The solar panel people.com - Renewable energy systems | heat pumps | solar panels | Kingspan solar panels | geothermal heat pumps | air source heat pumps | evacuated tube solar panels | flat panel solar | Waterkotte heat pumps | Mitsubishi heat pumps | mitsubishi ecodan heat pump | solar panels | solar heating systems | ground source heat pumps | heating solutions | solar hot water

Heat Pumps - A great choice for home heating
The heat pump is the best choice for heating your home. Heat pump heating is relatively new for residential heating applications but as a renewable energy technology it is ideally suited for our region where winters are relatively mild.
The heat pump is the most practical and economical way to keep your home warm and comfortable. With your new heat pump, you'll be able to maintain the desired comfort level in your home while saving on your monthly energy bill.

Heat pumps offer numerous advantages as a heating solution.
• Heat pumps offer efficiency gains on the order of 3:1 and higher, compared to electrical heating. Thus for every unit of energy consumed by the heat pump, three or more units of heat are gained making a pump highly energy efficient

• Heat pumps extract freely available heat from the outside air or ground, so no fossil fuel is burnt to heat your home - an important advantage in the area of efficiency and lower running costs

• Some of our heat pump systems used to heat can also be used to cool.

Heat pumps - The Basic Principle
As with many technologies that we use in every-day life, the basic principles of how a heat pump works are simple. All our surroundings, even a block of ice, have heat. The purpose of a heat pump is to absorb heat in one place where it is plentiful, then to transport and release it in another location where it can be used for space and hot water heating.
There are many different kinds of heat pumps, but they all operate on the same basic principle of heat transfer.
Heat transfer means that rather than burning fuel to create the heat, a device such as our range of award winning heating pumps move heat from one place to another.
In a heat pump, this heat is transferred from a heat source (e.g. the ground or the air outside of your home) into a heat sink (e.g. your home). What’s more, it is free. All we have to pay for is the machine to recover it and the cost of the energy to run the machine. Both air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps can extract heat energy from the outside air or ground even on the coldest days of winter.

Air source heat pumps – also known as ‘Air to water heat pumps’:

Air source Heat pumps -
Heat pumps transfer heat from one environment to another via refrigerant - takes heat from the air outside your home and pumps it inside through refrigerant-filled coils. Inside this basic heat pump, you'll find two fans, refrigerator coils, a reversing valve and a compressor. - This heat can then be used to warm water for radiators or underfloor heating systems depending on the type of central heating distribution set up in your property. Hot water is also be supplied to the hot water storage cylinder for your families hot water needs. Some models of our air source heat pumps also allow this process to be reversed providing cooling of the home or business. This offers even higher efficiency figures when taken in combination of heating and cooling with commercial applications benefiting most from this form of combined renewable energy. Our range of air source heat pumps are from two top manufacturers and further detail on these eco house – green technology systems are available by clicking on the link below:
• Waterkotte
• Mitsubishi

Air source heat pumps can be integrated into your home quite easily. The 'Waterkotte' models available have computer control to provide internal temperature control at your comfort level while also monitoring the north face of your building, (the coldest face of your property) and the pump computer engages the pump contoller while maximizing efficiency.

Ground-source heat pumps – Ground heat pump (also called 'water to water heat pumps')

Ground-source heat pumps -
These pumps absorb heat from the ground or an underground body of water and transfer it indoors. The most common type of ground-source heat pump transfers heat directly from the ground by absorbing it through buried pipes filled with water or a refrigerant. The process is similar an air source heat pump but in a GSHP (Ground source heat pump ) energy is extracted from a ground water source or the earth surrounding your property. A geothermal heat pump is a series of closed pipe loops buried horizontally in trenches or in vertical boreholes that are connected back to the heat pump unit. If underground water is available - this energy can be used in the same way as soil-energy or ground source, but the groundwater is extracted from one borehole and re-injected into a second borehole after the heat pump has transferred the heat into your home. This is called an ‘open loop’ system.
Primarily for new build properties the year round stable temperatures found in the ground are ideal for heat pumps and the efficiency of the heat pump remains high when the weather is coldest and the heat requirements of your home are greatest. Retro fitting of geothermal heat pumps is possible in certain situations and our site survey can assess which of the heating pumps from our range or other renewable energy technology that best meet your family’s needs and your properties constraints.
• Waterkotte

WaterKotte GmbH - Geothermal pumps above are defined as water source heat pumps (no.1) and ground source heat pumps (no.2 & main image above). The heating pump heat sources are all geothermal due the fact that the energy is drawn from the ground outside your property.