In this article I will show you how a heat pump works. And what types of heat pumps you can install in your home.

In a few minutes I will tell you how air-water and water-water heat pumps work.

And at the end you will see the consumption of the heat pump. Let’s get started!

Where does the heat pump get its energy from?

What if I told you that all the energy you need to heat your house in winter could be found… outside?

And that if you could capture the energy from there and move it into your home, you could heat it using a fraction of the energy of other methods?

Sounds impossible at first, doesn’t it?

If it’s colder outside than inside, what heat do we have to take? But it is very possible.

Thanks to heat pumps we can do that right now.

To choose a heat pump, use this link where you can make your choice.

How does the air-water heat pump work?

The air-water heat pump works by extracting energy from the outside air, which it uses to heat the air in the house.

They can do this even at negative temperatures below 0 degrees, so they can be used without worry throughout the year for heating and domestic hot water.

The compressor of the unit is outside, and inside we have a cylinder in the shape of a refrigerator.

The pipes for heating and hot water start from it.

We will find two types of air-based heat pumps: air-to-air heat pumps and air-to-water heat pumps.

The air-air heat pump is an ordinary split air conditioner, which heats the house by producing warm air.

The air-water heat pump heats radiators, underfloor heating or fan convectors.

The systems are similar and each has advantages and disadvantages.

How does the ground water heat pump work?

The ground-water heat pump and the water-to-water heat pump are also called geothermal heat pumps.

They use the constant temperature of the earth as an exchange medium, instead of using air as air-water heat pumps do.

In some places we have extreme temperatures: from scorching heat in the summer to temperatures of -15 or -25 degrees in the winter.

But a few tens of centimeters underground, the temperature remains relatively constant.

Depending on several parameters, it can be between 7°C and 21°C.

The ground water heat pump helps you take advantage of this by exchanging energy with the ground through a heat exchanger.

Types of geothermal heat pump

There are four main types of geothermal heat pumps.

Three of them are those with horizontal, vertical and lake coils and operate in a closed system.

The fourth type of heat pump is the open system heat pump with water from boreholes.

To choose the best ground water heat pump for you, you must take into account

• the available land and
• the cost of installation works.

1. Ground water heat pump with surface collectors

This type of installation for the geothermal heat pump is more suitable for recently built houses that have enough available land.

It is more difficult to apply to houses in big cities, because the cost of land is high.

It requires the digging of deep trenches in which 2 pipes are usually buried on one side and on the other.

2. Heat pump with vertical ground loop

A heat pump with vertical probes is generally used for larger constructions. Since land is expensive, this method is preferred.

The vertical drillings for the ground water heat pump cause less disturbance in the yard.

Vertical soundings are made about 6 meters apart and at depths between 30 and 120 meters.

In these drilled holes enter a system of 2 pipes that are connected to each other at the bottom with a piece in the shape of a “U” to form a loop with a closed circuit.

Then the pipes continue horizontally from the borehole to the ground water heat pump in the house.

3. Heat pump with collectors in the lake

If you have access to a lake in your yard, this may be the option with the lowest costs for installing the ground-water heat pump.

Pipes are drawn from the house to near the lake, placed in ditches.

Then the pipe is placed in the form of horizontal spirals at the bottom of the lake, to avoid freezing.

The pipes must be placed in water that meets the conditions of minimum volume and depth.

4. Groundwater heat pump

This water-to-water heat pump uses water from boreholes or surface water as an exchange medium that circulates directly through the pump.

After passing through the system, the water returns to the ground in another well or is discharged to the surface.

This option can be applied where there is sufficient water flow and the boreholes meet the minimum necessary conditions.

Is a heat pump efficient?

Under ideal conditions, a heat pump will consume only one fifth of the required energy compared to other sources.

With a coefficient of performance of 2.5 or higher, a heat pump produces more heat for you per unit of energy consumed.

This extraordinary efficiency makes the heat pump the heating technology of the future.

What is a heat pump?

Think of an air conditioner, which we see in many apartments. The thing is that air conditioners are heat pumps.

However, heat pumps are a newer piece of equipment if we are talking about heating our houses.

Now let’s think about the refrigerator and how it works.

For it to work, it has to make the inside cooler than the outside. Harder to do than it seems.

It must remove the thermal energy from the interior.

What we call temperature is actually the concentration of thermal energy in a given space.

If there is a lot of energy in a space, it is hot. If the energy is spread out, it is cooler. Energy always wants to spread.

It moves from areas with high concentration to low concentration.

A refrigeration system collects thermal energy from one place and disperses it in another.

It pumps heat.

The back of the refrigerator heats up when it’s working, and that’s the heat it extracted from the inside being rejected into the surrounding air.

What makes this possible is a refrigerant.

What is refrigerant?

Refrigerants are gaseous chemical compounds with a useful property: easy-to-manipulate boiling point.

For example, R-134A boils at -26 degrees Celsius. Pretty cool, right?

But it is found in liquid state. How can this be?

As with any substance, the boiling point is affected by the ambient pressure.

As with water, if the pressure is lower, it is easier to boil water.

When the refrigerant changes its phase, it absorbs or releases heat.

We use a compressor to create pressure and force the refrigerant to condense, thus releasing the latent heat of evaporation.

Then we force it to evaporate and reabsorb the latent heat.

We do this in different locations and pump the heat over a thermal barrier.

The coefficient of performance COP

The trickiest thing about air to water heat pumps is that as it gets colder outside, their efficiency is reduced.

The coefficient of performance, or COP, describes how much thermal energy the heat pump produces compared to how much it consumes.

A COP of 1 is… well bad. This is only a one to one ratio, just like central heating.

But a COP of 4 is easily achievable in decent conditions.

We get it almost any time it’s a few degrees above freezing.

COP means the coefficient of performance (Coefficient of Performance).

It explains how efficient the heat pump is.

The performance of the pump is based on the external temperature and the temperature of the internal heating system.

Heat pump opinions

A heat pump is the most efficient way to convert electricity into heat, and can help reduce emissions.

Although we can use wind or solar power to heat the house, it requires a lot of power and makes storage difficult to manage.

If everyone had highly efficient heat pumps, energy demand could be reduced by a significant percentage.

And while the air to water heat pump struggles in cold weather, there is an alternative.

Water source heat pump or geothermal

This is a way to achieve an almost constant peak efficiency throughout the year even in cold climates.

After presenting all the heat pump models, it’s time to talk about heat pump consumption. Read the next article about heat pumps on Heating Savvy.