Learn about Air to Air Heat Pump

Air to air heat pumps use the same principle as refrigerators to heat and cool your house by exchanging the heat between indoor and outdoor air. A standard air to air heat pump has two main components - an outdoor compressor/condenser and an indoor evaporator/air handling unit.</p><p>All air has some heat energy in it, and a heat pump can extract heat from the air even at low temperatures. They use the same principles as a refrigerator: a refrigerant fluid absorbs heat from the air and undergoes compression to increase its temperature. The heated fluid then transfers its heat into your home. The opposite takes place in summer when the heat inside your home is transferred outside to cool your home.

Heat pumps use electricity, but they can reduce your electricity use for heating by approximately 50% compared to furnaces and electric baseboard heaters.

Ducted or ductless? If your home has no ductwork, look for mini-split heat pumps which are designed for homes without ducts. If you have an existing forced-air furnace, then a heat pump can take advantage of the existing ductwork to distribute heat through your home.

Be sure to choose ENERGY STAR® compliant models and consider these three performance ratings (the higher, the better):

• COP (Coefficient Of Performance)
• HSPF (Heating Season Performance Factor)
• SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio - more related to cooling)

Work with a reliable and certified heat pump contractor to ensure you have the right size of heat pump and that it is installed correctly. Be very careful that only a licensed refrigeration technician installs, maintains, and later decommissions your heat pump. Current heat pumps contain a refrigerant gas that should not be allowed to escape to the atmosphere when servicing the equipment because it contributes to climate change.

An air-to-air heat pump can reduce fuel or energy consumed for home heating significantly. Even more so if you live in a relatively moderate climate like the northern US or southern Canada, and use electricity or oil for heating.

The first working heat pump was invented by an Austrian, Peter von Rittinger, in 1855, to evaporate water from salt brine to make salt.