Many people would think that this is all terribly complex. Why would anyone go to all this bother with compressors, and refrigerants, and loops and other complex things?
In the winter, when we want to stay warm, many people burn natural gas or oil or wood to stay warm, it seems to work OK?
The problem is that all of these fuels are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain just about every year.
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The physicists tell us that even when it is winter, and the cold winds are blowing, and lakes and rivers are covered with thick sheets of ice, and the earth is frozen and the ground become very hard under our feet, that there is still some heat there. It is low 'grade heat' and we can't use it directly to heat our houses. In fact if we tried, our homes would just get colder.
But a wonderful thing about heat pumps and their complex parts, is that they are able to gather up this 'low grade heat' and make it usable for us to heat our homes. The wonderful thing about low grade heat is that there is a huge amount of it, and heat pumps can gather it up for less money than if we were to heat with, for instance, oil.
So the question you may be thinking is, "How can a heat pump gather any heat from air that is colder than ice, or from the ground in winter, or from the water in a frozen lake? I mean, if you fell through the ice and into the cold water, you might die!
So, exactly how can a heat pump gather heat from air, or earth, or water that is so cold?!?!?
Well, you are now going to read just how this is done...
-AC