Archive for the ‘Heat pumps’ Category

Heat Pump Pros and Cons – Should You Make the Switch?

Thursday, October 19th, 2023

It’s been all over the news lately, both in Washington and even at the national level. Heat pumps have become a central part of the discussion about climate change and energy use. But what are the pros and cons of heat pumps, and will it be an improvement over your current HVAC setup?

The bigger question is, especially for us in the northwest – do you have air conditioning right now? Because if you don’t have it, and if you want it, pay close attention. Heat pumps may be just what you’re looking for.

What Is a Heat Pump?

Heat pumps operate differently from air conditioners and furnaces. They work by moving heat from one place to another, rather than always heating or always cooling your home. In the summer, they move heat from inside your house to the outside. In the winter, they move heat from outside to the inside. Along the way, compressors work to warm or cool the air, depending on how you have it set.

heat pumps move heat from inside or outside the home

The science is a bit complicated, but here’s what you need to know:

With a heat pump, you don’t need separate units for your AC and your heat. The heat pump handles both roles, and is able to heat your home in winter, and cool it in summer.

If you want to know the science, here’s a video explaining how heat pumps work.

Heat Pump Pros and Cons

So, let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of heat pumps so you can make an informed decision about if switching to a heat pump is something you should strongly consider.

5 Advantages of Heat Pumps

The main advantages of a heat pump are:

1. Dual Purpose – Heat and Cool Your Home

As already mentioned, heat pumps will heat your home in winter, and also cool it in the summer. That means you can achieve with one system what you needed both a furnace and an air conditioner to do before. A heat pump system includes an indoor and an outdoor unit to facilitate the movement of air as well as for backup heat.

The simplicity of this approach is obvious. Rather than require two separate systems to operate, you have just one. You still need an air handler to help circulate the air in your home, but you’ll need that regardless. With a heat pump, you no longer need a separate AC unit.

2. Heat Pumps Are More Energy Efficient

Heat pumps use less energy than HVAC systems that generate their own heat – and that includes natural gas. To heat your home, the heat pump takes the heat from the air outside and moves it inside. To cool in the summer, it does the opposite – remove heat from the home and send it outside.

heat pumps are more energy efficient than traditional heating like this radiator — An old-school radiator is much less energy efficient than a heat pump.

This method is far more efficient and better for the environment. Other systems have to actually heat up the air and blow it into your house. But the heat pump is just taking heat already present outside, and moving it into your home.

3. Heat Pumps Save Money Over Time

Because heat pumps use less energy to operate, your energy bills will be substantially lower in winter once you switch to a heat pump. The longer it operates, the more money you’ll save.

Just remember to keep changing out your air filters and perform regular maintenance, just like you need to with a furnace or an air conditioner. Clogged air filters make the system work harder, use more energy, and drive up your costs needlessly. This is true for any HVAC system. If you don’t change your air filters consistently – at least once per year – even the most energy efficient HVAC system loses its lofty environmental benefits.

4. Heat Pumps Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Regardless of where you stand on the politics of it, the facts are pretty straightforward. Using a heat pump doesn’t just improve your energy efficiency. It also reduces your carbon footprint. This is especially true if you have gas heat, because burning gas produces carbon dioxide emissions, though the refrigerant used as part of the heat pump system also affects the environment.

The heat pump requires electricity to operate, so however you are getting your electricity determines the degree of your emissions. But because they are more energy efficient, a heat pump produces less pollution than other forms of heating and cooling your home.

5. Heat Pumps May Reduce Humidity in Your Home

Because heat pumps move air, they can help moderate the humidity in your home. In the summer, they remove humidity by transferring air to the outside. In the winter, they can help avoid drying out the air the way traditional furnaces can, because they bring in air from the outside.

You may still need humidification in either scenario though. It depends on the specifics of your home.

3 Heat Pump Disadvantages

There are a few disadvantages of heat pumps as well. Here are the main ones.

