If you’re a homeowner here in Randallstown, MD, who’s in the market for a new HVAC system, you should consider a heat pump. They’re the latest in ultra-efficient HVAC technology and come with a variety of benefits that you won’t get from other system types. However, since most homes have traditionally relied on furnaces and conventional central air conditioners for their HVAC needs, you may not know much about heat pumps. To remedy that, here are six great reasons you should buy a heat pump to serve your home’s HVAC needs.
1. Heating and Cooling in One Unit
Heat pumps, unlike some other kinds of HVAC systems, offer both heating and cooling in a single unit. Traditionally, you’d need a furnace with a separate AC system if you wanted both central heat and AC in your home. Heat pumps, as their names suggest, can move heat from one place to another. As a result, they can transfer heat out of your home in the summer and into the house in the winter. The secret to this dual functionality is that heat pumps don’t consume any fuel or electricity to generate heat in the winter. Instead, they extract heat energy from the outside air, amplify it, and carry it into your home. In the summer, they do the opposite, absorbing heat energy from inside your home, amplifying it, and expelling it outside.
2. Heat Pumps Offer Unbeatable Efficiency
The most important reason you should buy a heat pump is that it offers efficiency levels you won’t get with any other type of HVAC system. They’re so efficient that it’s often difficult to compare them with conventional HVAC systems. On the heating side, consider that the most efficient gas furnace you can buy will only operate at an efficiency of 98.5%. And if you were to purchase an electric furnace, it would operate at 100% efficiency.
Given that an electric furnace is perfectly efficient and the best gas furnaces are close to it, you might think there can’t be much efficiency to gain from heating your home with a heat pump. However, that’s not true because air-source heat pumps can achieve 400% efficiency in optimal conditions. This is because they only consume electricity to move heat from one place to another. They simply collect existing heat energy for use in heating your home and don’t expend energy heating a fuel source.
In the summer, heat pumps also offer efficient cooling. A heat pump offers cooling efficiency that’s on par with the most efficient traditional central air conditioners available today. That’s because a traditional air conditioner is a type of heat pump that also uses a refrigerant to transfer heat.
3. Lower Energy Costs
Since heat pumps offer such high efficiency, they will reduce your yearly household energy costs. When you consider that the heating and cooling costs of the average home make up over half of its energy bills, the savings can be significant. If the HVAC system you’re replacing is relatively old, your savings could be much higher than that. This means that a heat pump, whose upfront costs might be a bit higher than a conventional furnace and central AC system configuration, will pay for itself fairly quickly in most households. After that point, all of the savings stay in your pocket.
4. Safer Operations
Although it would be unfair to call gas or electric furnaces unsafe, the fact is that fires can and do happen in homes that rely on them. According to the National Fire Protection Association, home heating equipment is routinely the leading cause of residential fires each year. This makes sense because both gas and electric furnaces operate at extremely high temperatures. Plus, something like a gas leak or a short circuit can easily lead to a fire.
Heat pumps, by contrast, don’t operate at high temperatures. Plus, the part of a heat pump that operates inside your home consists of little more than a blower fan and a heat exchanger. There’s no combustion process or heating coils to worry about. Therefore, the odds of a heat pump causing a fire are comparatively low.
5. Environmental Friendliness
Heat pumps are also more environmentally friendly than other types of HVAC systems. In heating mode, they don’t use combustion to produce heat, so they don’t release carbon into the atmosphere as they work. Plus, their energy efficiency limits their electricity consumption, reducing the impact of the electricity that’s required to power them. Plus, heat pumps use the latest refrigerants, so they don’t release greenhouse gasses the way older central air conditioners do as they age.
On top of that, heat pumps pair well with rooftop solar installations. So, they can be a key part of any residential electrical project. By removing dependence on fossil fuels and switching to renewables like solar, you can decrease your home’s carbon footprint even further. And if you don’t want rooftop solar, you can always purchase electricity from a green provider through your power company to achieve the same effect.
6. Heat Pumps Qualify for Tax Incentives
Beginning in 2024, Maryland homeowners purchasing heat pumps will qualify for some significant tax incentives through the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act. Within that law, the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act (HEEHRA) offers point-of-sale rebates for moderate and low-income households who purchase heat pumps. If your household earns below 80% of the local median income, you could qualify for a rebate worth up to $8,000 on a heat pump. And if you earn between 80% and 150% of the median income, you can claim a rebate worth up to $4,000.
With rebates like those, heat pumps are more than cost-competitive with traditional HVAC systems. In some cases, they may even cost less. When you add up your possible savings on the installation side of buying a new heat pump with the potential operating cost savings they offer, a new heat pump becomes an attractive proposition indeed.
In addition to using a heat pump to cool and heat the air in your home, you can retrofit a heat pump to an existing water heater, or you can purchase a new one that includes a heat pump and advanced monitoring features. The heat pump water heater may also provide an additional tax rebate opportunity.
Your Local Heat Pump Specialists
HB Home Service Team has served residents in and around Randallstown, MD since 1914. Today, we’re your trusted local heat pump experts, and that’s not all. We offer complete HVAC services, including installation, repair, and maintenance. Plus, we can handle all of your home’s plumbing needs, and we offer carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, surge protection, and well pump services. We even offer financing options on approved credit if you need help to fit a new heat pump or other HVAC system into your household budget. We’re proud to be an employee-owned company, so every time you speak to one of our employees, you’re dealing with an owner who’s committed to treating you right.
If you’d like to know more about how a heat pump could be the right choice in your Randallstown, MD home, contact the team at HB Home Service Team today!
