How do we make your house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter? This is a question about life and comfort; and home comfort is our area of expertise. When it comes to heating your home, it is more of an easily understandable concept due to how it transfers energy. However, the main barrier for cooling something down is that you can’t simply add coolness to something. Coolness is simply the lack of heat. So, you want to remove heat but since energy can’t be destroyed it has to go somewhere. That’s the power of a heat pump!

At Sandbox+ HVAC, we are here to help you find the right heating and cooling system in Northern Colorado. From installation to preventative maintenance and repairs, our local HVAC technicians are committed to providing you with reliable solutions every time. Keep reading to learn more about heat pump systems to understand how they work.

We found early ways of removing heat. One of the basics you may know is evaporative cooling. You’ve undoubtedly experienced this because your body does it naturally; sweat is just evaporative cooling. Whenever any piece of matter goes through a phase change it requires energy. When water, or in this case sweat, goes from liquid to solid it requires energy, it takes that energy from your skin transitioning from a liquid to a gas dispersing into the air around you. Energy was added to the liquid and removed from your body thus cooling you down.

This is also how swamp coolers work; they use the temperature of the ambient air to evaporate water thus dropping the temperature of the air going into your home, unfortunately that energy still exists but is now in the water in the air partially negating the effect. That’s why a heat pump system is superior. Especially when it comes to moving that air in or out of your home to keep an optimal temperature.

Now imagine if you were to do the reverse you wanted that gaseous gross sweat to come back into a liquid? You added energy to it before now. What if we did the opposite? Remove the energy from the air by cooling. If you think that sounds hard you’re lacking imagination. Ever have a nice cool glass of ice water in the summer? What appears on the outside of the glass? Little water droplets that were not from the contents inside, where’d they come from? Obviously you know it is called condensation, it’s the same vapor that forms clouds. 

We now have the essential processes of the refrigeration cycle. In the real world, these systems are mostly separate and interact at different times. But in the world of human design we can make a closed loop. Now let’s imagine boiling and evaporating water on one side. This wouldn’t have much of a cooling effect because we’re adding energy by boiling the water but there’s an important thing to remember about phase changes and that they are dependent on temperature and pressure. A heat pump system has all the components it needs for a closed loop while ensuring your comfort through efficiently moving heat.

Anyone who lives in or has moved to Colorado and does any baking or cooking should know that water boils at 200 degrees Fahrenheit here but at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level. This is due to reduced atmospheric pressure at higher altitude. When it comes to a heat pump system, the pressure inside of the unit impacts the temperature of the condensable fluid in order for it to transfer heat.

By hooding up our evaporation side of the loop and keeping the condensing side under normal or a higher pressure, we create a controlled flow between the two sides. This allows us to cool one side and heat up the other using nothing but the energy required to run the compressor. Congratulations, we’re pumping heat!

Since a heat pump is a refrigerant-based cycle, they are specifically engineered to boil at lower temperatures. Refrigerants make it easier to turn from liquid to gas while absorbing heat from the surrounding air which makes the heating and cooling system perfect for our climate in Colorado. This is the miracle of the heat pump. We aren’t using electricity to create heat, which is expensive and inefficient; we are using electricity to move heat by manipulating the pressure of the fluid.

A heat pump system for Northern Colorado homeowners is a must if you’re looking for a reliable, affordable solution for heating and cooling your home. Our local HVAC technicians are committed to installing an optimally sized system that works the best for your property so it can run efficiently for years to come.