The heat pump system is a crucial component of any home, transferring heat from the source to the heat sink. It can be divided into three major groups: an indoor unit, an outdoor unit, and controls. The outdoor unit, also known as the compressor or condenser unit, is the part of the heat pump system outside of the building that contains the compressor and the condenser coil. This unit can either be a heat pump or air conditioner (AC).
The indoor unit, which looks like the outdoor unit of a split-system air conditioning system, is either a gas furnace or an air handler unit. Most air conditioners have an outdoor unit called a condenser unit, which is responsible for circulating refrigerant. The outdoor fan helps move cool air through the outdoor components of the heat pump for optimal performance. The air filter catches the refrigerant, and the compressor is usually powered by electricity and located outside the building.
The outdoor unit, also known as the condenser unit, contains the compressor, propeller fan, circuit board, and heat exchange coil. The outdoor fan helps move cool air through the outdoor components of the heat pump for optimal performance. The air filter also captures the refrigerant.
The condenser is a main component of the heat pump cycle, as it circulates the liquified refrigerant to a heat exchanger in the outdoor space. Once the refrigerant is compressed, it passes into a water heating circuit that flows around the unit.
In summary, the heat pump system consists of two main components: the indoor unit, the outdoor unit, and the controls. The outdoor unit, also known as the condenser unit, is responsible for circulating the refrigerant and ensuring optimal performance.
📹 The Difference Between a Heat Pump and AC. (Heat Pump Parts Explained)
Heat pump parts and functions. I go over all the parts a heat pump has which a normal air conditioner does not. I also explain how …
What is outside air in HVAC?
The air conditioner does not take in outside air, but rather moves unwanted heat out of the home. It operates through a heat pump, which pumps hot air outside in the summer and inside in the winter. The compressor, or compressor, captures and releases this heat using a special fluid, refrigerant, enclosed in a closed metal loop. The refrigeration cycle, which involves a series of changes in temperature, pressure, and state (liquid/vapor), helps keep the air cool. The process of the refrigeration cycle has four stages:
- The compressor sucks warm air out of the home, removing it outside with the help of a special fluid, refrigerant. This process helps maintain the temperature, pressure, and state of the air, ensuring the comfort of the home.
What is an external heat pump?
Air-source heat pumps are devices that transfer heat between two heat exchangers, one outside the building and the other heating the air inside or water. The heat is then circulated around the building through radiators or underfloor heating, releasing it back into the building. These devices can also operate in a cooling mode, extracting heat from the internal heat exchanger and ejecting it into the ambient air. Some can also heat water for washing stored in a domestic hot water tank.
Air-source heat pumps are easy and inexpensive to install, making them the most widely used type. They have a coefficient of performance (COP) between 2 and 5, and can achieve a COP of 1 to 4 at temperatures below -8°C. Newer models with variable-speed compressors are highly efficient in freezing conditions, leading to widespread adoption and cost savings in areas like Minnesota and Maine.
What are the parts of a heat pump?
A heat pump is a device that transfers thermal energy from one location to another using a refrigerant. It works by transferring heat from one area to another, ensuring the perfect temperature all year round. The compressor, consisting of 16 parts, works together like clockwork to achieve maximum efficiency. The compressor includes the expansion valve, evaporator coil, condenser coil, refrigerant lines, reversing valve, high and low-pressure switches, and the thermostat. These components work together to transfer heat from one area to another, ensuring the perfect temperature throughout the year.
What is the unit outside called?
The outside unit of an air conditioner, also known as the “condenser unit”, is responsible for releasing heat from the inside of the home. It is crucial for the removal of heat from the home. The most important parts in the outside unit include the fan, thermostat, fan blades, and the fan blades. Without the fan blades, the heat that’s removed from the home wouldn’t be able to escape.
What is an external condenser unit?
A condenser unit is an outdoor unit that houses a compressor, which compresses and cools refrigerant gas. The gas is then sent to the condenser, where fans work to remove heat. The refrigerant becomes a liquid and returns to the indoor unit for further cooling. The heated air is then sent back to the outside, where it is disposed of. The condenser unit’s main function is to pump the refrigerant and cool it, converting it into liquid form. Without it, the system is useless.
