Furnace and Heat Pump Replacement in Snoqualmie, WA: A $16,835 Fix for a Leak Nobody Finished Tracing

Location: Hoff Avenue Southeast corridor, Snoqualmie, WA 98065

Call Date: May 4, 2026

First Visit: May 11, 2026

Work Start: May 18, 2026

Project Completion: May 19, 2026

Lead Technician: Luis, 25 years of experience, Seattle refrigeration certified, Mitsubishi certified

System Before: A Lennox gas furnace and Lennox air conditioner installed by a previous contractor in 2017, carrying a refrigerant leak. A different heating and cooling company had dye-tested the leak the year before without ever coming back to trace it. The system ran on a 30-amp electrical circuit and was unable to keep the upstairs rooms farthest from the blower cool.

System After: A Trane Resolute 3-4 ton, 80,000 BTU, two-stage gas furnace (model S8X2B080M4PSCA) paired with a Trane Resolute 4-5 ton, 16-19 SEER2 variable-speed inverter heat pump requiring a 40-amp circuit, a new evaporator coil, a new condenser pad, and a dedicated 8-gauge electrical circuit installed to replace the original 30-amp breaker.

Final Project Cost: $16,835.42 for the furnace and heat pump installation ($15,402.95 before tax, after a $562.98 cash discount, a $1,500 hybrid heat pump rebate, and a $300 Midstream heat pump rebate), plus a separate $819.75 invoice for the electrical circuit upgrade

Marc had a diagnosis nobody finished. The heating and cooling company that came out the year before had found a refrigerant leak in the air conditioner serving his two-story house on the Hoff Avenue Southeast corridor in Snoqualmie, injected dye into the line to trace it, and never came back to say where it was. By early May the AC couldn't keep up at all, worst in the upstairs rooms farthest from the blower, and the gas furnace next to it, installed by Brennan Heating in 2017, was already looking worn at 8 to 9 years old. He called Product Air on May 4.

Why Marc Called Instead of Going Back to His Original Contractor

The ticket that reached Product Air was logged simply as "Sales, Claude AI recommended us": an AI assistant's recommendation. Marc was a new customer, and what brought him in wasn't a system that had failed outright. It was an open question nobody had answered.

In his own words when he called: "They put in a dye, but did not come back to determine where the leak was. Yesterday I tested the system and it could not keep up." He asked for a quote and options on whether the current system could be repaired or what a new one would cost, and he flagged the detail that mattered most for how the job would eventually get scoped: "current system had issues keeping the upstairs cool, specially for rooms far from the blower."

What Luis Found on Hoff Avenue

Luis has 25 years in the trade, Seattle refrigeration certification, and Mitsubishi factory certification. The house is a two-story, 2001-built, 3,250-square-foot home with three bedrooms, typical for the area since roughly three-quarters of Snoqualmie's housing stock was built after 2000 on the back of the Snoqualmie Ridge development that filled in through the late 1990s and 2000s. A furnace and AC that age in this neighborhood are usually original equipment reaching the end of a normal service life, not an outlier.

Luis's read on the leak wasn't a fresh diagnostic search of his own. The job was scoped as a sales visit, not a repair call, and nobody re-traced the line the previous contractor had already dyed. His assessment instead was about the pattern: an 8- to 9-year-old system shouldn't have been failing yet, and the more likely explanation was how the original 2017 install and the servicing since had been done, not a defect in the equipment itself. That's a judgment call, not a measurement, and it's presented here as one.

Is It Worth Repairing an AC With an Undiagnosed Refrigerant Leak, or Replacing It?

A dye test that finds a leak's presence without finding its location has answered half the question. The dye itself doesn't fix anything: it's an injected tracer that fluoresces under UV light so a technician can find the exact fitting, coil seam, or line-set joint that's leaking. If nobody comes back with a UV light before the dye migrates or the customer gives up calling, the homeowner is left knowing something is wrong and nothing about where.

Whether that's worth chasing down for repair, rather than replacing, usually comes down to the age of the equipment underneath it. A leak on a system with years of service life left is worth finding and fixing. A leak on a system already 8 to 9 years old, paired with a furnace showing its age at the same visit, changes the arithmetic: the cost of a proper leak search plus a recharge starts to compete directly with the cost of a system that doesn't carry an unresolved fault into its next decade. Marc's system was in exactly that position, which is why the visit was scoped as a replacement quote rather than a second attempt at chasing the leak.

The Three Real Options Marc Was Given

Six estimates went on file for the job, but three of them were unpriced placeholders carrying only a permitting fee. The three that were actually scoped and priced looked like this:

Marc's own reasoning, in the words he gave the technician afterward: he was looking for a system with strong warranties so he could go into winter with confidence, and he weighed the fact that Product Air had been in business more than five years as a sign it would still be around to honor that warranty.

