If you’re looking for the most efficient, versatile heating and cooling solution for your home or business in South Carolina, you should be thinking about investing in a heat pump. If you’ve never heard of a heat pump before, or you have but don’t understand why you should care about them, don’t worry; we’re going to explain everything in this post.
What Is a Heat Pump?
A heat pump is a piece of technology not unlike an air conditioner in that it uses refrigerant and heat exchangers to move heat around. Unlike an air conditioner, a heat pump has a dual purpose in that it can also act as a heater and warm your home. This means homeowners can use a single heat pump in place of having both an air conditioner and a heater.
Why Use a Heat Pump for Heating and Cooling Your Home?
So, other than being a two-in-one solution, heat pumps have many other benefits. First and foremost, they offer truly incredible heating efficiency: an electric furnace might achieve just short of 100% efficiency, but a heat pump can produce 300% or more, depending on your setup.
While the numbers aren’t as high for cooling, they’re still as good as any cutting-edge high-efficiency air conditioner…and that’s not the only reason you’ll end up saving money.
Heat pumps can be installed in a ductless mini-split system if you’re willing to make the up-front investment. This means that instead of running ducts through your home from a heat pump connected to an air handler (the same way your central AC works), you’ll run lines of refrigerant to internal units in each room you want to cool or heat.
This means you get to set the temperature of each room separately, further improving efficiency as you can allow unused rooms to sit at a different temperature to save money.
And regardless of whether you’re using mini-splits or ducts, they’re less prone to failure and less reliant on repairs and maintenance than a furnace since they don’t use combustion or heating elements.
What Makes Heat Pumps Good For South Carolina?
There is one big drawback to using a heat pump as your sole source of heating and cooling, which is the reason why in many parts of the country they’re used in combination with a traditional furnace: if it gets cold enough outside, the compressor simply cannot get enough heat out of the air to warm your home efficiently.
Efficiency starts to drop at around 40 degrees for a heat pump, though it will still be the most efficient heating option until the temperature gets to around 25 to 30 degrees. Below this, it will still work, but it will be increasingly inefficient until you hit a temperature where it simply can’t keep up.
But of course, these are rare temperatures throughout most of South Carolina. The vast majority of the year, you’ll be getting extremely high efficiency from your heat pump—and it will practically never be cold enough to fall below traditional heat, much less fail to run.
Parting Thoughts
As you can see, a heat pump is an excellent investment for South Carolina. The only real drawback, given the climate, is the initial installation cost, which can vary quite a bit depending on whether you’re going for an air handler system with ductwork or mini-splits—but it’ll more than pay for itself in efficiency either way.
Our professional team at Beaufort Air Conditioning will gladly install a heat pump for you, and we’re always ready for any repairs you may need. To learn more about our heat pump services, call us today at (843) 524-0996 or contact us online.