1. More Costly Installation

On the front end, you will pay a bit more for a heat pump. Over time, you save money, but at first, it’s a higher cost.

Depending on the specifics of your home, you may be able to save money using a mini-split, which requires no duct work. For older homes where installing ducts would be very expensive, you can save money using a mini-split. Mini-splits use refrigerant lines instead of ducts, and still allow you to heat and cool individual rooms. In some homes, the costs of both these options will be similar.

2. Less Effective in Extreme Cold

This is the primary disadvantage of heat pumps.

When there’s hardly any heat outside, the heat pump has to work very hard to heat your home. In these conditions, your efficiency declines and your costs increase.

heat pumps take more time to warm up a very cold home

If you have natural gas right now, one way around this is to keep your natural gas as a backup system to use when temperatures drop into the mid-30s. The newer heat pump systems will detect the outdoor temperature, and automatically switch to the backup heating system.

The other key is to not wait until your home is super cold before turning on the heat pump. It’s much more difficult for heat pumps to heat up freezing homes than to maintain warmed ones.

But, all that said, heat pumps are not great options in locations that have long and very cold winters. Here in the Pacific Northwest, heat pumps are a good option because we don’t have very many freezing days. And if you use the backup approach, heat pumps can work just about anywhere.

3. Heat Pumps Have Longer Runtime

As you might have inferred from the previous item, heat pumps tend to heat up the home slower than traditional furnaces, and it takes them longer to cool it in the summer. For this reason, they are on for longer. If the sound of the heat pump running bothers you, this might be a drawback. And while mini-splits can in some cases be quieter, this isn’t always the case.

The key to remember is, as mentioned earlier, the system works much harder if you wait to turn it on. This is true in the summer too. If you wait until your home is 85 degrees before turning on the system, the heat pump will have to work much harder to cool the home, compared to if you had turned it on when you hit 75 degrees.

But either way, the system will be on for longer. The runtime is a pretty minor disadvantage, but if noise bothers you, it’s something to be aware of.

Want to Service Your Heat Pump?

If you already have a heat pump but haven’t had it serviced in (gulp) years, get on our schedule and we’ll come out and perform some much-needed maintenance.

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Why Get a Heat Pump in the Pacific Northwest?

Thursday, February 20th, 2020

5 Reasons to Consider Switching to a Heat Pump or Mini-Split

Heating and cooling your home in the Pacific Northwest can be achieved through several different methods.

more efficient energy is one reason why to get a heat pump in the puget sound — Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay

There are other more specialized options, but your three main choices for heat are natural gas, electric heat, or a heat pump. Each has their various pros and cons, which we may explore in a different article later.

For today, let’s explore the points in favor of a heat pump. First – what is a heat pump?

What Is a Heat Pump and How Does It Work?

A heat pump works much like a refrigerator, using refrigerant to remove heat from one area and move it to another. One of its two main defining characteristics is that it doesn’t generate heat through a heating coil or the burning of some type of fuel. Rather, it compresses and moves warm air absorbed by the refrigerant from the cooler place and transfers that heat to the warmer place.

Your refrigerator works in much the same way. It continually removes the heat from the items you put in your fridge (the cooler place) and transfers it through the refrigerant into the room. That’s why you can feel warm air coming out the bottom of your fridge.

Likewise, a heat pump takes warmth from the air from outside your home in the winter and moves it into your house with the help of an air handler.

A heat pump’s other defining characteristic is that it can go both ways. Unlike a furnace or an air conditioner which can only heat or cool your house, a heat pump can do both.

In the summer, it takes the warmer air from inside your home, and blows it outside, thus cooling the interior. In the fridge comparison, with a heat pump in the summer your house is the refrigerator. In the winter, the rest of the world is the refrigerator.

The primary reason most people give for not choosing a heat pump is that they don’t work as well in extreme temperatures. Especially in very cold (sub-freezing) temperatures, the heat pump struggles to get enough warm air from the outside to pump into your home.

