HVAC in Yarrow

Yarrow at a glance

Yarrow is a small community within the City of Chilliwack, about 90 kilometres east of Vancouver at the foot of Vedder Mountain, built partly on land reclaimed from the former Sumas Lake.

What that means for your HVAC

Yarrow has older village homes, farmhouses and newer houses. Many older homes heat with baseboards, oil or propane and have no ducts, which makes ductless heat pumps a practical upgrade for both heating and cooling. Ask about cold-climate models so the heads keep working well during arctic outflow; see ductless heat pumps.

Low, reclaimed land

Homes on the old lake bed sit on low, flat ground. Crawl spaces can be damp in the wet months, and that moisture finds its way into indoor air. Check the crawl space after heavy rain, keep vapour barriers intact and run bathroom fans that vent outside to keep the house feeling drier.

The Vedder lands and the Mennonite village

Volkert Vedder began pre-empting land here in 1862, and with his sons Adam and Albert built holdings of 1,200 acres by 1878. The BC Electric Railway line of 1910 had a station named Yarrow, and when the Vedder Canal dyking was finished in 1924, it opened 12,000 acres west of the village to farming. From 1928, Dutch-German Mennonite families who had fled the Soviet Union bought land here and built a thriving community. Some of their early houses still stand, and older farmhouses like these often benefit from better insulation along with a heat pump.