That reasoning doesn't fully explain the pick on its own: the Platinum Plus option actually carried a longer, 5-year labor warranty than the Trane Resolute system he chose. What closed the gap was the rebate eligibility underneath each option. The Platinum Plus system removed the gas furnace and went fully electric, which put it in line for a different rebate track entirely. The Trane Resolute system kept the gas furnace and paired it with a heat pump, a hybrid configuration, which is exactly the scope Puget Sound Energy's $1,500 hybrid heat pump rebate is written for. The Gold option, a single-stage AC with no heat pump at all, didn't touch that rebate or the Midstream heat pump incentive. Once the rebates were figured in, the hybrid system with a four-year labor warranty was the one that made financial sense against the five-year-labor all-electric one.

What Product Air Installed: A Trane Hybrid Furnace and Heat Pump

The install job opened on May 18, a week after the estimate was signed. Two technicians spent eight hours on site that day, per the crew notes on the job: "HVAC: 8 Hours / 2 Guys." The existing gas furnace came out, along with the old evaporator coil. The new furnace and coil went in on the same footprint, the old outdoor unit was replaced on a new concrete and foam condenser pad, and the line set was reused where the scope allowed.

Why Would a New Heat Pump Need a Bigger Electrical Circuit Than the Old One?

A heat pump's rated minimum circuit ampacity comes from the compressor and fan motor load stamped on its own data plate, not from whatever circuit happened to be in the wall from the last unit. Replacing a smaller outdoor unit with a larger or more efficient one doesn't guarantee the old wiring was ever sized for the new equipment. It was sized for what used to be there.

That's what turned up on Marc's job. The new heat pump is rated for a 40-amp circuit, and the breaker already feeding that location was only 30 amps, logged plainly on the electrical ticket: "Our heat pump we are installing is a 40-amp minimum, current breaker size is 30." A separate electrical visit ran a new dedicated circuit with 8-gauge wire to meet the amperage rating before the heat pump could be commissioned. It's not an upsell. A heat pump won't safely operate on a circuit rated below its nameplate draw, and there's no way to know a given circuit is undersized until someone reads the new equipment's plate against the panel that's already there.

Two Crews, One Day, and a Circuit Rebuilt Before Startup

The installation crew worked the Hoff Avenue Southeast corridor job on May 18, eight hours with two technicians. The electrical crew came in the same day to rebuild the heat pump's circuit before it needed power, and the job closed out May 19. Beyond the circuit rebuild, the technician's own account of anything non-standard on this job was that the crew handled the rebate paperwork and submission on Marc's behalf, which is what actually lowered his net cost rather than leaving him to chase five separate credits himself.

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The Real Number: $16,835.42 With Tax, Plus an $819.75 Electrical Fix

The signed estimate priced the Trane Resolute system at $15,402.95, and that figure is the subtotal, not the final bill. The invoice that closed out the furnace and heat pump installation came to $16,835.42, which is that same $15,402.95 plus sales tax: $1,432.47 on a $15,402.95 base works out to just under 9.3 percent, in line with the combined state and local rate in this part of King County.

The rebates behind that price are worth naming individually:

• Cash discount, 3.0%: -$562.98
• Puget Sound Energy hybrid heat pump rebate: -$1,500.00
• Puget Sound Energy Midstream heat pump rebate (submitted through the distributor): -$300.00

That brought the subtotal to $15,402.95, and with sales tax added, the HVAC invoice closed at $16,835.42. The electrical circuit rebuild was billed separately at $819.75, on its own invoice, for the dedicated circuit run from a 30-amp breaker up to the required 40 amps.

The applied cash discount suggests Marc paid outside financing, though the exact payment method isn't specified in the job file. For homeowners who'd rather spread a project like this out, we also work with GreenSky and Service Finance Company, LLC, and most applications get a decision in minutes. Financing is subject to credit approval.

Warranty

The Trane Resolute system Marc chose has a 10-year manufacturer warranty on parts and a 4-year Product Air labor warranty, per the signed estimate. The table above shows how that compares to the other two options he was offered: 5-year labor warranty on Platinum Plus versus 3-year labor warranty on Gold (both under the same 10-year manufacturer coverage).

What Marc Has Now

The question Marc called with in May wasn't really about whether his system was broken. It was about whether anyone would actually trace the leak down this time. He now has a furnace and heat pump with no inherited fault to trace, on a circuit sized for what's actually installed rather than what used to be there.

The variable-speed heat pump modulates its output to match the house's load instead of cycling on and off at full blast, which is the part of the new system aimed directly at his original complaint about the upstairs rooms far from the blower never getting enough air. A single-stage system either runs at full output or not at all. A variable-speed one can hold a lower, steadier output longer, which tends to even out delivery to the rooms at the end of the duct run rather than just moving more air in short bursts.

