Two parallel regimes, and only one of them is the one everyone consults
The Verchères windmill, a stone tower built around 1730, remained part of the seigneury until 1834, passed to the federal government in 1913, served as a signaling station for navigation until 1949, and was designated a heritage building by the minister on February 11, 1983. The Saint-François-Xavier Church, built in 1787–1788, received between 1819 and 1823 an interior decoration created in the workshop of Louis-Amable Quévillon. And the Madeleine de Verchères monument, a work by Louis-Philippe Hébert inaugurated on September 21, 1913, was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on May 25, 1923.
A word about her, because precision is easily lost. Marie-Madeleine Jarret de Verchères was fourteen years old during the Iroquois attack of October 22, 1692 — the event is real, and her own account, dated October 15, 1699 and authenticated by Intendant Champigny, describes a run to the fort, a cannon shot fired to alert neighboring posts, and a resistance lasting about two days with a single soldier. The eight-day siege, the forty-five pursuers, and the cannon heard as far as Montreal come from a second account written about thirty years later, and it is that version that the 1927 bronze plaque made official. We prefer the first: it is more restrained, it is signed, and it is sufficient.
We installed a GREE FreeMatch R32 2-head wall-mounted heat pump in this village, and the project raised a regulatory question we had never encountered in this form in Quebec.
This text complements our first page devoted to Verchères, which covered a four-head system and addressed two topics we will not revisit here: choosing the pipe size based on distance — the piping budget when no nearby outdoor location is acceptable — and the centimeters around a wall-mounted head, including clearances and ceiling trim. The two pages complement each other; this one discusses neither line length nor clearances.
What was installed
| Item | Data |
|---|---|
| Outdoor unit | GREE FreeMatch R32 GWHD(30)ND6MO |
| Rated capacity | 8,300 W (28,400 BTU/h) in cooling · 8,800 W (30,000 BTU/h) in heating |
| Heads | 15,000 + 12,000 = 27,000 BTU/h — 95% of the rated capacity in cooling, 90% in heating |
| Modulation range | 2,400 to 10,000 W in cooling mode (8,190 to 34,100 BTU/h) |
| Dimensions | SEER2 21 · HSPF2 10 · EER2 12.5 · EER 4.00 · COP 4.19 |
| AHRI reference | 214931588 |
| Heating range | −30 °C to 24 °C |
| Factory charge | 2,200 g of R32 |
| Piping | 18 m + 25 m = 43 m developed length, 3 m beyond the 40 m factory charge → 60 g of R32 weighed and added |
| Electrical | MCA 23 A · MOCP 35 A |
| Cabinet | 1,020 × 826 × 427 mm, 66 kg, 3,413 cfm, 62 dB(A) |
Values taken directly from the X610068B data sheet. This chassis has the best COP in the range, 4.19. And let’s be clear: this combination of capacity and distribution has already been used elsewhere in our series. With two heads, the matrix is full; we are writing it down rather than disguising it.
The certificate, and what comes on top of it
First, the good news: the equipment is named
Verchères’ By-law 435-2009 on permits and certificates lists, among the work requiring an authorization certificate, in section 2.3.2:
“accessory equipment (heat pump, canopy, awning, etc.)”
It is written, it is named, and that settles the first question. By-law 615-2025 on fees even gives the price in Appendix A, urban planning section:
“Heat pump or similar equipment $40.00”
Forty dollars. An amount a property owner can verify for themselves before calling anyone.
Then the line that almost no one reads
Two lines lower, the same appendix adds:
“+ Additional amount for areas covered by the following by-laws: PIIA / Vieux Verchères Heritage Site $50.00”
The municipal fee schedule tells you that a second regime exists, and gives you its price. To our knowledge, this is the most concrete way a Quebec municipality signals the existence of an additional regulatory layer: not in a recital, but in a fee schedule.
The two regimes, and why they do not overlap
Here is the structure, and it is more interesting than it may seem.
By-law 464-2011, adopted on December 5, 2011, designates the Vieux Village de Verchères as a heritage site. Article 1 is remarkably brief: “The Vieux Village de Verchères sector is constituted as a heritage site.” The boundaries are described in article 2, from the riverbank to the north to 765 Marie-Victorin to the east. Articles 4 and 5 list the activities requiring authorization from the municipal council: subdivision, new construction, exterior alteration, restoration, signage, and demolition. The Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec records the same thing as a status: designation as a heritage site by the Municipality of Verchères on December 5, 2011.
The 380-2004 bylaw on PIIAs, for its part, covers signs in a list of zones, backfilling and grading work, the redevelopment of montée Calixa-Lavallée, the river corridor—and exterior renovations to heritage buildings listed in the inventory and “located outside the Vieux Village sector of Verchères”.
Read this last clause twice. The PIIA does not cover the Vieux Village: it expressly excludes it, because the village core is governed by its own bylaw. These are not two overlapping regimes; they are two parallel regimes that divide the territory between them, and the municipal fee schedule charges for both on the same line precisely because a property owner should not have to know which one applies to them.
