What Is A Heat Pump?

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What Is A Heat Pump?

When you are building a brand new home, you have many choices available to you. From picking out the type of siding, the types of shingles for your roof, or whether the floors are going to be carpet or wood, the choices are endless. When it comes to getting the right heating and cooling system, you also have some choices available. While many homeowners are pretty familiar with the terms air conditioner and electric or gas furnace, not as many of them are as familiar with the term heat pump. If you are in this situation and are trying to figure out which would be the best heating & cooling method for your home, our team can help! This article takes a closer look at the often misunderstood modern-day marvel that is the heat pump.

What Is a Heat Pump?

A heat pump is a modern appliance that provides both heating and cooling to your home. When you want your home to be colder, the heat pump extracts the heat from the air and redirects it outside. When you want your home to be hotter, it takes air from the outside, moving it through the ventilation system, resulting in high-energy which heats the air.

Heat pumps are named due to their ability to pump warm air either to the outside of the home or the inside. This heating and cooling option is often very popular with consumers who are interested in creating a more energy-efficient home and having more versatility in their home’s temperature. Since it just moves heat instead of creating it, your heat pump will use up less energy than your traditional HVAC unit.

How It Works:

To get a better understanding of how a heat pump would work in your home, let’s look at the two modes, cooling and heating.

Cooling

Traditional air conditioners are notorious for producing cold air by conditioning the air that is either outside or inside of the home, depending on the type of unit you have. Heat pumps rely on absorbing the heat of the air inside the home. This heat is then passed on outside, while the remaining air is treated with refrigerant, which circulates between the air handler and the outdoor compressor.

Heating

A diagram of a heat pump
heat pump works by extracting energy stored in the ground or water and converts this in a building’s heating system. Heat pumps work on the same principles as a fridge, cooling System, or air conditioning.

When you want your heat pump to provide your home with warm air, the reverse valve kicks in. This valve reverses the order from which the air is circulated throughout your home. So instead of kicking air out, it brings it in from the inside. The outside air is run through the compressor, where it encounters refrigerant. The refrigerant pulls the hot air out of the cold, causing it to boil until it becomes a vapor. This hot vapor is then circulated to the inside coil, where it releases its heat into the home, cooling the refrigerant down until it becomes a liquid again, then being pushed through the heat pump to start the process all over again.

The Two Different Types of Heat Pumps

There are two different types of heat pumps on the market. There is the air-source heat pump and the ground-source heat pump.

Air-Source Heat Pumps

This type is extremely popular with residential consumers as they transfer heat between the air inside your home and the air outside. These units are often not as expensive to install as the ground-source unit.

Ground-Source Heat Pumps

Ground-source heat pumps trade heat between the air inside your home and the ground outside. While these pumps are more on the expensive side installation wise, they do boast higher energy efficiency and consistency, as the ground doesn’t have wide ranges in temperature changes as the air does. This allows you to operate your pump at a lower operating cost than the air-source pump.

Do Heat Pumps Work Well in Texas?

Heat pumps boast incredible reliability in Texas and that is thanks to the Texas Heat. Unlike colder climates, such as you would encounter on the east coast, Texas is known for its moderate temperatures during the winter. Thanks to this, heat pumps in Texas work with incredible efficiency and consistency, not failing to provide your home with the air you need to be comfortable.

Are you already sold on the low-operation cost, energy efficiency, and reliability of the heat pump? Comfort Masters Heating & Air Conditioning can help you find your perfect heat-pump for your home. Whether you are looking for a ground unit or an air unit, we got solutions to ensure that you find the perfect one to keep your home at the perfect temperature. Contact our team today for more information or for an estimate on what your heat pump installation will cost you.

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