With colder temperatures approaching in the Decatur, Alabama area, you may be wondering about the best ways to heat your home. You may have heard of heat pumps as an option but aren’t sure what they are or how they work. However, heat pumps do more than just heat your home. Despite their name, heat pumps are useful for keeping your home comfortable all year round!
If you’re considering a heat pump for your Decatur area home, continue reading.
Heating and Cooling: How Heat Pumps Work
Heat pumps are a heating and cooling system wrapped into one. They also remove the humidity from your home during the oppressive summer months. You can think of heat pumps as an all-inclusive climate control system for your home, with heating, cooling, and humidity control wrapped into one. They’re efficient and don’t need to burn any fuel to heat and cool your home. They’re best for climates that don’t get too hot or too cold.
Heat pumps just need a little bit of energy to move heat from one area to another. In the colder months, they can “pump” heat from the air or the ground and into your home. During the summer months, heat pumps can be reversed to pull the hot air from your home and put it outside where it belongs.
Heat likes to move from warmer areas to cooler areas when it’s left alone, but heat pumps can reverse this process and take heat from cooler areas, such as the ground, and move it to warmer areas, like your home. (This can also happen in reverse.) Heat pumps can move this air into your home’s ducts similar to how a furnace would.
Air-Source Heat Pumps
Air source heat pumps are the most common. They consist of an outdoor fan that pulls air over refrigerant coils which in turn bring this heat into your home through ducts. An indoor unit blows this heat away from it. This process can be reversed for cooling using a special valve. Most of these systems are split, with an indoor and outdoor part mounted on a wall. The refrigerant in these systems absorb and let go of heat, and these systems are great for taking the humidity out of your home.
Ground Source Heat Pumps
These pumps use pipes buried in the ground to transfer heat to and from your home. They take heat from the ground itself or even groundwater, and then transfer that heat into your home through the water or refrigerant in the pipes. These pipes can circulate in a loop, bringing heat to your home and away again.
Split-Ductless Heat Pumps
These systems don’t use ducts, but rather a single outdoor compressor and condenser and a few indoor units. Heat is moved through refrigerant tubing to and from the indoor units. These systems are best for single rooms or smaller areas, and don’t suffer as much heat loss as duct systems do. They can even be connected to space heaters and water heaters.
Find The Right Heat Pump Today
If you’re considering a heat pump for your Decatur area home and don’t know where to start, we’re here to help.
