A Guide To Heat Pump Anatomy And Efficiency

Despite their name, heat pumps work to both heat and cool your home. Basically, they do it by transferring heat into and out of your house, depending on the season. That’s why they’re more efficient than many other types of HVAC equipment — they move heat that’s already present rather than burning fuel or consuming electricity to create “new” heat.

Air-source heat pumps extract heat from the air. Ground-source heat pumps extract heat from the earth. While ground-source pumps work very well in some situations, air-source pumps are more common.

Here are some key points of heat pump anatomy. Understanding how an air-source heat pump works can help you decide whether it’s a good solution for you — or help you keep your existing heat-pump system running efficiently:

• Heat pump systems are made up of a compressor and two copper coils. One coil is outdoors, one is indoors, and the compressor sits between them.
• Refrigerant flows through the entire system, absorbing and releasing heat as it moves in and out of your home, between the coils.
• When you need to cool your home, for example, refrigerant moving through the indoor coil is evaporated at a low pressure. That process pulls heat from the air in your home. The compressor between the two coils condenses the refrigerant back into a liquid. The heat that results is sent expelled into the outdoor air as the refrigerant flows through the outdoor coil.

It’s important to understand that heat pumps lose efficiency when the temperature falls much below 40 degrees. At that point, backup electric heat kicks in. However, heat pumps remain energy-efficient home-comfort solutions in mild climates likes ours in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

Questions about heat pump anatomy? Contact the experts at Simpson Air. We welcome questions about HVAC systems’ operations, and we’re always glad to help our neighbors boost their homes’ energy efficiency.

Efficiency image via Shutterstock.