How Heat Pumps Are a Smart

Heat pumps are the new stars of heating. These systems offer numerous advantages, and one of them are Tax Credits For Heat Pumps as financial incentives offered by the Colorado government. In fact, most state governments in the USA are promoting their use through new laws and regulations, motivated mainly by green plans to combat global warming. This blog post is a comprehensive review by Comfort Pros, providing help to know everything about this technology, maintenance issues, and how we can overcome them to ensure your comfort. Keep reading!

Benefits of Installing a Heat Pump

Environmental Benefits of Switching from Gas to Electric Boilers

Climate ecology is influencing the decisions of many governments (particularly in the USA), which are rejecting gas boilers in favor of electric-powered boilers. The objective is to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and to avoid unstable and often upward fluctuations in the price of gas. Boilers have become one of the preferred solutions in the USA to replace gas boilers in newly built individual homes.

Superior Efficiency and Cold-Weather Solutions

The energy efficiency of a heat pump is superior to that of the best condensing boilers. However, this performance decreases when the outside air temperature is below -7 °C, although some installation tricks can solve this problem in very cold regions. For example, we, at Comfort Pros, can help you in this regard.

Proven Technology with Minimal Maintenance

The operation of a heat pump is identical to that of an air conditioning unit, or even a refrigerator. It is therefore a technology that has been mastered and optimized for a long time, and which currently presents very few maintenance problems.

Versatile Heat Pump Installations for Any Building or Use

There are many types of heat pump installations that adapt to all types of buildings and environments. Thus, a heat pump can replace a gas boiler by taking advantage of the traditional water heating circuit of a space, and can even be used to heat a swimming pool!

Financial Incentives for Switching to Heat Pumps

To encourage owners to install a heat pump instead of gas, some countries and states offer financial aid for conversion works. Tax credits for heat pumps as an aid are very interesting because they significantly reduce the cost of installation.

Understanding How a Heat Pump Functions

Heat pumps recover external heat to reinject it into the interior of a space. They are based on a refrigerant fluid circuit that transports heat (thermal) energy by changing state:

• Stage 1: Outside, the evaporator recovers ambient heat to heat the fluid at a very low temperature, in a mostly liquid state at low pressure, which thus becomes a gaseous state. A compressor then abruptly compresses the gas, causing its temperature to rise sharply.
• Stage 2: Inside, the hot gas enters a condenser, which recovers its heat to heat the house, either by water or air. It then cools the fluid, which condenses and returns to a (nearly) liquid state. The fluid then passes through a pressure reducer, which sharply reduces its pressure, and therefore its temperature, and thus returns to stage 1.The operating principle of a Heat pump is therefore strictly identical to that of an air conditioning unit, but in exactly the opposite direction. This is why it is possible to equip it with a reversible Heat pump system (inverter), capable of cooling in summer and heating in winter. In summer, the external part plays the role of a condenser and the internal part becomes the evaporator.

For all the above reasons, it is important to choose the best heat pump system from the beginning

• Air-water heat pump: This system consists of an external unit that ventilates the ambient air to heat the fluid. The circuit then supplies a conventional water heating system (radiator or floor), while also providing hot water for sanitary use.
• Water-to-water heat pump: This system allows the cooling fluid to be heated passively by circulating it through a natural body of water (water table, lake, river, etc.). It saves more energy and is better suited to very cold winters.
• Air-to-air (or even water-to-air) heat pump: This system heats the interior thanks to internal splits that vent hot air. It is a little less effective for heating and difficult to adapt to a domestic hot water system. However, its main advantage is that it is reversible and acts as air conditioning in summer with the same material.

Heat pumps extract heat from the outside environment, and very cold winters can affect their performance significantly. In areas with below -7°C, the system works harder to extract heat from outside, increasing energy consumption considerably.

However, you don’t need to worry about this. Our specialists use the Canadian well system as a trick which consists of locating the air inlet in a place far from the evaporator, linked by a long underground pipe, which naturally heats the air by geothermal energy before reaching the evaporator. A reliable Central Heating System can additionally support in managing this by circulating the heat more uniformly throughout your space.

The efficiency of the heat pump is defined by a main index: the coefficient of performance (COP). For example, a COP of 3 means that for 1 kW of electrical power consumed, the pump delivers 3 kW of heat, simply recovering 2 kW of “free” energy from the outside heat. It is therefore understandable that the COP varies depending on the outside temperature.

Heat Pump Maintenance: Essential Controls to Perform

One of the main advantages of heat pumps is their reliability. The refrigerant is designed to last indefinitely without leaks, which are very rare; something like a refrigerator, which does not require maintenance until after many years of operation.

In some states, it is mandatory to ensure Heat Pump Maintenance by having them checked every two years. However, in Colorado, there is no restriction, but we advise you to have your system regularly maintained to ensure its peak performance and safety. In doing so, some major checks are essential, with the manifold (a pipe with multiple outlets, connecting to other pipes) being a central tool, generally employed for AC maintenance, to ensure everything is okay.

Coolant leak

A fairly rare problem, but one that completely neutralizes the operation of the heat pump. For example, our expert technicians use a coolant detector to locate the leak. In the event of a leak, the circuit must be emptied and its tightness checked by vacuuming it using a vacuum gauge.

High- and low-pressure measurement

This measurement also allows a leak to be detected when the differential (Delta) between overpressure and under pressure is insufficient. Above all, it allows the correct performance of the heat pump to be checked, as well as the operation of the compressor and the pressure reducer. Our technicians use an effective pressure gauge to carry out this double measurement simultaneously.

Superheat and undercooling measurement

A thermocouple thermometer allows these two temperatures to be accurately measured by contact with the copper refrigerant tube: the superheat temperature at the compressor outlet and the undercooling temperature at the pressure reducer outlet. These temperatures must remain consistent with the thermal properties of the state change of the refrigerant present in the circuit, which certifies the correct operation of the heat pump.

We use the best thermocouple thermometers to carry out this operation at the same time as the pressure measurements, and the application then automatically calculates the consistency of the measurements for 126 different refrigerants based on their pre-recorded thermal properties.

Replacing the coolant

To comply with the regulations of the heat pump or improve its performance, it is sometimes necessary to change the entire coolant. It must be recovered for recycling, checking that the circuit is completely empty at the end of the operation. To do this, our heat pump specialists use a vacuum gauge, which is also used in other commissioning operations.

Installation and refrigerant filling

For the installation of the heat pump, after repairing a leak or changing the fluid, filling the refrigerant circuit also requires a manifold for all necessary vacuum, pressure and temperature measurements.

Inspection and maintenance of the thermodynamic system

Maintenance also concerns everything that accompanies the core of the heat pump. For water heating systems, the operation of the hot water storage tank, the water pumps of the heating system, the compressor, the pressure reducer, and the electrical installations must also be checked.

We use an infrared thermometer to detect abnormal overheating in electrical systems. For reversible heat pumps, we check the correct operation of the condensate pumps, clean them (see our cleaning guide), or replace them if necessary.

Air flow rates for evaporator and condenser units

Last but not least, it is much simpler to check that the ventilation units are working correctly by measuring the ventilated air flow rates with a propeller anemometer, or any other multi-function device. The fan may need to be repaired or cleaned (blades, foam, dust) to restore optimum performance at the evaporators and condensers and to reduce operating noise.

Comfort Pros is always within reach whenever you need an expert heat pump technician in Henderson, Colorado, or you are currently searching “Heat Pump Installation Near Me” on Google. Trust our expertise for outstanding services and solutions!