The How and Why of Heat Pumps

The term “heat pump” is frequently used in reference to a heating and air-conditioning system, but not every homeowner is familiar with what a heat pump is, or what it does.  In the simplest definition, a heat pump is an air conditioner that can reverse its operation to move heat into the house, instead of out.

The movement of heat

Most everyone is familiar with what an air conditioner does.  It creates cool air, which is then circulated through a house’s ductwork by the furnace or air handler.  But strictly speaking, an air conditioner doesn’t “make cold,” it “gets rid of heat.”

The refrigerant that Betlem Residential puts into an air-conditioning system circulates back and forth between the air conditioner outside, and the coil inside, gathering heat as it goes.  Once that heat gets outside the home, the air conditioner disperses it.

Standing next to an air conditioner, you can feel a steady stream of warm air coming off of it. This heat isn’t generated by the air conditioner’s motor or fan; it’s the heat that was previously in the house, being vented into the atmosphere.

The heat pump difference

When a heat pump operates during warm weather, it performs exactly like an air conditioner.  It gathers the heat that’s inside the house, and vents it outside.

When cold weather arrives, however, the heat pump is able to reverse its operation. It gathers heat from the outside air and moves it inside to warm the house.  Because even when the outside air feels cold on the skin, it still contains enough heat for the heat pump to gather and move inside.

Why select a heat pump?

The decision to choose a heat pump or a furnace for a home has to do with the climate in which the home is located. Heat pumps typically work better in warmer southern climates where winters aren’t too harsh. Since the air doesn’t get very cold, a heat pump can gather enough heat during cool weather or cold snaps to keep the home comfortable.

In northern climates that have colder winter weather, there is usually not much heat present in the air for a heat pump to collect.  And even if there is some heat present in the outside air, it may cost a lot of electricity for the heat pump to run long and fast enough to collect it.

For that reason, homes in northern climates typically elect to use a gas furnace  or oil-burning furnace for warmth.

Dual-fuel systems

For homes located in mild or moderate climates, a heat pump can be paired with a gas furnace to create a dual-fuel system.  In this configuration, you enjoy the best possible balance between comfort and energy efficiency.

In cool weather, when the seasons transition from summer to fall, the heat pump in a dual-fuel system keeps the home warm.  Because electricity is typically cheaper than gas, this means more energy-efficient comfort.

When winter arrives and the weather becomes colder, it would take substantially more electricity to draw in enough heat to keep the home warm.  So the dual-fuel system switches from the heat pump to the gas furnace to provide warmth.

The most energy-efficient warmth, every time

The system will continue to switch back and forth automatically between the electric heat pump and the gas furnace, based on whichever is most energy-efficient for the current weather.

The switching point is preprogrammed by Betlem Residential when the system is installed.  Since the switch point is based on prices of electricity and gas in the area in which the home is located, this allows customized energy savings.

To get the energy-conscious advantages of a heat pump in your home, or to discuss the year-round advantages of a dual-fuel system, please contact Betlem Residential.

Saving Energy: Understanding Energy Ratings

Understanding energy ratings

If you’ve ever shopped for a new air conditioner, furnace, or even a window unit, you’ve probably seen energy rating data listed somewhere on the product. Knowing what those numbers mean, and how to compare them, can save you a lot of money over the life of your equipment.

Making sense of the numbers

Ratings help you make smart choices 

Energy ratings were established to provide a baseline for comparing heating and air conditioning equipment based on the energy it uses to keep you comfortable. In a sense, you can think of energy ratings like miles-per-gallon in a car.

The more gasoline it takes you to go one mile, the more you’ll spend for every mile you need to travel. So if you’re looking at a large SUV that gets 15 miles per gallon, you know you’ll need to plan a larger fuel budget every month than if you’d chosen a subcompact or hybrid car that gets 38 miles to the gallon.

What the ratings mean for your home

With home heating and cooling equipment, the efficiency numbers tell you how much energy you’ll have to spend to get the same performance out of similar products.

Ratings are different for each type of heating and cooling equipment, simply because of the energy source used to power it. In other words, you can’t use the same rating to compare a gas furnace to an electric heat pump, because they don’t use the same type of fuel.

