Like air conditioning cooling systems, air-source heat pumps transfer refrigerant that carries heat energy from one air source to another, such as the air inside and outside the home. If you’re shopping for a new cooling system for your Dayton-area home, consider the advantages a new heat pump system offers over the conventional A/C.
Heat Pumps Cool, Too
An air-source heat pump delivers home cooling in the same manner as a central A/C. Following are the basic principles:
- Refrigerant is pumped into the indoor evaporator coil where the liquid refrigerant turns into a gaseous state as it extracts heat energy from the indoor air. This cools the airflow.
- The refrigerant is pumped to the outside compressor and condenser where, moving through a condensing coil, it releases that heat energy into the air before converting back to a cooler liquid.
- A compressor helps along this process, and then pumps the refrigerant back into the house where the process repeats itself.
The process of transferring heat energy is the same for cooling and heating cycles; it’s only the role of the coils that is reversed. Heat is extracted from the outside air and brought inside, where the indoor coil releases it, heating the air. Fittingly, a reversing valve is the component responsible for allowing heat pumps to both cool and heat a home.
Home Cooling: Heat Pump or A/C?
There are three nice advantages to installing a heat pump for your system replacement, upgrade or new home design.
- A heat pump can be installed with your furnace as a dual-fuel heating system, offering the most efficient energy source for home heating based on energy prices.
- Heat pumps offer automatic switch-over between cooling and heating modes.
- A heat pump cools and dehumidifies just like a central A/C, and may be fitted with a desuperheater for exceptionally efficient water heating.
The drawback of a heat pump installation is that it typically costs more than a central A/C. Ask your HVAC contractor to perform a cost analysis, which estimates how many seasons of home heating savings and water-heating savings it takes the heat pump to earn back the higher sticker price (After that, it’s energy savings in your pocketbook.).
For more details about the advantages of heat pumps in your Dayton-area home, contact Ace Hardware Home Services, Inc.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Dayton, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