But here in the Puget Sound area, we don’t generally have temperatures that low, so this is rarely an issue.

5 Reasons to Choose a Heat Pump

1. Uses Less Energy – Saves You $$$

saving on heating costs is one reason why to get a heat pump — Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay

As you may have already inferred, because the heat pump does not have to generate its own heat, it uses far less energy than a gas or electric furnace. All the heat pump has to do is power the compressor, the fans, and other components to facilitate the transfer of the warm air.

This makes a heat pump much more energy efficient than your other options.

Measurements and studies vary, but your heat pump will probably save you between a third and a half of your home heating energy costs. Other factors can affect this, such as how well insulated and sealed your house is, the size of the house, your preferred temperatures in summer and winter, and other variables.

To produce 1 million BTUs, according our data, heat pumps cost far less than the other options.

2. Helps the Environment in Two Ways

First, because you’re not burning fuel to produce energy, a heat pump produces far fewer emissions than something like a gas or oil furnace.

If you’re looking for a way to play your part in curbing climate change by minimizing your carbon footprint, switching from a fossil fuel burning furnace to a heat pump is one of the most high-impact decisions you can make.

According to one source, a heat pump can offset energy produced by burning up to 300 gallons of oil.

Second, because heat pumps use less energy, you will also be drawing less power from your utility to operate the appliance. It runs less often than a furnace, and requires less energy to do so.

So with a heat pump, you are tapping the grid less often, reducing your overall energy usage. The Energy Department estimates that a heat pump can reduce your electricity use by about 50%.

3. Mini Split Style Heat Pumps Do Not Require a Duct System

If your home doesn’t have ducts, that’s not a problem. Heat pumps can adapt to this using a ‘mini-split’ approach. This essentially means the outdoor condenser unit can be hooked up to wall units all around your home.

However, traditional heat pumps require ducting because this is how the air handler moves the heat throughout the home.

4. Heats Your Home Faster

Because the ductless heat pump is just blowing warm air into one room rather than the entire house, individual controls for each room helps keep the comfort level more consistent. With a furnace, the warmest air is the air closest to where it was produced. As it gets farther from the unit, it cools more. So the furnace has to work harder to heat the rooms farthest from it.

The exception to this is if you are demanding large temperature swings from your system. Heat pumps are designed to keep consistent temperatures, not to go back and forth between 55 and 70 every day. If you try to do that, a traditional heat pump will switch to the furnace to heat the house. On the other hand, a mini split or ductless system allows you to heat or cool specific rooms.

5. Technology Continues to Advance

Today’s heat pumps work substantially better than ones produced 30 – 40 years ago.

Now, furnaces and air handlers use variable speed or dual speed motors. This keeps air moving at a consistent speed, which minimizes cool drafts, increases your savings, and make less noise.

Heat pump compressors have also seen vast improvement in their technology. Originally, units only had piston compressors. Then came scroll technology. Now, they are inverter driven, which varies the capacity of the unit and makes it much more efficient and quiet.

Trane and American Standard have worked with Seattle code compliance officials to achieve sound levels once thought impossible. We have units that will keep the decibel levels at 52 or less at full capacity and then lower that to under 40 after 10pm. Seattle and Kirkland have the most strict noise ordinances in the area, which is a huge problem with buildings now being built so close to each other.

Why Choose a Heat Pump?

To be clear – B&C Comfort does not endorse any one heating or cooling solution. All solutions have their pros and cons. What we care about most is that you are happy and comfortable in your home, no matter the season.

If you’re drawn to the idea of a heat pump but are concerned about getting a return on your investment, the question we usually ask is, how long do you plan to live in your home? It generally takes about five years to pay yourself back for switching to a heat pump as opposed to adding a separate air conditioner, assuming you already have a furnace.

More and more people are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprints and be more energy efficient. Heat pumps in the Puget Sound region are one very impactful way to achieve that.

B&C Comfort no longer installs heat pumps, but we do still perform service and repair work.