Something I noticed the other day is that, in communicating via enterprise 2.0 technologies like cubeless, the best “way” to answer a question isn’t necessarily the most direct. Why, well, it has to do with the mentality of “If this person is asking this question, there may be numerous others asking similar questions”. While being verbose is not ideal for one to one communications, providing rich, copious amounts of information is useful for future inqueries. For instance, I saw this question in our internal cubeless system.
”Can anyone help me understand if a/c unit by itself is better than a heat pump, when i have a gas furnace for heating?”
Air conditioning, a topic that generates tons of questions. Since I am fairly familiar with the science behind these units, I decided to answer, but in a “way too much info for this question, but relevent info for future questions” sort of way.
”OK, not getting too technical, but a heat pump and a AC unit are really the same thing. Most people think that AC units just make things cold, but what they really do is they make one side cold (the side of the AC unit in/facing your house) and one side hot (in/facing the outside). For instance, you will notice that while an AC unit is blowing cold air inside, if you go outside, the AC unit is blowing hot air. How this works is because of the condensing and evaporating of freon. In the part that cools, the freon is evaporated, so those coils become cold and a fan blows air on the coils, cooling the air. Then the evaporated freon travels outside to the compressor. The compressor makes the freon hot and the freon flows outside to release the heat. The heating and cooling of freon happens because of a difference in pressure in the cooling part vs. the heating part. But again, not to get too technical. A heating pump is really no different, except that you can reverse the process, and switch back. So if you switch the flow, instead of the cold part of an AC unit being on the outside, think of it as now on the inside of you home. Also, the hot side of the AC unit is now inside. So really, the process is the same.What this means to you? My take, since you already have a gas furnace, don’t bother with the heat pump. A gas furnace is far more efficent to heat than an heat pump. Think of it this way, a gas furnace is really only a valve to allow gas to flow, a match (or other ignition source) to light the gas, and a fan to blow hot air. A heat pump is 2 fans to blow air, freon (which is expensive), pumps to move the freon, piping all over the place, and wiring and valves everywhere. Basically, there is alot more moving/operating parts to heat pumps, thus these would take much, much more energy to operate, costing you money. In fact, even in the Northern US, then energy bills in months like July to cool a home to 75 F when the outside temp is 85 F are still more expensive than to heat a home in January when it is 0 F. Additionally, I am sure heat pumps cost you more.
So in summary, get the AC unit for the summer, and use the gas furnace in the winter. Don’t bother with the heat pump.”
Yeah, I know, lengthy answer, but information that is useful, nonetheless. This way, the next person may not even need to ask a question since the info will be in the cubeless system. Anyway, I thought I would pass this along.