What is the inside unit of a heat pump called?
The indoor unit, also referred to as the air handler unit, constitutes a vital component of a heat pump system. The indoor unit is comprised of a coil and a fan, which function in conjunction to facilitate the circulation of air throughout the residence. The refrigerant, which absorbs and rejects heat, is then pressurized by the compressor, enabling its circulation throughout the system.
What is a heat pump outdoor unit?
Heat pumps have a reversing valve that reverses the flow of refrigerant, allowing the functions of the indoor and outdoor coils to reverse. In summer, a heat pump is an air conditioner, while in winter, it has the compressor and evaporator coil. The outdoor unit of a heat pump is called the outdoor unit, covering both summer and winter.
Package units, which are part of split system air conditioners or heat pumps, have all four components in the outdoor unit. They are not split, but everything that’s part of the heating and cooling sits in one package outdoors. The best name for this type is “package unit”.
In a passive house, the Sanden heat pump water heater is a split system, with the indoor unit being a tank for hot water and the outdoor unit being a package unit heat pump. The indoor unit is a tank for hot water, while the outdoor unit is a package unit heat pump. If only seen as the outdoor unit, it might seem like a mini-split heat pump.
Can heat pumps be outside?
Air source heat pumps are typically installed outside your property to ensure efficient heating and extraction of heat. They require access to external air to extract heat and expel cold air that has been heated and fed into your heating system. Installing an air source heat pump inside would require more effort to maintain the temperature of your property, as the cooled air expelled from the system would cool the property rather than heating it. Therefore, they should be installed outside for optimal performance.
What is an external pump?
An external gear pump uses two identical gears, one driven by a motor and the other idle, supported by a shaft with bearings on both sides. Fluid trapped between the gear teeth is transported from the inlet to outlet ports, with the gear mesh acting as a seal.
An internal gear pump uses two meshing gears, with the outer gear driving the inner gear. Fluids trapped between the gears are transmitted from the inlet to the outlet port due to the rotation of the meshing gears, with the gear mesh acting as a seal between the ports. An internal gear pump may use a crescent component to assist in internal sealing.
External gear pumps work by meshing the gears in a close fitting housing, allowing fluid to fill the space between corresponding gear teeth and be carried from the inlet side to the outlet.
What do you call the outside part of a heat pump?
The outdoor unit, also known as the compressor or condenser unit, is a part of the heat pump system outside a building. It contains the compressor and condenser coil. Refrigerants are fluids used in heat pumps and air conditioning systems that can change from gas to liquid state and back again. They are highly regulated due to their high levels of toxicity, flammability, and impact on the ozone layer. The refrigeration cycle is a reversed thermodynamic cycle where thermal energy is transferred from cooler to warmer spaces, unlike natural processes without intervention from a heat pump.
What is an outdoor unit in AC?
The outdoor unit in your air conditioning system disperses heat from inside your home. It consists of a compressor, condenser coil, and fan. The heat absorbed from your home’s air is transferred to the refrigerant, which is then pumped to the outdoor unit. The compressor moves the refrigerant throughout the system, allowing it to be reused for cooling. The refrigerant is compressed to a higher pressure and moved through the condenser coil. A fan cools the condenser coil, and the heat from inside your house is dispersed to the outside air. The refrigerant is then pumped back indoors, repeating the process.
📹 What are the Pros and Cons of Heat Pumps?
In the video we break down the Pros and Cons of Heat Pumps. Chapters 0:34 – What are the Pros and Cons of Heat Pumps 3:00 …
I sure hope I am not the only one who did not realize that a “heat pump” was exactly the same as a normal AC condenser but with additional parts inside… If you remember the first time you heard the term “heat pump”, do you recall what the first thing that came to your head was? I can’t be the only one who did not imagine a condenser unit.. 😄 True story: I, the greenhorn tech who did not go over heat pumps in school yet, was on a ride-along with a senior tech at my first HVAC job… After he and I looked at the furnace we went back to the van to order a part. As he was looking for the part, he realized he needed another model number so he asked me to go get him the model number of the heat pump. I said, “sure, no problem!” even though I had no idea what a heat pump was. I didn’t want to look stupid – I am actively attending an HVAC school after all. So I go back to the furnace room because that’s where we just were and I start looking for something that looks like a heat pump… After a few minutes, I was certain that it is not the water heater, there is no boiler, and there is nothing else that may be a heat pump.. I had a flip phone back then with no internet so I couldn’t look it up either. I went back to the van and told him I couldn’t find it. After a short pause, he gave me a confused look and then asked me if I tried looking on the other side of the house and pointed to where the “air conditioner” is. (I think he was simply trying to let me save face and pretended not to understand that I had no idea what a heat pump is).
