Minotair appear to have closed down. Alternatives for heating/cooling a small efficient home? – GreenBuildingAdvisor

It’s been a few years since I built our small 1000 sq ft home near Vancouver BC. With the help of GBA and its contributors (Malcolm Taylor in particular) it turned out great. With some exterior insulation, triple pane windows and scoring 0.32 ach50 its very comfortable. The HVAC system was built around the Minotair unit, as the heating and cooling loads fell within its performance, and it’s been fine, though not without some quirks.

But…

After trying for some time to get a replacement for what seems to be a faulty timer, I stopped getting responses. A couple of months ago I placed an order for filters, the payment went through and…..nothing. Nothing was shipped and emails and phone calls went unanswered. A google search took me to this thread on Reddit, with several posters reporting the same issue, and reporting bigger issues with the company.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildingscience/comments/1hwvovi/anyone_else_having_issues_with_minotair_pentacare/

According to one poster, a former distributor

“The original founder and inventor retired. His right hand man purchased the company from him and immediately ran it into the ground. They laid off 95% of their employees this last summer and the current owner is seeking to sell the company.”

Another recent post suggests the warehouse doors have closed for good.

So the clock appears to have begun ticking on the need to come up with an alternative heating and cooling solution for my house. What’s the current consensus on heating/cooling small tight homes? Casting my mind back the options for small loads seemed to be a central single zone mini split, or a slim duct unit. Is that still the case? The bedrooms would probably get too warm with a single zone minisplit in the living area, they definitely warm up when we sleep. But the loads in the bedrooms would be small, too small for minisplits? Is there a compact air handler I could tie in to my existing duct work? What about slim duct units? Or something completely different? The crawlspace is pretty spacious and open but would be very hard to get ducting up to ceiling level on the main floor. The duct work for the Mintotair runs in drop ceilings and bulkheads to the two bedrooms and open living room/kitchen.