Types of heat pumps – what should you know about heat pumps?

Ecological and renewable heat sources are one of the major challenges that arise today when designing and installing equipment belonging to the HVAC group. Heat pumps are one of those that meet the high expectations. Before installing them, it is worth getting acquainted with their most important features and types in order to choose the one that will best meet your expectations.

What is a heat pump?

Unlike many other devices, a heat pump is considered a renewable heat source. The device owes this positive opinion to the possibility of extracting heat from the environment to deliver it to the building.

It works by forcing the heat to circulate in a direction inconsistent with natural behavior. This means flow from a cold to a warm area. Of course, for this purpose it is necessary to supply energy to the pump itself: mechanical or thermal. For this reason, we can distinguish two types of pumps:

• Compressor pumps with mechanical heat flow;
• Absorption pumps driven by the absorbed heat.

Where does the pump get the heat from to heat the room?

The purpose of using a heat pump is to heat the room in the most ecological and economic way. For this reason, renewable heat sources such as air, water or earth are often chosen. The low-temperature heat from them is then transferred with the higher temperature on the heating side.

Let’s take a closer look at how the three main types of pumps work with different ground sources, i.e. the ones from which heat is extracted:

• The air pump extracts heat directly from the air inside or outside the building. It is worth noting that even in winter, thanks to the rays of the sun, the air contains thermal energy. Moreover, thanks to the use of appropriate collectors and with a small number of cold days a year, it is a very effective solution.
• The pump that takes the heat of the earth is usually connected to it by copper pipes. It draws energy directly from the ground, which is heated by the sun’s rays, but also by other processes that take place inside it.
• The water pump is the third type of heating that is connected to the groundwater. Their circulation in the installation allows you to draw heat from naturally occurring reservoirs or from deep wells specially made for this purpose.

Each type of heat pump transfers the collected heat to the heating system in the building. It is also worth paying attention to this factor in order to obtain optimal conditions when choosing the above solution.

Best cooperation with underfloor or wall heating

Due to the large heating surface and the possibility of uniform heating of rooms, floor or wall heating is increasingly used. It is also the most optimal installation for combination with a heat pump. It shows high inertia, and thus efficiency. Thanks to this, you can afford longer breaks in the operation of the pump itself, which significantly reduces the cost of heating the building.

Why choose a heat pump?

First of all, it is an excellent solution in terms of ecology, which can easily cooperate with the existing traditional heating systems. It then acts as an additional heat source that helps to maintain the right temperature in the house.

What is extremely important, the heat pump also allows you to reduce bills. Its use is extremely economical already at the stage of designing a new house, as it eliminates the need to build, for example, a fuel storage. Next, the costs of purchasing this material in good quality disappear.

A well-optimized heat pump works with low electricity consumption. What’s more, it is characterized by high durability, which guarantees its long operation without incurring the costs of renovation.

The device is also worth choosing because of the ecological factor. By using natural, renewable energy sources and minimizing the emission of harmful products, the heat pump is an environmentally friendly solution. In the near future, this may be one of the most important factors determining the choice of a heat source, and an earlier investment in an ecological device guarantees that there will be no need for a quick modernization of the system.

Finally, it is worth adding that after optimizing the parameters, the heat pump can operate practically maintenance-free. Its advanced model can also be responsible for cooling the building in summer, which translates into even greater comfort of its use.