Hello good buddy 👍 Jay good to see you again my friend I missed you buddy.. well Arnold has been doing pretty good here lately I had a rough time here lately my first cousin passed away unexpectedly her funeral was Monday she leaves behind a teenage daughter so sad 😢 beyond words. I had a scare Sunday night I was having chest pains I ran out of my nitroglycerin pills and had to drive myself to the hospital and they gave me two shots of nitroglycerin before I got better and I was able to come on home I have to go see a cardiologist I don’t know how long I will be here for real Dr said that my heart sounds bad I know that I haven’t been feeling good for a while I get so tired anymore. I came home from the hospital Sunday night and got a call a old friend of mine passed away also he was actually in the ER the same time I was and I didn’t know it. Arnold said hello to you good buddy 👍 I’m happy to see you again my friend tell everyone I said hello and I love them and you too my number one good buddy 👍 even though I never met you I consider you my best friend take care buddy and God bless you all my friends I will be praying for you Jay 👋🤙🙏👊🤜🤛✌️🤙
Thanks Jay for all your great helpful articles, Informative no nonsense info. I’ve also wondered since setting up my nest house wiring in 2016. I wondered what is a heat pump within my gaspack unit? I researched back then and that’s just another reason what make your articles stand out from the rest… Great Job.
Again, your articles are the best! I’m having my AC/gas furnace replaced. Suppliers are out of 5 ton condenser so contractor offerd to install a heat pump instead. Could this be converted to dual fuel as simply as replacing inside TXV with one that has a check valve and upgrading the thermostat? Thanks!
Thank you much for these articles! With your instructions over the last two years between two houses I have changed my control panel, fan motor, and fuses and installed a compressor saver pack and bought and learned how to use a multimeter. AC has broken twice in arizona summer and I have fixed it both times. Keep up this website man…. everyone needs to share this guy with their friends to support!!!
Just getting into HVAC and these articles are super helpful. I’m starting off doing installs, but I’ve already transitioned into doing some service calls and diagnosing. My favorite so far is commercial stuff, the big carrier and Lennox package units are cool and its neat to see how the control side works.
Jay good news starting HVAC class Monday finally! pray for me man It starts with electricity the whole first semester. I hope I get it, looks complicated and I never dealt with electrical before. But God blessed me with free tuition via grants. Been perusal your articles, you just seem like you have a more analytical mind than me. Blessings to the family man!
Hello J, I come to your website for a lot of advice and I’m back once again. This is my first year with a heat pump here in Missouri and I need some advice. This past week we’ve been in the teen’s and 20’s for high temps. I have my thermostat set at 70 but it’s a cold 70. I’ve been told and you even mentioned in this article that I can set my thermostat to “EH” and bypass the heat pump. Doesn’t that usually double your electric bill? As it is it seems run most of the time anyway. It’ll run for 15-20 minutes then kick off but back on again in 10 minutes or less all day and night. Any suggestions? Thank you in advance.
Judi had just bought a beautiful ❤️ red Jaguar convertible. She jumps in and drives down a country road, her blonde hair flying in the breeze. On such a beautiful day with a new car, what could possibly go wrong? All of a sudden the car begins to shake and sputter and stops. She opens the hood and looks at the engine. She realizes she has no clue what’s wrong. She gets her cell phone and calls AAA. After a while a mechanic finally arrives. She sits in the car while the mechanic works on the engine. OK ma’m, it should start now. She turns the key, and sure enough, the engine roars to life. As she pays the mechanic, she asks, how did you fix it? Oh, just shit in the carburetor, he says. She looks shocked and asks “how many times a week do I have to do that?”…
I’ve been doing HVAC for 4 months ran into my first Heat Pump yesterday . Couldn’t get it to program with a Present day Smart Amazon thermostat . Any articles on wiring those ? Also I’ll be honest my 4th money journey has been so exciting and fun but also discouraging at moments because I feel like im 26 and I’m not learning as fast as a should be . Ironically, I Just need some word of advice .
