Heat Pumps: What's The Big Mystery?

Why do most people seem so confused and bewildered about heat pumps? They have been around now for at least several decades, yet the technology behind them seems to mystify so many people. So, I decided to research this subject for myself in order to tell you how - in layman's terms - these things work

First of all: The name - heat pump. Why are these things called a heat pump? What are they pumping anyway? The word 'pump' suggests that heat pumps are moving something, and indeed they are: heat, or more accurately, heat energy. Here's an illustration of heat 'moving.' Go and get a cup of coffee from your favorite coffee shop. It's piping hot when you get it (hopefully). But let it sit 15 or 20 minutes - then take a sip. What has happened? It 'cooled off,' right? Well, what really happened? Actually the heat energy present in the hot liquid escaped and was transferred into the air surrounding the cup. Heat was 'moved' from one location to another. Simple, huh?

Perhaps you never learned this in school, but even on the very coldest of winter days, there is heat energy present in the air. The same thing is true for the ground we walk on: it has the capacity to hold a lot of heat energy. Heat pumps simply move, or 'pump' heat energy from one place to another. When you have a hot room you can use a heat pump device to make it cooler, using this basic fact of physics.

So let's see a heat pump at work: you have a heat pump installed. It's summertime, and your room is hot. A heat pump will circulate the air in the room, draw off some of the heat energy and transfer that heat energy outside. Because heat energy has been taken out from the room, you feel cooler.

What do you do in the winter? Simply reverse the whole process: use your heat pump to move heat energy from the outside to your rooms inside (even when it's cold outside there's heat energy there, remember?). You will feel warmer in that room as a result.

It is very important to remember that heat pumps do not actually burn fuel to add heat to any room - they simply move it from another location. This means that heat pumps are not furnaces - furnaces burn fuels, heat pumps do not. A heat pump is an energy-transferor, not a producer of energy.

Some heat pumps are called air-source heat pumps, so called because they use the air (surrounding the unit or from a separate unit outdoors) as their source for heating and cooling.

Other types of heat pumps include Geothermal heat pumps. These units use the ground - they draw heat from it to warm, and expel heat into it to cool. They make use of a complex system of coils that are buried into the ground. What makes it possible for these units to work is that below a certain depth, the temperature of the ground actually does not change very much from season-to-season.

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About the author: Jen Garvin discusses home improvement and Heat Pump Installation Read about the details of heat pump prices by visiting her website.
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