Despite its benefits, most people don’t understand what a heat pump is and what it does. This is understandable because heat pumps have not yet become common. If you are not familiar with heat pumps, the sections below will help you negotiate your way around the various heat pumps that are available in the market.
What is a Heat Pump?
Simply put, heat pumps extract heat where there seems to be no heat. While heat pumps sound magical, they are actually straightforward and very clever.
Heat pumps come in different types including; air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, and water source heat pumps.
Air source heat pumps are the most common because they are less costly and easier to install compared to the other heat pumps. Initially, ground source heat pumps had dominated the market up to 2010. Water source heat pumps are the least common but this is not to say that they don’t have their benefits
To explain exactly what a heat pump is, we will use an air source heat pump because the principle is similar for all heat pumps. You can understand how heat pumps work if you know how a fridge functions.
While this might surprise you, your fridge is actually a heat pump. This is because it works by taking heat from the air inside it and transferring it to the air that is at its rear through the little black grill attached to it.
Now that you know how a fridge works, visualize the underfloor heating system or radiators in your home as the black grill at the back of your fridge and the air inside the fridge as the air outside your home. They work in a similar manner.
Generally, all heat pumps utilize a coil of refrigerant that helps to take the heat out. Usually, the refrigerant solution begins at low pressure, where the heat travels from warm areas to cold areas. The heat taken to the cold refrigerant solution warms up and then evaporates to form gas.
Important Considerations
It is important that you understand the efficiency of the heat pump that you have in mind before approaching suppliers. This is because different heat pumps have different efficiencies. However, the efficiency of a heat pump is determined by your home’s requirements for hot water and the site’s conditions.
Once you determine the heat pump that best suits your home, you should find out the various problems that you are likely to encounter with that type of heat pump.
