How does an air-to-air heat pump work?
As the name indicates a heat pump, pumps heat from one location to another. If you remove heat from an area, that area will become cold. Strange as it may sound an example of this is your home refrigerator. The refrigerator keeps the food cold by removing the heat inside and exhausting it out the back or bottom into you kitchen, via the condenser fan. Using the same process, in the summer a heat pump removes heat from inside your home and exhausts that heat outside via your outside unit. In the winter the same principle is applied except in reverse with the use of reversing valves in the outdoor unit. The outdoor unit extracts heat from the outdoor air and exhausts it indoors to keep you warm and cozy. You may ask how a heat pump can extract heat from outside when, in the winter, it could be zero or below outside. The heat pump can accomplish this because heat exists in all air down to minus 460 degrees F. Even extremely cold winter air contains heat. In this heat extracting process th
