Cooling can get expensive in LA, and chilly nights over the winter months make a heating system useful even when for most of the year it might sit dormant. But an air source heat pump offers a convenient solution, combining high-efficiency heating and cooling into a single HVAC appliance.
Heat pumps are popular in hot and temperate climate, though they’ve been slow to catch on in much of the United States because their effectiveness drops off as the temperature approaches freezing. (Though, combining heat pumps with secondary sources of heat in a dual fuel system offers an efficient heating option for those climates.) They’re able to deliver efficiency ratings of 300-400 percent, removing (or adding) three to four times as much heat energy as they consume in electricity, because they simply transfer heat energy from one area to another.
An air source heat pump in cooling mode is able to remove heat from your indoor air as the air circulates through your home, and discharge that heat into the outside world. When the nights get chilly, it simply reverses its operation and draws heat from the outdoors into your home. It’s able to warm your home past the temperature of the outside air because it’s not drawing the air, only the heat energy from it – and all substances, even ones we find cool to the touch, contain heat energy above a temperature of absolute zero, or -459.67 degrees F. (The reason heat pumps lose effectiveness around 32-40 degrees F is because, while heat energy is still present in air at the freezing point, the mechanical system of the heat pump has trouble drawing enough heat in order to raise the home from an ambient temperature to a livable one.)
Air source heat pumps are significantly more efficient than furnaces, and give efficient air conditioners a run for their money. To learn more about how to simplify your HVAC system using an air source heat pump, visit us at Around the Clock Air Conditioning & Heating.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Los Angeles, North Hollywood and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about air source heat pumps and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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