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For climates with moderate heating and cooling needs, heat pumps offer an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioners. Like your refrigerator, heat pumps use electricity to move heat from a cool space into a warm, making the cool space cooler and the warm space warmer. During the heating season, heat pumps move heat from the cool outdoors into your warm house; during the cooling season, heat pumps move heat from your cool house into the warm outdoors. Because they move heat rather than generate heat, heat pumps can provide up to 4 times the amount of energy they consume.
The most common type of heat pump is the air-source heat pump, which transfers heat between your house and the outside air. If you heat with electricity, a heat pump can trim the amount of electricity you use for heating by as much as 30% - 40%. High-efficiency heat pumps also dehumidify better than standard central air conditioners, resulting in less energy usage and more cooling comfort in summer months. However, the efficiency of most air-source heat pumps as a heat source drops dramatically at low temperatures, generally making them unsuitable for cold climates, although there are systems that can overcome that problem.
For homes without ducts, air-source heat pumps are also available in a ductless version called a mini-split heat pump. In addition, a special type of air-source heat pump called a "reverse cycle chiller" generates hot and cold water rather than air, allowing it to be used with radiant floor heating systems in heating mode.
Higher efficiencies are achieved with geothermal (ground-source or water-source) heat pumps, which transfer heat between your house and the ground or a nearby water source. Although they cost more to install, geothermal heat pumps have low operating costs because they take advantage of relatively constant ground or water temperatures. However, the installation depends on the size of your lot, the subsoil and landscape. Ground-source or water-source heat pumps can be used in more extreme climatic conditions than air-source heat pumps, and customer satisfaction with the systems is very high.
A new type of heat pump for residential systems is the absorption heat pump, also called a gas-fired heat pump. Absorption heat pumps use heat as their energy source, and can be driven with a wide variety of heat sources.
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STRONGER ECONOMY BRIGHTENS HVACR OUTLOOK
An accelerating U.S. economy, buoyed by strong productivity growth and historically low interest rates, promises in 2004 to reduce unemployment. That is good news for the heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC/R) industry, which has been waiting for manufacturing and office construction to catch up to the sizzling home building market.
The slower-than-expected recovery from the recession during 2003 - prolonged by layoffs of manufacturing workers and high office vacancy rates - dampened commercial market construction, although a perceptible upward trend at year-end provided encouragement for 2004.
As in recent past years, it was the housing industry, with strong new construction and home remodeling projects thanks to low lending rates, that helped drive shipments of central air-conditioners and heat pumps slightly above the 6.7 million record set in 2002.
Thanks to tax cuts and a generous Federal Reserve Board, which seems in no rush to raise short-term interest rates, mortgage rates are expected to rise only moderately in 2004. After bottoming out at 5.31 percent last June, 30-year fixed rate mortgages were still a bargain at slightly more than 6 percent at the end of 2003.
Higher rates reduce the size of a loan for which a borrower can qualify and may slow new construction. They may also curtail refinancing, which provided lots of cash last year for remodeling projects and replacement of obsolete heating and cooling units.
But less robust new housing market could be counterbalanced by increasing numbers of replacements, which continue to drive the air-conditioning market, thanks to at least 65 million units now in service that will need replacing over time.
Meanwhile, double-digit growth in health-care construction provided a welcome boost last year to non-residential construction, especially given the slowdown in spending on primary and secondary school construction as a result of budget cutbacks and the tepid industrial construction market.
Industry observers expect an improving economy to brighten the outlook for non-residential large unitary air-conditioners and heat pumps (BTU output of 65,000 and larger). Avoiding a decline in shipments for the first time in 2 years, manufacturers reported that shipments matched those of 2002.
Water source heat pumps and packaged terminal air-conditioners both rose about 2 percent, while packaged terminal heat pumps were down 8 percent, and room fan coils dropped 7 percent. The economy's weakness was also seen in an 11-percent decline in heating and cooling coil shipments and a 10-percent drop in central station air handlers.
Reciprocating chillers dropped 2 percent from the 2002 level of 14,368 units. Large tonnage liquid chiller shipments dropped about 3 percent from the 2002 total of 5,793 units.
Phase out of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chillers still remains a long-term task, assuring steady shipments by manufacturers of non-CFC replacement units. Of the approximately 80,000 CFC chillers in the early 1990s, approximately 36,000 are still in use, despite significant efficiency gains provided by replacement non-CFC chillers.
According to a brochure from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at www.ari.org/consumer/articles, "Building owners with obsolete CFC equipment compete for dwindling supplies of reclaimed refrigerant and parts - paying higher prices and risking refrigerant shortages. Savings from electricity costs alone pay back the investment at high rates of return - even at low energy prices."
Refrigerants are reclaimed to meet ARI Standard 700 for purity and are available throughout the U.S., although some such as R-502 appear to be in short supply, and the cost of CFCs has increased dramatically compared to 10 years ago.
The outlook for shipments of new large tonnage liquid chillers is brighter now than in past years, thanks to better prospects for the economy and their installation in offices, malls, hospitals, airports, factories, sports complexes, government buildings, and institutions.
It's been a difficult few years for the HVAC/R industry, despite the welcome new records in shipments of central air-conditioners and heat pumps. The loss of millions of jobs, especially the cutbacks in manufacturing employment, took its toll as indicated by the slowdown in shipments in many sectors of the industry.
With strong fiscal and monetary incentives now working their way into the economy, the rebuilding process is well underway with jobs expansion and the need for new buildings slowly becoming a reality. The U.S. population is expected to increase by about 30 million by 2010, and this industry is well positioned to help improve the quality of life at home and abroad through the production of high-quality equipment.
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Ductless split air conditioning offer higher efficiency and reduced noise without a large hole in the wall or an open window. By separating compressor and condenser fan from indoor blower, the noisiest components are outside and away from the room. The indoor part of the ductless air conditioner has remote control capabilities and a timer to cycle the system only when needed.
Since mini split air conditioners have no ducts, they avoid energy losses associated with ductwork of central forced air AC systems. Duct losses can account for a significant portion of energy consumption for space conditioning, especially if the ducts are in a unconditioned space such as an attic.
Ductless air conditioning offers Higher Efficiency vs. window air conditioning, less noise, and no costly ductwork.
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