What is an Air Source Heat Pump? and what does an Air to Air heat pump mean?
We have talked about how the heat pump works and by now you understand (much like an air conditioner) it transfers the heat from one place to another. The only difference between an air conditioner and a heat pump is that the it can reverse the cycle of the refrigerant using the reversing valve. This means that the it can cool or heat your house.
But where is that heat that it moves? The heat is in the AIR of your home.
So basically an Air To Air heat pump or Air source heat pump means it absorbs the heat from the air inside your home and rejects it the air outside your home. In the summer time it moves heat from inside- that’s why when you put your hand to feel the air coming out of your outdoor unit it feels hot.
Got the picture? The Air to Air Heat Pump or Air Source Heat Pump transfers the heat back and forth between the home air and the outside air…
Having said that, I bet you have some questions so I
will try to answer them:
First Question - In the winter time the air is cold outside
so how can we absorb heat from a very cold air already?
In
order to understand how this works fully please review the page on the theory behind
the heat pump and the air conditioner (this page explains everything, I
promise)
. But a quick general
answer is that even though the air is cold it still has some heat so if the Air to Air heat pump
absorb even a little bit of heat from a huge amount of air, it adds up so it can heat up your
home.
But in order to do that the refrigerant going to the outdoor coil has to be colder than the outside air for it to absorb any heat. That requirement creates a limit on how low the outdoor temperature can be for the heat pump to work. As a rule of thumb if the outdoor temperature is any colder than 400 F, the Air to Air heat pump will be very inefficient and will fail to give enough heat for comfort.
The reason is that the refrigerant going to the outdoor is colder than the outside air by about 20 degrees. That’s means the coil temperature will go below 32 degrees- the freezing point of water. In a humid climate or rainy weather the outdoor coil will freeze over.
Yup that’s ICE, frozen over an outdoor Air source heat pump coil, and that ice
prevents the coil from working.
That’s why all Air to Air heat pumps have what we call it a de-ice or defrost cycle
to melt iced up coil. So if you
live in a very cold climate like
Most heat pumps have an electric coil heater to heat up your home when it is too cold for the normal Air to Air heat pump cycle. We call this the Emergency Heater. Some units also have a similar Auxiliary Heater. These units will still provide enough heat for comfort when it is below 40 degrees outside. However these electric resistance heaters are very inefficient and expensive to run (if they were cheaper you wouldn’t have a heat pump in the first place). So you have effectively lost the energy saving benefits of a heat pump if the weather is below 40F for extended periods of time.
Please view the electric coil heater diagram:
Second
Question- How does can a or Air source heat pump (or an air conditioner
for that matter) reject heat from the inside of the house to the
outdoors when it is already so hot outside?
Well
the answer is almost the same. You
still need the refrigerant to have higher temperature than the outside
air, for it to be able to move or reject heat.
So there is still a practical limit for the outdoor
temperature to be. But this
limit is about 120F and it is very unusual to find 120F outdoor
temperature anywhere.
Don’t
get me wrong the hotter the outside temperature the harder your heat
pump or your air-conditioner will have to work to keep up and the more
hurt you will feel in your wallet when you pay your electric bill. It helps when you choose the
location of the outdoor equipment to make sure there is no additional
heat load on it- for example, don’t put it on a flat black tar roof. Put it in the shade with sufficient
ventilation if you live in a very hot area and make sure the
temperature where you locate the equipment is not more than the ambient
outdoor temperature.
Conclusion:
·
Air
to Air Heat Pumps can be very efficient and cost effective systems. Since they are by far the most
efficient electric HVAC systems they are especially cost effective if
you live in area where the price of natural gas is more expensive than
the electricity.
·
They
also make sense if you live in a rural area where it is difficult to
get natural gas or propane.
·
In
a cold climate areas Air to Air Heat Pump or Air source Heat Pump will
have a very hard time & sometimes may fail when the outdoor
temperature falls below 35o F.
·
The
Heat
Pump thermostat is completely different from and more complex
than the air conditioner thermostat, because the Heat Pump thermostat
controls the heat pump itself as well as the Auxiliary Heater, the
Emergency Heater and the Reversing Valve.
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