Heat Pumps Made Simple

Heat Pumps are being used extensively to heat buildings as well as swimming pools in a cost effective way. A heat pump essentially behaves like AC but in the opposite direction. Instead of cooling down your house and shedding excess heat via a radiator and external fan unit, a heat pump cools down the outside air and pump that heat directly into your swimming pool or house. 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 run the pump in the first place.

This means that if you compare the unit cost of heat provided by a heat pump with the unit cost of heat provided by an electric heater, you can often get improvements of 300% or more. For space heating then, heat pumps offer a highly cost effective solution which means that your overall energy costs can be reduced with much of the heat energy you use actually being provided by the ground or by the outside air.

There are two chief types of heat pump: ground source heat pumps which extract warmth from the ground via a network of underground pipes, and air source heat pumps which get heat from air that is fanned over a heat exchanger with a low noise. Air source heat pumps are usually the easier to install and currently are quite quiet}. They operate even down to sub-zero temperatures.

Ground source heat pumps rely on a series of underground pipes which contain a pumped liquid that enters the pipes cold, having given up its heat to your home or pool, and then warms up to the surrounding ground temperature as it flows through the system. 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 more difficult to install than air source heat pumps but have the advantage of working at slightly higher efficiency during cold weather. The underground pipe network can be laid horizontally or vertically via a deep bore and essentially take out goe thermal 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 selecting 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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