I have an 18 month old American Standard heat pump with a natural gas furnace, known as dual fuel. Last year the heat pump switched off and started the gas furnace when the outside temperature was below 40 degrees. This year, even at 29 degrees, the heat pump keeps operating and holding set point. What is broken so that my heat pump no longer switches to operate the gas furnace based on outside temperature?
When the setup is all electric, even a basic heatpump can supply heat more economically than backup elements down to 10F or even lower. The energy consumed by the compressor is all absorbed by the refrigerant which helps heat the home, and whatever is picked up by the outdoor coil is free heat. Switching it off and switching to all electric at 30 is very wasteful, it is better to leave the heatpump running and cycle the backup on and off to bridge the gap between amount of heat needed and what hp supplies.
My 7yr old Mitsubishi Ecodan (air-water) handle -20C/-4F without help from auxiliary inline heater. (still working at -32C/-25F with aux heater helping) I live ~450km/280miles from the polar circle and have no problem with heating my home with heatpump. My SCOP is between 3.2 and 4.5, depending on how cold the winter gets.
@ 1:36 in my country as far as i know we have 0 incidents followed by the death of tenants! I have seen several cases where the exhaust pipe was pulled from the boiler and the burnt gas entered the house – the tenants had headaches and called us because the boiler signaled the lack of flame… instead, the chances of fires from overloaded electrical installations are much higher. Besides, almost all fires known to me are caused by various faults in the electrical installation 😉
I have a heat pump . My heat pump is so efficient in winter and summer.I’m talking 60% less.Biggest problem is the noise. Not like a central air unit that’s quiet.Loud screech sound on startup and finish are normal.It’s normal to turn on 10-15 times an hour because they maintain temperature to precisely. If it’s set on 70 and it goes to 71, it comes on. Constant cycling on and off. Never knew this. Builder put ours outside my bedroom wall where my headboard this.The noise is horrible at night
I understand that you’re going to be paying more in the winter to heat your home with respect to electricity bills. We’re on propane and live in coastal California. Propane heating is wildly expensive, especially since our furnace isn’t very efficient. I don’t see that it would be likely that we would be paying a lot more in the winter that would be in electricity rather than gas. But that was good information to know. First question: I thought heat pumps were more efficient at cooling than traditional air conditioners and would save us money on summer electric bills ….is that not correct? We need a 3 ton unit and we’re looking at a 3 ton 15 seer. we would probably use a larger unit except that we already put an independent mini split in our master suite which is on its own upper floor. Second question: shouldn’t heat pumps be located outside? One the reasons where making this change is that our old unit is hung underneath our house on earthquake fittings and straps and vibrates the floor in the dining room whether it’s heating or cooling it’s a 15-year-old unit and it’s just past its lifetime. It’s also very inefficient. The installer I talked to wanted to still put the new heat pump unit underneath the house. This doesn’t make any sense to me. The last thing I want is a chance of replicating vibration through the house as the unit ages or if something goes wrong – We have all deducting we need, and it would simply involve diverting the ducting from the existing unit to the heat pump.
Consider this: say it is 105 deg. outside and you have a heat pump that is supposed to take the heat from inside your house which is at a temp. of say 70 deg. and transfer it to the outdoors. It may be possible but it sure as “ell will take a whole boat load of electricity. Then consider this: say it is 35 deg. outside and 65 deg. inside your house. Do you think that taking heat from the near freezing outdoors and transferring that heat to inside will take a lot of work? You betcha, as a former governor of Alaska would say. Now conside this: Is a heat pump for you?? or for an evironmentalist???