However, when you understand the numbers behind the ratings, you can get a good idea of how much money you’ll spend to run your equipment, whether it uses gas, electricity, or both.

SEER, for rating electric cooling

SEER is one of the most common rating systems for home cooling equipment. It stands for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio, and it gives a pretty good indication of your energy costs because it measures performance over an entire cooling season.

To calculate SEER, you simply take the total cooling output that the equipment will generate over the summer, measured in British Thermal Units (BTU), and divide it by the total amount of energy you’ll have to expend (and pay for) during the same time period.

What you’re really measuring here is how much cooling power the unit will provide, and how much it will cost you to enjoy that cool comfort. The Lennox® XC25 is currently the most precise and efficient air conditioner you can buy*, offering a SEER of up to 26.

Federal law currently mandates a minimum SEER of between 13 and 14, depending upon where in the country you live, and any air conditioner over 14.5 SEER can be eligible for ENERGY STAR® qualification, meaning it’s a smart choice for energy-efficient cooling.

AFUE, for rating fossil-fuel furnaces

AFUE is a different way to measure efficiency, because it deals with a different type of fuel. The AFUE of a furnace, which stands for Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency, is a measure of how much heat is generated over the course of the heating season, compared with how much fuel is burned.

AFUE is a fairly straightforward number. The higher the number, the more heat you will actually feel for a given amount of natural gas or oil burned. A furnace with an AFUE of 80 will turn 80% of its fuel into useable heat, while wasting about 20% of its fuel through either air leaks, inefficient burners or a less-advanced design.

On the other hand, a furnace with an AFUE of 95 will convert 95% of the gas or oil it consumes into useable warmth. Any furnace with an efficiency of 90% or higher is considered high-efficiency.

The Lennox SLP98V furnace currently offers an AFUE of 98.7, meaning it converts 98.7% of its fuel into useful heat for your home. With less than 2% fuel waste, it’s a very efficient way to weather the winter.

*The most precise and efficient air conditioner and heat pump you can buy (XC25/XP25)
Efficiency claim based on comparison of air conditioning and heat pump products’ SEER as published in AHRI (January 2013). Actual system combination efficientcy may vary; consult a Lennox Dealer or AHRI for exact system efficiencies. Precision claim based on the cooling capacity range of the XC/XP25-036 units as compared to equivalent-sized competitive variable capacity compressor units.

HSPF, for rating electric heating and cooling

In the simplest terms, an electric heat pump is an air conditioner that can run in reverse. During the summer, it moves heat out of your home into the atmosphere. Then, during colder weather, it reverses the process and draws latent heat from the outside air into your home.

Since it doesn’t use fossil fuel, AFUE really doesn’t apply. So heat pumps actually have their own comparative efficiency rating, known as HSPF, or Heating Season Performance Factor. This is a measure of how efficiently an electric heat pump can warm your home when it’s in heating mode, over the course of an entire heating season.

HSPF is calculated by dividing the unit’s heat output over the course of the season by the amount of electricity required to produce that heat. Anything over 8 is considered high-efficiency, and may be eligible for utility rebates or tax credits.

When shopping for a heat pump, it’s important to remember that since it uses electricity to heat and cool, it will have both a SEER and an HSPF rating since it runs during multiple seasons.

The Lennox XP25 heat pump currently offers a SEER of up to 23.5, and an HSPF of up to 10.20.

Introducing the Newest Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps in the Lennox Lineup

For more than 120 years, Lennox has been synonymous with innovation in the field of home comfort. In fact, the company’s first product was an improved furnace that prevented harmful fumes from escaping into the living space of a home.

That same commitment to innovation is readily apparent in the XC20 Air Conditioner and XP20 Heat Pump, which will be available later this year.

The XC20 and XP20

When it comes to creating your perfect environment, you’re trying to strike a balance between temperature, humidity and energy savings. After all, it’s hard to enjoy a cool space if it’s too humid, and it’s hard to enjoy any combination of temperature and humidity if it’s costing you a fortune. Enter the XC20 and XP20.

