Pasadena HVAC: Are There Benefits to Choosing a Heat Pump Over an Air Conditioner?

Pasadena HVAC: Are There Benefits to Choosing a Heat Pump Over an Air Conditioner?

In this mild climate, the benefits of choosing a heat pump instead of a central air conditioner are many. Both heat pumps and air conditioners cool the air, but the heat pump can do double duty as a heating system in the winter.

Cooling systems work by absorbing the heat inside homes using chilled refrigerant that flows through the evaporator coil inside the air handler. As air blows over the coil, the refrigerant absorbs it and transports it outdoors, where the outdoor condenser then dissipates it.

The Heat Pump Difference

The reversing valve in a heat pump allows this appliance to switch the refrigerant flow to heat your home. It does so by extracting the heat from the outdoor air in the winter and sending it into the indoor evaporator coil, where it gives up its heat to warm your home.

Distinct Advantages 

A heat pump is a good choice if both your cooling and heating systems need replacement. Choosing a heat pump over an air conditioner makes sense if you don’t have access to natural gas lines on your property since it moves heat from the outdoors instead of creating it with fuel.

Alternatively, heating your home with an electric furnace or an electric radiant heating system is about three times as expensive compared to using a heat pump. Engineers measure the efficiency of electric heating appliances by their coefficient of performance (COP). Higher COP ratings indicate better efficiency. A heat pump has a COP of 3 or higher, while electric resistance heating has a COP of 1.

Another significant benefit of choosing a heat pump is that you can use it in the summer to heat your home’s water, a swimming pool or a spa. A desuperheater uses the wasted heat from the heat pump to efficiently heat water three or more times better than an electric water heater.

For more information about the benefits of choosing a heat pump, contact Air-Tro, Inc. We’ve proudly provided HVAC services for Southern California homeowners since 1969.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in the greater Pasadena, California area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).

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