This is happening when they run out of customers as most people are having boilers by now, and there’s not to much demand these days – no much work😂. “We need a change, the change is good”. Evryone is using the “climate change” to fill their pockets. Gas Calor recommend to remain on gas 😂🤣. Bear in mind – when everyone will switch to heat pump the price of energy will be sky rocketing this could be accelerated by EV as well. Imagine having noise in every room and hot air blowing in your face… Make sense of having the AC on the top of the wall but no heater. Cold air is staying down due to the density and this is the one that need heated. “Welcome back to the fan heater” Unsure in this move 🤷♂️
I currently have an old natural gas furnace and a woodstove in my basement but no AC yet. I was thinking of replacing the furnace with an air source heat pump. I think this is the only way to make a heat pump worth the installation and running costs(using it as an AC and using the wood stove with it in the winter) as the winters here can get under -30C even during the day. Anyone I’ve spoken to that has these, either has a woostove as well or pays crazy electricity bills in the winter. This article would confirm that as the redzone for efficiency at 25 fahrenheit is only -3 Celsius. Even with woodheat, im not sure how a hest pump wpuld do anyrhing but cost me just as much as my 30 year natural gas furnace. Im in Canada, where the carbon tax alone makes the cost of living 33% more expensive. So needless to say, there is a lot of government pressure to switch to electric heating. Really hard to find information thar isnt completely full of bias. So thank you for that.
The heat pump is simply the REFRIGERATION process. Refrigeration can appear to be like magic, meaning, the efficiency can be 300% or more. The amount of energy pumped can be 3 or more times the amount of energy required to do the pumping. The magic takes place in the condenser unit. The compressor compresses the refrigerant gas into a hot gas (not a liquid). When this hot gas flows through the condenser cooling coils, it condenses into a liquid. This change of state from a gas to a liquid is where the magic is. If the condenser cooling coils are large enough, not even a cooling fan is necessary to achieve this change of state.
the only reason heatpumps are more expensive to install is because in the US you guys get raped by these HVAC techs. A fully installed 7kw (24,000btu) heatpump in NZ is around 1500USD, including the heatpump. They’re absolutely trivial to install and theres precisely zero percent more work because it does heating and cooling, what a joke. My 7kw unit has required exactly zero servicing by HVAC techs, all you have to do is clean the filters and blow out the coils inside and out, which is 100% free. The comments about heatpumps being bad below 40f is a joke as well, this is like saying ‘cars can’t tow boats’ and using a toyota corolla as your example. If you’re in a cold climate area you get a cold climate heatpump, which can pull their full rated power to down to -5F. You’re an hvac tech? lol. Monkey Wrench is appropriate.
3:10 I understand that heat-pumps cost more, they do need the reversing valve which adds extra complexity. But why would the cost to install be higher? It does not make any sense, it’s the same process to install a heat-pump or an air conditioner. Heat pumps are air conditioners that have the reversing valve. I dislike it when contractors offered to install a heat-pump and quoted me the install cost, based on the equipment cost. It’s the exact same process to install. Install a condenser outside, install an air-handler inside, connect them together with refrigerant lines and a communication wire, fill the system with refrigerant and plug both units in. It’s the exact same process wether you are using a $10k heat-pump system or a $2k air-conditioner only. Also at 3:50, why do they require more maintenance? It’s only the extra reversing valve that is different compared an AC unit, and that has no maintenance that can be done. At 4:30 when talking about poor severe weather performance, that’s true, but not below 25F. Sure there are some older designs that don’t work well, but nowadays, my Mitsubishi HyperHeat is rated to provide 100% heating capacity at 5F with an efficiency of 200% and will continue to operate down to -17F. I feel like this article is full of misinformation, don’t understand why…
Heat pumps and their 300% efficiency are a big con and they go against the laws of physics. If that was the case, i.e. 300% efficiency, then why can’t we install an 2nd pump in series from the 1st pump, and give out 3 times more, i.e. output 9 times from the original input? Could even try a 3rd pump and give out 27x output…..The 300% efficiency is a big con. People tried to build perpetual motion machines in the 17th-18th century, until physicists formulated the laws of thermodynamics and proved this was not possible. No machine can be > 100% efficient.