Better than on and off

Before you understand what makes the XC20 and XP20 so special, you must first understand how a normal air conditioner and heat pump work. At the heart of every heat pump and air conditioner, you’ll find a compressor. That’s the component that pressurizes the refrigerant to help it transfer heat.

Most compressors are either on or off, like a light switch. That means they’re either running full blast, or not running at all. But the XC20 and XP20 use a different type of compressor operation.

Efficiency and comfort on a sliding scale

Rather than totally on or off, the XC20 and XP20 have the ability to adjust the speed of their compressors to more than 60 different levels, making them operate less like a light switch and more like a dimmer switch.

This allows the XC20 and XP20 to find the perfect balance between cooling or heating output and energy use, because they’ll always operate at just the right speed. Not too fast, not too slow. Just right, like the environment they create.

Precise humidity control for greater comfort

Humidity is a big factor in the way the air in your home feels. With proper control of it, you will not only enjoy a more comfortable environment, you can spend less on energy. That’s because properly humidified air still feels comfortable even at higher temperatures.

Slow and steady

Because they have the ability to adjust their cooling output, the XC20 and XP20 can help remove moisture from your air with greater precision when paired with a Lennox iComfort thermostat.

This happens because an iComfort thermostat can work with the XC20 or XP20 and the furnace or air handler to adjust airspeed and cooling capacity, to make sure the air travels slowly during startup. This allows more moisture to be drawn out before the air begins to circulate.

To learn more about the XC20 or XP20, contact Betlem Residential 

Home comfort tech has come a long way in a short while

Today, we pretty much take home comfort for granted. But we haven’t always been so fortunate. In fact, compared to even the most basic of today’s systems, the home comfort equipment of even a few decades ago seems almost primitive.

Controls.

Early thermostats were mechanical in nature, regulating system operation using either mercury or a metal strip that would expand or contract with the ambient temperature to open and close a switch. Today, sophisticated electronic sensors use varying electrical resistance to sense temperature, anticipating heating and cooling needs before you even know you’re uncomfortable. Some, like theiComfort Wi-Fi® touchscreen thermostat, can hold the temperature in your home to within .5 degree or less of your set temperature.

Airflow.

Furnaces used to operate at only one speed. They’d wait until the home was too cold, then blast it with warm air until it was too hot. Then repeat the cycle over and over. Today’s furnaces, like the Lennox® SLP98V, offer variable-speed airflow that changes based on demand, ramping up and down as needed to keep a quiet, even flow of air moving through the home. This also means quieter startups, and no startling rush of hot air. See variable-speed airflow here.

Heating.

Furnaces have always used fire in some capacity. But the way they use it has changed quite a bit. Conventional furnaces use a series of burners that warm the air as it passes through the furnace. They come on when heat is needed, and go off when it isn’t. More sophisticated furnaces like the high-efficiency EL296Vcan burn fuel at different rates to produce varying amounts of heat based on demand. This helps it operate much more efficiently than a single-stage furnace.

Some furnaces, like the SLP98V with Precise Comfort® technology, can adjust output in increments of as little as 1% for pinpoint comfort and amazing efficiency.

Cooling.

Like conventional furnaces, conventional air conditioners and heat pumps operate at one speed. They cool when it’s hot inside, and they shut off when it isn’t.

Today’s most modern air conditioners and heat pumps, like the XC21 and XP21, can adjust compressor speed to many different levels, like a dimmer switch.  This makes them incredibly efficient, with the added benefit of extremely quiet operation.

It was warm just a minute ago…

Prepare your home for Fall’s unpredictable cold snaps.

Summer was great while it lasted, but now the colder weather is on the way.  In Fall, the temperatures can drop at a moment’s notice.  Help keep your home consistently comfortable with these helpful Fall tips for fighting unexpected cold snaps.

Don’t let cold walk through the front door

Doors are great for people and pets.  Unfortunately, cold will also try to sneak in every time a door is opened. And it will try to force its way in through leaking seals around your doors even when they’re closed.  Replace worn or insufficient weatherstripping to preserve the barrier between cold and comfort.