We have already published, on our La Prairie page, the principle that a heritage designation may constitute a second authority on top of a municipal permit—but that involved a site designated by the government. Here, the additional authority is the municipality itself, which adopted a second bylaw to give itself a power it would not otherwise have had.
What This Changes for an Outdoor Unit
An outdoor unit mounted on a wall, on brackets, or placed on a base against a façade is an exterior alteration. Within the Vieux Village area, this means, in addition to the certificate of authorization:
- authorization from the municipal council, that is, a decision made at a council meeting rather than at the service counter;
- the $50 surcharge listed in the fee schedule;
- and above all, a schedule that is no longer in the supplier’s hands. A council meets according to its own schedule.
Our position does not change: we cite a bylaw; we do not interpret it. Determining whether a specific address falls within the scope of Article 2 is a question for the Urban Planning Department at 450 583-3307, with the lot number in hand—and that is the first thing to do, even before choosing a model.
What We Will Not Publish
Three refusals, and they are deliberate.
No setback, no screen, no height. Zoning Bylaw 443-2010 is distributed as a single file covering sixteen chapters, and it cuts off mid-read in Chapter 3. The chapters covering accessory equipment, setbacks, and screens never reached us. We know the bylaw defines an “accessory equipment” and a “privacy screen”; we do not know what it says about a heat pump, and we will not make it up.
No issuance deadline. The chapter of bylaw 435-2009 containing it was likewise not provided to us. A figure circulated during our checks; it came from a portion of the document we had not received, so we discarded it.
One noise threshold, not two. The 361-2003 bylaw on nuisances, in section 46.1, names the equipment and sets the rule:
“It constitutes a nuisance and it is prohibited to use a heat pump, air conditioner, pump, filter, or fan that emits or causes noise whose sound pressure level, measured at the property line from which it originates, is greater than 53 dB (A).”
A second, more permissive value appeared during our checks; it was accompanied by elements that have no place in a municipal bylaw, and we will not publish it without confirmation from the City. The bylaw also prohibits construction noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
An important reminder that belongs on our Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu page: the 62 dB(A) on the technical datasheet and the 53 dB(A) in the bylaw are not comparable. They are neither the same measurement nor taken at the same point, and bringing them together because they use the same unit is a reasoning error, not a safety margin.
On a heritage-designated site, install it once
That is the technical consequence of the regime described above, and it deserves its own discussion.
Everywhere else, moving an outdoor unit three years after installation is a nuisance: you dismantle it, patch the holes, refasten it, and pull a new vacuum. In an area where any exterior modification requires authorization from the council, that same move becomes an application. Reversibility stops being a question of tools and becomes a question of the municipal schedule.
Three decisions therefore change status.
The location
It is no longer chosen solely based on air, water, and noise: it is chosen once, knowing that revisiting it will require a second visit. That does not mean choosing quickly—it means the opposite. The technical assessment takes longer, and the quote reflects that.
The penetrations
Drilling into old masonry is irreversible in the strict sense: a patched hole remains a patched hole, and it shows. The number of penetrations, their position, and their alignment must therefore be decided at the same time as the location, not during installation.
The service life of the unit itself
Here is the point we wanted to make, and one that is rarely stated clearly.
A hermetic compressor does not die of old age. It dies from contamination. The mechanism was published on our Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague page, and we will not repeat it here: residual moisture and hygroscopic oil form acids that attack the winding varnish slowly, over many years. That is why a deep vacuum and its rise test are the project’s long-term reliability decision.
What we add here concerns what comes next, and it is brutal: when a compressor burns out for this reason, it does not die alone. Acid decomposition circulates throughout the entire circuit, including the concealed piping. That is why replacing a unit after a burnout is never a simple equipment swap, and why the question “can the existing piping be reused?”—addressed in detail on our Sorel-Tracy page for an ordinary replacement—does not arise in quite the same way after a burnout.
Now connect the two halves of this page. At a designated heritage site, concealed piping is the most expensive thing to redo, because touching it means reopening the wall, and reopening the wall reopens the file. A botched commissioning therefore costs more than just a compressor: it costs an authorization.
That is also why, on this type of project, we record more details: the measured vacuum value, the actual developed lengths, the weighed supplementary charge, and the date. A complete file is of no use on the day of installation. It is useful on the day someone has to demonstrate what was done to an insurer, a buyer, or a municipal council.
What this page adds to the first one
Our first Verchères page asked a question of geometry: how many metres, how many centimetres, and where can the unit physically fit? This one asks a question of authorization and duration: who has to say yes, and how many times will we have to ask them again? The village has not changed between the two texts—the framework is what is different.
At AirGreen, we install, maintain, and document HVAC systems in Verchères, Contrecoeur, Calixa-Lavallée, Varennes, Saint-Amable, Sainte-Julie, and throughout Marguerite-D'Youville, as well as in Montréal, Laval, Longueuil, on the North Shore, and on the South Shore. If your address is in the Vieux Village, mention it during the first call: this single detail changes the order of the steps, and the order of the steps changes the installation date.