Where This Job Fits: Our Issaquah Team

This job was handled by our Issaquah team, the crew that covers Issaquah and the Eastside. That location covers King County, including Snoqualmie, North Bend, and Issaquah.

FAQ

Is it worth repairing an AC with a refrigerant leak nobody located?

It depends almost entirely on the age of the equipment carrying the leak. A young system with a locatable leak is usually worth fixing outright. An older system, especially one already showing wear elsewhere, changes the math: the cost of a proper leak search and recharge starts to compete with the cost of equipment that doesn't carry an unresolved fault forward. In one Snoqualmie case, a dye-tested but never-located leak on an 8 to 9 year old AC, paired with a furnace already looking worn, was scoped as a replacement quote rather than a second repair attempt.

Why would a new heat pump need a bigger electrical circuit than the old equipment used?

A heat pump's minimum circuit ampacity is set by its own compressor and fan motor load, not by whatever wiring happened to already be in the wall. A new, larger, or more efficient unit can require more amperage than the equipment it's replacing, and there's no way to know that until the new equipment's data plate is checked against the existing breaker. In one Snoqualmie install, a heat pump rated for a 40-amp minimum circuit was going onto a breaker rated for only 30 amps, which required a separate electrical visit to run a new dedicated circuit before the heat pump could be commissioned.

What is the PSE hybrid heat pump rebate?

Puget Sound Energy offers a rebate for installing a hybrid heating system that pairs a new or existing gas furnace with a heat pump, rather than replacing the furnace outright with an all-electric system. The rebate applies to central ducted, air-source heat pumps and does not extend to ductless systems. On one Snoqualmie job, this rebate applied at $1,500 to a system pairing a new Trane furnace with a new Trane heat pump. A competing all-electric option quoted for the same house did not qualify for it, because removing the gas furnace entirely takes the system out of the program's hybrid scope.

Do you need a permit to replace a furnace or heat pump in Snoqualmie?

Yes. The City of Snoqualmie requires a mechanical permit for the installation, relocation, or replacement of a furnace or heat pump, filed through the city's Building Division rather than through King County. Homeowners should confirm with their contractor that the permit was actually pulled in their name and that the required inspection is scheduled, rather than assuming a permit was unnecessary because the equipment sits in the same location as before.

What's the difference between a single-stage and a two-stage furnace?

A single-stage furnace has one output level: full fire, every cycle. A two-stage furnace can run at a lower output for milder demand and step up to full output only when the house actually needs it, which generally means longer, gentler run times instead of short bursts of maximum heat. Paired with a variable-speed blower or heat pump, that lower stage does most of the day-to-day work, with full output reserved for the coldest stretches, which matters more in a colder inland pocket like Snoqualmie than it does in Seattle's milder marine climate.

Can a variable-speed heat pump fix a room that never gets enough air?

Sometimes, though it isn't a duct fix. A variable-speed system modulates output rather than cycling between full blast and off, which tends to deliver air more evenly to rooms at the far end of a duct run over the course of a cycle. It doesn't correct a genuinely undersized duct, a closed damper, or a disconnected run. Those are delivery problems a technician has to find directly. On a job where the customer's main complaint was upstairs rooms far from the blower never cooling properly, replacing a single-stage system with a variable-speed one was the equipment-side answer. It wasn't paired here with any duct modification, because none was found to be needed.

Why is the final invoice higher than the signed estimate?

Usually because of tax. A signed furnace or heat pump estimate is typically quoted as a subtotal, and the invoice that closes out the job adds sales tax on top of it, which shows up as a higher number without anything about the scope having changed. On one Snoqualmie job, the signed estimate came to $15,402.95, and the invoice that closed out the installation was $16,835.42, the same figure plus $1,432.47 in sales tax. A homeowner comparing the two numbers without accounting for tax would see a jump that isn't actually there.

Key Takeaways

• A dye test that finds a leak's presence without finding its location is half a diagnosis, not a repair. An undiagnosed leak on an 8 to 9 year old system is a replacement decision waiting to happen, not always a repair worth chasing further.
• A heat pump's minimum circuit ampacity is a hard requirement set by the equipment's own data plate, not a guess carried over from whatever breaker fed the old unit.
• A hybrid system that keeps the gas furnace and adds a heat pump can qualify for rebates, but an all-electric conversion of the same house does not.
• A signed estimate is typically a pre-tax subtotal, not the final bill. Sales tax added at invoicing is a real increase in dollars, not a change in the deal.

Marc spent a year carrying a question a previous contractor never finished answering. He doesn't have that question anymore, and the system that replaced it is sized, both the equipment and the circuit feeding it, for what's actually installed rather than what used to be there. If you're sitting on a diagnosis nobody came back to close, or a heat pump quote that hasn't mentioned your electrical panel yet, our heat pump installation and furnace replacement teams can walk the whole system, panel included, before you sign anything. You can see reviews from the Eastside on our Issaquah Google Business Profile.