Don’t let messy weather walk all over your house

When cold weather hits unexpectedly, the change in temperatures can often bring rain.  Compound that with the large assortment of leaves on the lawn, and you have a recipe for a dirty floor.  Try playing a mat inside the front door to help keep rain, leaves and even unexpected snow from being tracked all throughout your home.

Make sure your furnace is in shape

The best time to repair or maintain your furnace or heat pump is before you really need it.  Schedule an appointment with the trusted HVAC professionals at Betlem Residential to get a system checkup, to make sure you’re squared away before it becomes an emergency.

Performing a system check will also make sure your furnace, air handler, heat pump or air conditioner are all ready for the up-and-down temperatures that Fall can bring, as the weather goes back and forth between wet, dry, hot and cold.

Get out the caulking gun

Small holes can mean small air leaks.  And small air leaks are all it takes to let the warmth inside your home escape into the wild.  Caulk small holes and cracks yourself, or find a local handyman to give you a hand. Pay close attention to areas around doors and windows, where weathered wood can start to break down.

Clear the way for melting water

Fall is a great time to clean gutters and downspouts.  By creating a clear path for melting water to escape later on in winter, you can prevent the formation of ice blockages that can weigh down gutters and damage shingles.

Let your furnace breathe

Your air handler or furnace is going to be working overtime as the weather gets colder.  Make sure it has unrestricted airflow with a clean furnace filter.  Drier winter weather can also produce more dust, so checking your filter now will help keep your air cleaner as the seasons change.

Don’t get hosed

Before the cold weather arrives, it’s smart to disconnect your hoses from outside faucets.  If they’re connected during freezing temperatures, the ice inside can expand and cause damage to the hoses and even your pipes.   For an extra layer of protection, shut off the water supply to each faucet, drain the pipe and add an insulated faucet protector to hold in heat and stop ice from forming.

It’s the humidity

If you have a whole-home humidifier, Fall is the perfect time to check the pad, and replace it if necessary.  That way, you’re ready to fight off static shocks and damage to your furnishings before they start.

Replacing your A/C? Consider a home comfort system.

After a long, distinguished career, your air conditioner is ready to retire.

You’ve shared a lot of summers together, but the inefficiency, high temperatures and uncomfortable indoor humidity have made it time to say goodbye. Don’t think of it as a hassle, think of it as an opportunity.

Replace the entire system, or just one part?

Anytime you need to repair or replace a part of your home’s heating and air-conditioning system, ask yourself a few questions. Are you spending a lot on repairs on a regular basis? Is your system more than just a few years old? How high are your energy bills? A new system may be a smart decision for many reasons.

It doesn’t have to be old to be inefficient.

With the continuing advancement of home comfort technology, equipment is becoming more energy efficient. A new system may offer you substantial energy savings even if your current system is only a few years old.

Balanced performance.

By replacing your entire system, rather than just a single component, you get equipment that’s been designed to work together. Because of this compatibility, you’ll enjoy greater energy efficiency and optimized comfort.

It’s just like replacing a flat tire on your car. Using one tire of a different size would reduce the performance of the entire vehicle.

Know the parts of a home comfort system.

When you understand how a home comfort system works, it’s easy to understand why a matched system can offer greater energy savings and comfort.

The furnace or air handler.

The furnace or air handler is the center of the system, almost always found indoors. It circulates heated or cooled air all year long.

The air conditioner or heat pump.

Found outdoors, the air conditioner or heat pump connects to the furnace or air handler to cool air in the summer and, in the case of a heat pump, warm air in the winter.

The thermostat.

The brains of the entire operation, the thermostat coordinates heating and cooling based on the temperature you set indoors. Programmable thermostats allow your system to heat or cool on a schedule, saving energy when you’re not home.

Indoor air quality.

For even healthier, more comfortable air, an effective air cleaning system is a must.

Help is here when you need it.

There are many resources out there to help you decide whether to repair or replace. The more you know, the better a decision you can make. Call Betlem Residential Heating & Air Conditioning at 271-COOL(2665) and we will go into detail about every aspect of your decision, helping you make the right choice for greater energy efficiency and comfort. Find out all you can, because replacing your system may be the best decision you’ll make all summer.