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Imagine a refrigerator that not only kept your food cool when stored but also cooked your food for you. Maybe with a 1940's sounding portmanteau name like a 'Refrig-O-ven' or 'Ovenator'. Sadly, such a miraculous device is only a dream. However, there is an appliance that is almost as innovative. It has been designed to provide both cool and warm air to your Virginia Beach home. It goes by the name “heat pump”. What is the big deal about heat pumps? A heat pump is an air conditioner with a special power: the ability to work in reverse to heat your home. You heard that right, a heat pump cools your Virginia Beach home in the summer and heats it in the winter. But there is another bonus – heat pumps are also very efficient. Why are heat pumps more efficient? Unlike traditional heaters (furnaces and boilers), heat pumps do not burn fuel or use electricity to create heat. Instead, they transfer heat from one location to another. For example, air-source heat pumps pull the heat out of the air and transfer it to the air in your home using a liquid refrigerant. This process is reversed in the Virginia Beach summer. The heat pump removes the heat from your home and transfers it to the air outside, making your home’s air much cooler. There are also geothermal heat pumps available that use the ground or ground-water as their heat exchange. Geothermal heat pumps are even more energy efficient than their air-source counterparts because the ground requires less energy to extract heat. Do heat pumps work when the weather is extremely cold? As previously discussed, air-source heat pumps work by extracting the heat from the outside air and bringing that heat to your home’s air. Even a small amount of heat can be turned into warm air for your home. Air-source heat pumps work well in temperatures as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Geothermal heat pumps, on the other hand, can work in extremely cold situations because they are pulling heat from beneath the earth’s surface, where the temperature remains fairly constant throughout the year. For electric heat pumps, a monovalent configuration is used when the heat pump can meet the heating requirements of the internal environment fully. If the heat pump uses external air as it source, this configuration can be utilized in climate zones where the external temperature rarely falls below 32ºF. Otherwise, a bivalent system must be built, consisting of an auxiliary heating system (i.e. a traditional boiler) which meets heating requirements when the external air temperature falls below 32ºF. Since there are winter days in Virginia Beach with lower temperatures, homeowners with air-source heat pumps may need a backup heater, such as a furnace or boiler. Find out how your home can benefit from a heat pump. Schedule a free in-home estimate online today. ?HVAC Warehouse is Hampton Roads' premier HVAC repair, service and installation company. We serve the cities of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Hampton, and Newport News, Virginia. Let HVAC Warehouse handle your heating and air conditioning system needs. For further information, contact us at (757) 962-5047 or visit http://www.hvacwarehouseonline.com
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