Heat Pumps Made Simple

Heat Pumps are being used widely now to provide heat to buildings and swimming pools in a cost effective manner. A heat pump in essence behaves like air conditioning but in the opposite direction. Rather than cooling down your house and getting rid of excess heat via a radiator and external fan unit, a heat pump cools down the external air and pump that heat directly into your house/pool. The physics of energy conservation mean that you end up with more energy than you pay for because heat is transferred from the ground or air into your house together with the energy you use to drive the pump in the first place.

This means that if you compare the unit cost of heat produced by a heat pump with the unit cost of heat provided directly by an electric heater, you can usually achieve improvements of 300 percent or even more. For space heating then, heat pumps thus offer a cost effective solution which means that your overall energy costs can be cut with much of the heat energy you use actually being provided by the surrounding outside air or geothermally.

There are 2 chief types of heat pump: ground source heat pumps which extract geothermal warmth from the ground via a network of underground pipes, and ASHP or air source heat pumps which get heat from air that is fanned over a heat exchanger with a low noise. Air source heat pumps are usually easy to install and nowadays are very quietquite quiet}. ASHP pumps operate even down to below zero temperatures.

GSHP or ground source heat pumps rely on a series of underground pipes which contain a pumped working fluid that enters the pipe cold, having given up its heat to your home or pool, and then warms up to the ground temperature as it flows through the system. Once warm again it enters the heat pump and gives off its heat again to repeat the cycle.

Ground source heat pumps are more difficult to install than air source heat pumps but have the advantage of working at slightly higher efficiencies during cold weather. The underground pipes can be laid horizontally or vertically via a deep bore and essentially take out goe thermal heat from the ground. This energy is always present at a low level but when combined with efficient heat pump technology it can be extracted and used to heat houses or pools highly effectively.

When choosing a heat pump you also need to select a good quality heat pump installer and it pays to use a firm that has a lot of experience and is professionally qualified.