Mini Split Installation in Cortez, CO
A new system here will heat from October through May and cool from July through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Montezuma County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
A mini-split in Cortez needs to handle 19 degree nights and 8 months of heating
Winter nights here average 19°F from December through February, and homes need heat from October through May. That is 8 months of the year the heat pump side of a mini-split has to work, not just the two summer months when it runs air conditioning. A unit sized or installed for August afternoons in the mid-80s but not for that long a heating stretch will fall short.
Any mini-split installed new has to meet the federal minimum for split-system heat pumps, 14.3 SEER2 for cooling and 7.5 HSPF2 for heating. That HSPF2 number matters more here than in places with a short winter, since the heating side of the system is doing most of the work over the year.
- 8 months
- October through May, your system heats
- 2 months
- July through August, it cools
- 19°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 84°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- Is a mini split worth it?
- For most homes here, yes. Cortez needs heat from October through May and winter nights average 19°F, so the heat pump has to work hard on the coldest nights, but cold-climate units are built for exactly that range. A mini split also gives you cooling for July and August without ductwork, which matters if your house is heated with something other than a central system now. Whether it's worth it for your house depends on how many rooms you're trying to cover and what heat you have now, so it's worth having a contractor look at the specific setup before you decide.
- How many rooms can a mini split cover?
- A single outdoor condenser can run more than one indoor head, so one system can cover several rooms at once. Each indoor head is sized for the room it's in, so a contractor will look at the square footage and layout of every room you want covered before recommending how many heads and how large a condenser you need. Trying to stretch one condenser across too many rooms undersizes each head, so it's not just a matter of counting doors.
- Can a mini split heat a whole house?
- It can, with enough indoor heads placed in the right rooms and a condenser sized for the whole load, not just one room. Cortez winter nights average 19°F, so whichever units go in need to be rated to keep producing heat down at that temperature, not just at milder temperatures. A contractor will size the system room by room and check that the equipment is rated for local winter lows before calling it a whole-house solution.