Heat Pump (was Central Air)
Posted by Matthew Sat, 13 May 2006 18:35:00 GMT
UPDATE 07/27/06: We ended up getting the Nordyne/Gibson JT3BD Heat Pump. We’ve only been in the house a short time but we’ve been through some very hot and humid days and thus far it is working fine.
OLD POST: We’re now considering installing an Anderson Envirosure 1400 Heat Pump. It uses puron instead of freon and performs the cooling by pulling heat out of your house. It then utilizes an air handler inside the house to distribute the air around the house. It is setup like an air conditioner but flipped around so that the hot coils are on the inside and the cold coils are on the outside.
Heat pumps are generally considered more efficient than air conditioners. Unfortunately, when the temperature drops below freezing the cold coil outside can ice up and it has to switch back to ac mode to heat the coil up and melt the ice. However, we don’t plan on using it in the dead of winter, for that we’ll get a natural gas boiler to send hot water to our radiators. But for cool nights in Fall and Spring it will be fine and should be as simple as flipping a switch to go from cool to hot air.
