Home Renovation Savings Program: Heat Pump Rebates

In short

The Home Renovation Savings Program pays cold-climate air-source heat pump rebates by system size and by the fuel your house burns today: $500 per ton to a maximum of $2,000 where natural gas heats the home, and $1,250 per ton to a maximum of $7,500 where electricity, oil, propane or wood does. Your eligibility form and your contractor's application both have to be approved before installation.

How much you can get

Cold-climate air-source heat pump — gas-heated home $500 per ton, up to $2,000
Cold-climate air-source heat pump — electric, oil, propane or wood heat $1,250 per ton, up to $7,500
Rental heat pump $500 per ton, up to $2,000
Ground-source (geothermal) — gas-heated home Flat $3,000
Ground-source (geothermal) — no gas heating $2,000 per ton, up to $12,000
Smart thermostat included in the project $100
Attic insulation, drain-water heat recovery and other measures See the program page

Who qualifies

You are an Enbridge Gas residential customer heating with a natural gas furnace or boiler, or you are on the Ontario electricity grid heating with electricity, oil, propane or wood.
The property is a single detached, semi-detached, row house, townhome, or a mobile home on a permanent foundation.
The home is an existing dwelling rather than a new build — the program page states the occupancy requirement it applies.
The heat pump model appears on the Natural Resources Canada qualified products list.
The work is done by a participating contractor — owner-supplied equipment and DIY installs are excluded.
No pre-installation energy assessment is required when the heat pump is the only upgrade, which is a real simplification compared with the older programs.
Your homeowner eligibility form has been submitted and approved before anything is ordered or booked.
Your contractor's pre-installation application has been approved as well — an install that goes ahead before both approvals land is not eligible.

Everything else about this program follows from one number: the tonnage of the system you install. Get that number wrong and the rebate is wrong, the comfort is wrong, and the equipment cycles badly for the next 15 years. Below is what the program pays, what it asks for, and where it currently stands.

How the per-ton rebate is calculated

Multiply the rated capacity of the heat pump, in tons, by the rate for your heating fuel. One ton is 12,000 BTU/h, so a 3-ton system in a gas-heated house earns 3 × $500 = $1,500, while the same equipment in a house on electric baseboards earns 3 × $1,250 = $3,750.

Then check the ceiling, because the two tiers do not share one. The gas tier stops at $2,000, which a four-ton system already reaches, so tonnage above that earns nothing more. The non-gas tier runs to $7,500, and it takes six tons to get there. Rental heat pumps are treated like the gas tier: $500 per ton, $2,000 maximum.

The fuel test is about how the home is heated today, not about what you are installing. A house with a gas furnace sits in the lower tier even if the heat pump will do most of the heating afterward. That single rule is responsible for most of the confusion we hear at kitchen tables.

Pre-approval is mandatory — it comes before installation

This is the rule the program does not bend on. Two approvals have to be in hand before a single component is installed: the homeowner eligibility form you submit, and the pre-installation application your contractor files for the specific measure. Installs done before that approval arrives are not eligible, and there is no route to fix it afterwards.

We say this plainly because the alternative — a rebate quoted in good faith and then refused — is how a homeowner ends up thousands of dollars short at the end of an install. Ask any contractor to put the approval confirmation in your hands before the truck arrives, and treat a same-week install date on an unapproved project as a warning sign.

Why sizing decides the size of your cheque

Tonnage has to come from a heat-loss calculation on your actual house: wall assemblies, window area, air-tightness, and the design temperature we build to in this part of Ontario. It should never come from a rule of thumb about square footage.

Oversizing to chase rebate dollars buys you short cycling, poor dehumidification in July, and a compressor that never settles into its efficient range.
Undersizing leaves auxiliary electric heat carrying more of January than it should, which shows up on the hydro bill.
Ducted retrofits need the duct static pressure checked — a heat pump moves more air at a lower supply temperature than the furnace it replaces.
Ask for the manufacturer's capacity table at -15 °C and -25 °C, not just the headline rating at mild temperatures.

You can keep the gas furnace — hybrid installs qualify

Removing the furnace is not a condition of the rebate. A dual-fuel setup — heat pump for most of the season, gas furnace for the coldest nights — qualifies, and for a home with a furnace that still has life in it, that is often the better engineering answer as well as the cheaper one. The heat pump versus furnace comparison walks through where each one wins.

What this looks like in Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton

Enbridge Gas serves all three cities, so most houses here fall in the $500 per ton tier and are realistically looking at $1,500 to $2,000. The higher tier shows up in the pockets without a gas main and in electrically heated homes: rural-edge properties above the Niagara Escarpment, and condos and townhomes running baseboards or fan coils.

Housing era matters more than the postal code. A 2000s subdivision home in Alton Village usually has a 200-amp panel and duct runs that take a heat pump without drama. A 1950s bungalow in Aldershot or Roseland often has a smaller service and original returns, and the honest quote includes that work rather than hiding it.

We work out of 4145 North Service Road in Burlington and do rebate-backed heat pump work across Halton and Hamilton — see residential HVAC services for what an install includes, or book a free assessment and we will model your tonnage and the rebate before you commit to anything.

How ZK Mechanical helps

Run a room-by-room heat-loss calculation so the tonnage on the rebate form matches what the house actually needs.
File the eligibility form and the pre-installation application, and wait for both approvals, before equipment is ordered.
Quote only models on the NRCan qualified list, with the AHRI reference numbers written on the proposal.
File the program paperwork and supply the itemized invoice verification asks for — no contractor can guarantee an approval, so we never deduct a rebate from your price as though it were certain.
Tell you when the rebate does not change the answer — sometimes the right move is to keep the furnace another season.

Frequently asked questions

Does a hybrid heat pump and furnace system qualify?

Yes. Pairing a heat pump with a gas furnace qualifies for the per-ton rebate, and you keep gas backup for the coldest nights. Your fuel tier is still set by how the home is heated at the time you apply, so a gas-heated house is paid at $500 per ton and cannot exceed $2,000 on the air-source measure.

Do I need a home energy audit first?

Not when the heat pump is the only upgrade — that requirement was dropped, which is one of the reasons this program is simpler than the ones it replaced. If you are bundling insulation or other envelope measures, check the program page, because assessment rules differ by measure.

Can I buy the equipment myself and have it installed?

No. The rebate is built around contractor-supplied equipment and a participating installer. Buying a unit online and hiring labour to fit it is the single most common way homeowners disqualify themselves.

How is the rebate paid out?

It is claimed against the completed project after verification, using the itemized invoice and the equipment details. Ask your contractor in writing who files the claim and whether the rebate is credited on your invoice or paid to you afterward — practices differ between companies.

Do new builds qualify?

No. The program funds retrofits of existing homes, so a newly built house in a Milton or Waterdown subdivision is excluded until it has been lived in long enough to satisfy the program's occupancy rule. The current threshold is published on the program page — check it rather than assuming, because it is the kind of detail that gets revised between seasons.

Official sources

All Ontario HVAC rebates Heat pump rebate calculator Enbridge heat pump rebate How much does a heat pump cost in Ontario?All rebate programs