Today’s air-conditioning and heating systems are light-years ahead of units produced a generation ago, and leading the advancement is the amazing heat pump. The largest energy user in your home has seen significant technological advancements that can save you money. Here’s why you should consider a heat pump system for your newly constructed home or when you’re retrofitting an existing home.
Traditional versus heat pump systems
Old-style heaters generate heat from gas jets that burn inside a chamber called a heat exchanger; a blower then circulates air over the metal chamber, transferring the heat into the home. Electric heaters use heated coils instead of gas jets. A third, more antiquated method uses gas or electricity to heat water in a boiler, sending hot steam to radiators located throughout the house.
Air-conditioning works by extracting hot air from inside the house, processing it through a compressor-condenser system, then circulating it over coils filled with refrigerant, where it is cooled and blown throughout the home.
Engineers realized that the same process that converts hot air to cool air in the air-conditioning system could be operated in reverse to extract residual heat from cold outdoor air in winter and transfer it into the home. Now, instead of a house having separate systems, one for heating and one for cooling, the same system handles both.
Leveraging energy usage
Because a heat pump handles both heating and cooling and does not generate heat via burners or coils, it is vastly more energy-efficient than traditional systems. The heat pump generates heat from thin air, not by burning gas or oil or using electrical heating coils.
How efficient are heat pumps? Even the best traditional HVAC system operates at a peak efficiency of 95%, meaning that for every 100 energy units expended, you get 95 units of heat or cooling back in the treated air. Because a heat pump reverses the temperature of existing air, it achieves an astounding 300%-500% efficiency. A heat pump delivers three to five times as much energy as it consumes.
How much do heat pumps cost?
Installing a system in new home construction is comparable to a traditional system, costing $4,000 to $15,000, depending on the area to be treated. Some high-tech systems can run up to $25,000.
The cost of retrofitting an existing home may be higher due to labor to remove the existing system and install the new heat pump.
Related – Home Heating Systems: What Every Homeowner Needs to Know
