Differing opinions on mini split heatpumps but most would agree that Mitsubishi makes excellent equipment although it tends to be pricier than some other Japanese brands. Other Japanese brands...Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic and Daikin come to mind. Probably even more important than brand is making sure it will be installed by a reputable HVAC company familiar with that brand and that has been in business for many years and will be there in the future to assist in honoring any warranty issues and service calls. I'm surprised that your garage doesn't get significantly warmer or colder than the temperatures you reported. Would think when temps go down to the low 20's your garage wouldn't be as high as 60 degree. Is your garage door insulated? As inverter type mini splits can throttle back on their output I'd be inclined to purchase a 24,000 btu model that should easily handle your large garage when temps reach high 90's or low 20's outside. If in the dead of winter your garage really doesn't get below 60 degrees and in the heat of summer not above mid 80's you could probably get by with an 15,000 btu to 18,000 btu model.

I am loosing my mind or someone deleted my statement that I live on the (South) Gulf Coast! That is a very important part of many of my comments on house issues. It is obviously very hot and humid here. Your BC situation is so very different so I can't really speak the practical side of your heating issues. No, I did not install it myself. I got a guy that's been teaching at the local trade school forever as far as the local installers go. He did not have much experience with minisplits and called in a collaborator for the job. They did a really nice job running the tubes and electrical through interior walls. The house is raised over an open crawl space so I don't have anything but the outdoor units visible outside. Now I have three whereas before I had two conventional two-ton compressors, one AH, with a gas furnace in the attic. I mostly looked into Sanyo, Toshiba and Mitsubishi. They all have advantages and disadvantages wrt operating features. I do not know your climate so my main concern would be low temp heating performance. Here if you have enough cooling in a heat pump, you can not really run out of heat. One thing I have noticed, but don't understand is that the single minisplits are more efficient and better at low temp than the multi systems. There has to be an engineering explanation or they are just a year or two ahead with the single systems and the designs will trickle over with a delay. Overall, we really like the system. It fits our lifestyle. We are out a lot, and the house has its original doors and walls intact. The inherent zoning feature should save us a lot of money over the years since we will have less expense for conditioning of rooms that are not occupied at different parts of the day and night. My systems are mounted high on the walls. It was very cold for my area when we went into operation so it got a good test. One thing that I noticed is that the programming could be better for heating. The inside blowers go to slow mode when the temp approaches the set point. This makes them good ceiling heaters. (That seems pretty predictable. I've lived in homes in predominantly cooling climates with both supply and return located in the ceilings.) Bumping up the blower speed manually solved the problem. I suppose that the ceiling fan might have done the same thing. One thing I am very glad that I did was to change the first plan to put the units at the head of the beds in a couple of rooms. I was actually concerned that the cool air would cascade down on heads at low blower speed. That might have been a problem, but it would have been even more annoying to have hot air on the face in the "winter". Keep in mind that you can mix and match. If I had not gone entirely with minisplits, I would have had a regular forced-air system and installed one mini in the rear utility room. The duct to that area originated in the attic, ran vertically down a chase through the house and under 2/3 the length of the house to three registers in the floor in that room. It was a weak point to keep in a main system. The expense of mixing systems like that might depend on how capacity breaks down in choosing a "main". Finding a good installer who is experienced with minisplits might be difficult.

Jsbjab118, Congratulations on having started your build - exciting and stressful times! We will be building in the Truro area. House likely to be 1 and 1/2 storey with about 1400 sq feet on the main floor, built on a slab, no basement. The builder who recommended the electric infloor suggested using that in the slab, with either electric baseboard or a minisplit upstairs. Although he said we could do infloor upstairs also, in a layer of mud. In our current house we use geothermal and haven't totally ruled that out. I don't think we have much need for air conditioning, just a few weeks of the year. We will face southeast. Too many decisions! Good luck with your build.

Hi Elmer I read through your comments strongly supporting NG over HP option due to its cost advantage. Do you know a 10 KW solar system can be installed in CA today for $15000 after tax incentive , which will generate approx. 15000 KwH of electricity per year ? I am exactly doing this for my 1995 built 3375 sq ft home in bay area as this appears to be the cheapest route to bring down my energy cost as compared to other options like improve insulation, change windows or upgrade 1995 installed 80% efficient NG furnace etc. Till my NG furnace is alive and kicking, I plan to use it minimally in the morning to take the chill out of the home and rely on supplemental electrical heating ( resistive ) to keep the house warm . Resistive heating is inefficient, but ok as stop gap option particularly if my electricity is coming from solar. When it's time to bid farewell to these antique NG fired machines, I plan to take HP route for my home heating and air conditioning. Even without any of these actions and just install of solar, my current electricity only bill will be reduced from $2800 / year ( 10000 KwH ) to zero. That will pay for solar install cost in just 5 years. Add to it cost saving from an electric car ( which I don't have at this time ), payback is even shorter. My yearly NG heating consumption is 700-750 therms. The baseline consumption of 20 therms / month or 250 therms / year will always remain due to NG cooking appliance and NG water heater. But the rest 500 therms / year NG consumption can be eliminated when I replace central ducted existing NG Furnace / AC system with ducted heat pump (no splits). There will be more upfront cost to install heat pump as compared to NG furnace / AC option , but I am hoping this differential to be in the range of $2-3K , particularly if I go with heat pump option like MrCool Universal ( will work well in temperate Bay Area weather ) instead of fancy Fujitsu or Mitsubishi heat pumps. And saving of $1000 from eliminating consumption of 500 therms / year should help offset this cost sooner rather than later. Due to these considerations, I decided to go for 10KW Solar System that gives me enough capacity of solar generated electricity to meet these loads. Time to give a fresh look to all ( almost ) electric home with recent price reduction ( actually since June, 2020 ) in solar install cost.