Heat Pumps Made Simple

Heat Pumps are being used extensively to provide heat to buildings and pools in a cost effective way. A heat pump in essence behaves like air conditioning but in reverse. Rather than cooling down your house and shedding excess heat via a radiator and external fan unit, a heat pump will cool down the outside air and pump that heat directly into your house or pool. The laws of energy conservation mean that you get out more energy than you pay for because heat is pumped from the ground or air) into your house together with the energy you use to operate the pump in the first place.

This means that if you compare the cost of energy produced by a heat pump with the unit cost of heat provided directly by an electric heater, you can usually get improvements of 300 percent or more. For space heating then, heat pumps offer a highly 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 ground or by the outside air.

There are 2 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 fan. ASHP pumps are usually the easier to install and currently are very quietquite quiet}. They operate even down to sub-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 or pool, and then warms up to the ground temperature as it circulates. Once warm again it is made to give up its heat via the heat pump compressor which operates just like a fridge.

Ground source heat pumps are less easy to install than air source heat pumps but have the advantage of operating at slightly higher efficiency during very cold weather. The underground pipes can be laid horizontally or vertically via a deep bore and essentially take out 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 very efficiently.

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.