The heat pump installation playbook

A heat pump is not a big wallbox. The order value is several times higher, the job takes two or three trades instead of one electrician, homes differ enormously, and the customer is often replacing the system that keeps the house warm. A charger program with a mediocre process still completes most jobs. A heat pump program with a mediocre process produces wrong quotes, half-finished installations, and houses without heat in November.

Heat pump operations fail in predictable places, and most failures trace back to the assessment rather than to installation day.

1. The job is won or lost in the assessment

Every home is a different problem. What is being replaced: an oil boiler, direct electric heating, an old air-to-water unit? How does the house distribute heat: radiators, underfloor heating, or no water-based system at all? Where can the outdoor unit go, how far from the indoor unit, and how close to the neighbor's bedroom window? Does the electrical cabinet have capacity, or does the main fuse need upgrading? A quote issued without those answers is a guess, and guesses get corrected on installation day, at the customer's expense and out of your margin.

The traditional answer is a physical site visit. It works, but it does not scale: each quote costs a skilled person half a day, on leads that may never convert. The answer that scales is a structured virtual site survey, a guided photo flow the customer completes on their phone, designed so that an assessor can answer the sizing and scope questions remotely, while AI photo analysis reads the electrical cabinet.

For complex or commercial sites, move from photos to a live video survey, where the assessor directs the customer's camera. Done uses this model with Wattif to scope expansions of existing charging sites. The same method works for heat pumps, where a short video call often settles what the photos leave open.

2. Price the extra work before installation day

Heat pump scope creep is charger scope creep with an extra zero. Longer pipe runs, electrical work, condensate drainage, removing and disposing of the old boiler or tank: discovered mid-job, each one turns into a price negotiation on the spot with a customer whose old heating is already disconnected. They will say yes because they have no choice, and they will remember how it felt.

Preventing that takes three things:

• A fixed price list for extras. The recurring extras are known. Price them once, centrally, so the quote does not depend on which installer takes the job.
• Approval before installation day. The virtual survey flags most extras in advance, so the customer approves the real scope in the app before the installer arrives. Anything that surfaces on the day is priced from the same list and approved in writing on the customer's phone before work continues.
• Only approved items can be invoiced. When the system makes unapproved charges impossible, that category of dispute disappears. So does the margin you lose when installers undercharge to avoid an awkward conversation.

3. Coordinate the trades on one timeline

A heat pump installation is a plumbing job and an electrical job, sometimes with well drilling for ground source on top. That means two or three crews, often from different companies, whose work has to happen in sequence. The classic failure is the gap: the plumber mounts and connects the unit on Tuesday, the electrician cannot come until Friday, and the customer spends three days with a new heat pump and no heat. Technically the job is nearly done. For the customer it is a disaster.

The fix is to run the installation as one job with one timeline that every crew can see, instead of separate work orders that happen to share an address. All crews see the same schedule, the same site photos, and the same chat with the customer. Handoffs are explicit: the electrician is booked against the plumber's completion, and if one slot slips, the other is flagged. Matching on certification matters as much as matching on location. Refrigerant work, for example, may only be done by certified technicians under the EU F-gas rules, so whoever dispatches needs to know who holds which certification, not just who is nearby.

Ground source heat adds a step with the municipality. Drilling an energy well in Sweden has to be reported before work starts, and some areas require a permit. Processing times vary between municipalities, so the filing belongs on the critical path alongside equipment delivery: submitted when the order comes in, not discovered at scheduling.

4. Plan for the seasonal peaks

Heat pump demand is uneven. It spikes when the first cold snap finishes off the oldest boilers, when electricity prices jump, and when subsidy rules change. The November buyer is also a different customer from the one planning in May: their house is cold now, and every day of lead time is another day of space heaters from the hardware store.

That makes capacity hard to plan. A team sized for the winter peak sits idle in summer. A team sized for summer collapses in November, exactly when customers are least forgiving. The operations that cope run a hybrid: their own or dedicated crews for baseline volume and the most demanding jobs, backed by network capacity for peaks and thinly covered regions. The Done network adds 500+ vetted installers, and 80% of customers reach an available installer the same day. The full reasoning is in in-house vs outsourced installations. In short: the mix should shift with the season, and your systems have to allow it.

5. Document for warranty and service

A heat pump stays in place for many years, and the installation is the first page of its service history. Manufacturer warranty claims turn on commissioning evidence: settings, flow temperatures, refrigerant checks, photos of the finished installation, and serial numbers. A free-text report typed in the van will not hold up in a warranty dispute two years later. A structured report, where the installer cannot submit without the required fields and photos, will.

The same documentation is the foundation for aftermarket service. Service and maintenance revenue, the recurring income that makes heat pump programs attractive, depends on knowing what was installed, how it was configured, and what has happened since. Operations that capture structured installation data from day one own the customer relationship. Operations with PDFs scattered across email threads end up surveying their own installations all over again.

6. In Sweden: ROT, not the green-tech deduction

In Sweden, heat pumps fall under a different deduction from chargers. EV chargers, solar, and home batteries qualify for the green technology deduction (grön teknik). Heat pump installations qualify instead for the ROT deduction for renovation labor. The mechanics matter for operations: the deduction is applied directly on the customer's invoice, the company that invoices the customer claims the amount from Skatteverket, and the customer must have deduction room left for the year. For common heat pump types, Skatteverket accepts a standard labor share of the total price, which keeps fixed-price offers possible.

Design out two failure modes. The first is deduction room: if the customer has already used their ROT allowance for the year, Skatteverket rejects the claim, and your finance team has to collect the difference from your own customer. Check before invoicing. Done does this with BankID against Skatteverket. The second is presentation: show the price after the deduction at checkout, not as a rebate the customer has to understand and apply for. Price certainty sells heat pumps the same way it sells chargers.

The rollout order

Build in this order: the virtual survey first, then the price list for extras, then multi-trade scheduling, then flexible capacity, then structured documentation. ROT handling is the exception: it has to work from the first invoice. The assessment comes first because everything after it depends on its output. Scaling a program that quotes from guesses only multiplies the wrong quotes, and in heat pumps a wrong quote ends in a cold house and a public review.