Why Homeowners are switching to Quilt this heating season
Key Heating & Cooling installs Quilt, the smartest way to heat your home. Full capacity to -5°F, room-by-room control, and $400 off per room before November 30, 2026.
New Hampshire winters demand more from your heating system
Winter here along the NH seacoast, lakes region and southern Maine is not a season you can under prepare for. Temperatures regularly fall into single digits, snowstorms arrive with little warning, and overnight lows that drop well below freezing are a routine part of life from December through February. For most homeowners, that reality means one thing: the heating system has to work, without hesitation, every single night.
The problem is that most heating systems in this region were designed around burning fuel, not moving heat. Gas furnaces, propane boilers, and oil heating systems generate warmth by combustion, and combustion is expensive and inefficient. For every unit of energy a gas furnace consumes, it delivers roughly one unit of heat. A heat pump, by contrast, moves heat from outside into your home rather than creating it from scratch, which means it delivers far more warmth per unit of electricity.
Quilt is the smartest way to heat and cool your home, and Key Heating and Cooling in Exeter installs it to Quilt Certified Partner standards. Here is what that means for your home this winter.
How Quilt performs in real New Hampshire (& Maine) cold
The most common concern homeowners in cold climates have about heat pumps is straightforward: does it still work when it actually gets cold outside? The answer, with Quilt, is yes, well past the point where most heating seasons get tested.
Quilt holds its full rated heating capacity down to -5°F. At -13°F, it still delivers roughly 90% of that capacity. Its operating range extends all the way down to -15°F. On the coldest night of the year in Rockingham County, your home does not need to rely on a backup electric resistance strip or a propane top-up. Quilt keeps going.
The efficiency numbers back this up. Quilt's coefficient of performance is 4 at 47°F, which means it delivers four units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses. Even at 5°F, that coefficient of performance is still 2, meaning two units of heat for every one of electricity. A gas furnace, even a high-efficiency model, cannot match that ratio. Quilt's HSPF2 rating of 12 for Region IV, the coldest rated climate zone, reflects performance across an entire heating season, not just on mild days.
For a 2-room system, the SEER2 rating is 25 and the HSPF2 is 12. For a 3-room system, the SEER2 rating is 25.3 and the HSPF2 is also 12. Those are the highest efficiency ratings of any comparable ductless heat pump currently available, and they come with Energy Star Cold Climate certification, which means Quilt qualifies for maximum rebates in most utility and state programs.
Room-by-room heating, not whole-house guessing
Central forced-air heating treats your home as a single unit. The thermostat calls for heat, the furnace fires, and air moves through ducts to every room, whether anyone is in those rooms or not. That is a simple system, but it is not a smart one.
Quilt gives you room-by-room control. Each indoor unit serves one room, and each room has its own temperature setting. You can adjust them individually from the Quilt Dial on the wall or from anywhere with the Quilt App on your phone. If you are working from a home office all morning, that room stays at your preferred temperature. The guest room down the hall does not need to be the same temperature, and with Quilt, it does not have to be.
Quilt also includes occupancy detection built into each indoor unit. A radar sensor detects in real time whether the room is occupied. When it is empty, the system shifts into an energy-saving mode automatically. When someone walks back in, it responds immediately. This is not a behavior-learning algorithm that improves over weeks. It is real-time sensing. Empty rooms are simply not heated to the same degree, and that shows up as lower energy use and lower bills every month.
A design that fits your home
One of the reasons ductless heat pumps have historically been a hard sell in well-finished homes is aesthetics. Traditional indoor units are bulky, industrial-looking wall mounts that interrupt a room rather than integrating into it.
Quilt was designed differently. The indoor unit stands 7⅞ inches tall, with a profile that sits close to the wall and draws little attention. It comes with two front cover options: white oak, which gives it a warm, architectural quality, or paintable white, which lets it disappear into the wall. For a home in Exeter where you have invested in the way your rooms look and feel, Quilt fits in rather than standing out in the wrong way.
The system runs quietly, between 27 and 48 dBA depending on the operating mode. For reference, rainfall typically registers around 50 dBA. Your bedroom's Quilt unit does not compete with conversation, sleep, or the sound of snow falling outside.
The system gets better over time
Most home equipment is static. What you install is what you have until something breaks or you replace it. Quilt is different. It receives over-the-air software updates that improve its performance without any new hardware.
A fall 2025 update increased heating and cooling capacity across every Quilt system already installed in the field. Homeowners who had installed their systems months earlier woke up to a more capable unit than the one they bought, at no additional cost. As Key Heating & Cooling's customers install Quilt this fall, they will receive future updates the same way.
Why Key Heating and Cooling is the right partner for this
Key Heating and Cooling has built a reputation in Exeter and the surrounding area around doing the job right. As a Quilt Certified Partner, the team is trained and vetted specifically for Quilt installations, which means your system is sized correctly for your home, installed to the standards Quilt requires, and backed by a warranty of 10 to 12 years on parts and compressor, depending on your Quilt Certified Partner tier.
Quilt's customer satisfaction score is 4.7 out of 5 across more than 150 Quilt Certified Partners in 46 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Key Heating and Cooling, your key to comfort, brings that standard home to Exeter.
The timing makes sense right now
If you have been thinking about replacing your gas or oil heating system, or adding efficient, room-by-room heating to parts of your home that your existing system does not serve well, this is a strong moment to act. Rebates and incentives for Energy Star Cold Climate certified heat pumps are widely available through utilities, the state of New Hampshire, and federal programs, and Quilt qualifies for the maximum in most of them.
Through November 30, 2026, Key Heating and Cooling is offering $400 off per room on a new Quilt system. For a 2-room or 3-room installation, that is a meaningful reduction in the upfront cost, on top of whatever rebates apply to your home.
The best time to get this done is before the hardest part of winter arrives. Schedule a consultation with Key Heating & Cooling and go into the season knowing your home is ready for whatever New Hampshire sends.
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