

We’re terrible at being adults and doing adult things like home improvement, so it was fantastic to be able to enlist the help of actual adults who were cool about holding our hands through the entire process of greening up our house!