Add-On Heat Pumps Lower Utility Bills

(HIT) - If your home’s central air conditioner has called it quits—but your furnace is still working—ask your heating and cooling contractor about installing an "add-on" heat pump. An add-on heat pump could be an energy-saving alternative to installing a new air conditioner—one that can also help to lower your home heating costs in the winter, according to the Edison Electric Institute and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, two national electric utility trade associations.

How Add-On Heat Pumps Work

The add-on heat pump is so called because it "adds-on" to your existing gas or oil furnace. Your energy-inefficient furnace now becomes a back-up heating system to heat your house on the coldest nights of the year. On the market since the 1950s, heat pumps use electricity to relocate the air’s existing heat, not to create it. A heat pump operates by absorbing heat from the air, and then transferring or "pumping" this heat either inside or outside of a house.

But an add-on heat pump can help keep your home cooler as well. During the summer, an add-on heat pump absorbs hot air inside a house and pumps it outside, very much like an air conditioner. During the winter, a heat pump reverses its operation, taking heat from the cold outdoor air and using it to warm the house.

Surprisingly, even when its zero degrees outside, air contains about 82 percent of the heat it did at 100 degrees. Therefore, during those cool fall and chilly winter nights the same add-on heat pump that kept you cool in the summer will now heat a house with the highest-efficiency ratings of any heating system available.

Depending on the type and model of heat pump selected, an add-on heat pump can return between two and four dollars worth of heating or cooling for each dollar spent on electricity to operate it. Your electric utility’s residential marketing department may be able to help you find a qualified heat pump contractor. They can also give you tips on how to get the most value from every dollar you spend on electricity throughout your house.

Courtesy: Home Improvement News and Information Center