Heat Pumps Made Simple

Heat Pumps are being used widely now to provide heat to buildings and swimming pools in a cost effective way. A heat pump in essence acts like air conditioning but in the opposite direction. Instead of cooling down your house and shedding excess heat to a radiator and fan unit outside, a heat pump will cool down the external air and pump that heat directly into your house or pool. The laws of energy conservation mean that you end up with more energy than you pay for because heat energy is transferred from the ground or air into your house together with the energy you use to drive the pump in the first place.

What this means is that if you compare the unit cost of energy provided by a heat pump with the unit cost of heat provided by a standard electric heater, you can often achieve improvements of 300% or even more. For space heating then, heat pumps offer a cost effective solution which means that your overall energy costs can be cut with much of the heat you use actually being provided by the ground or by the outside air.

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

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, and then warms up to the surrounding 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 less easy 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 extract geothermal heat from the ground. This energy is always present at a low level but in conjunction 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 is professional qualified.

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