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Heating need not be 'all waste'. An air (or ground) source heat pump heats a room, counterintuitively, by pumping heat from the colder air outside. It uses less
by writinghawk 8y ago
Heating need not be 'all waste'. An air (or ground) source heat pump heats a room, counterintuitively, by pumping heat from the colder air outside. It uses less energy than the amount it releases into the room.
- MrStonedOne 8y ago(also known as an ac in reverse)
- rootusrootus 8y agoI've heard this term twice in this thread. Do most people not just call them heat pumps? Certainly that's what they're known as here in the PNW.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoI don't know that I've encountered a space heater based on a heat pump, but in my mind... "air conditioner" - a machine which keeps one or more rooms in a house cool, powered by a heat pump. "heater" - a machine which keeps one or more rooms in a house warm, usually not powered by a heat pump. "refrigerator" - a machine which keeps its own interior cool, powered by a heat pump. "freezer" - a machine which keeps its own interior below freezing, powered by a heat pump and usually attached to a refrigerator. All of which is to say, a heat pump is a machine that moves heat. It's named after its effect. But "heaters", "refrigerators", and "air conditioners" are named after their purpose, not their mechanics, and include heat pumps--if they do--incidentally, as the mechanism by which they achieve their purpose. If somebody came up with a refrigerator that still kept your food cold but didn't use a heat pump, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a "refrigerator".