Heat pumps are an efficient option for heating and cooling your home no matter whether they’re air-source or geothermal. However, there are some significant differences between the two that you’ll want to understand when considering which option is best for your home.
The main draw of heat pumps is the unmatched heating efficiency they offer. They achieve this efficiency due to the fact that they warm your home by extracting heat from exterior sources and moving it into the home instead of creating the heat from combustible fuels or electrical heating elements.
Where exactly they extract this heat from is where these two options get their names. Air-source heat pumps extract the heat from the exterior air, while geothermal heat pumps extract it from below ground. Extracting heat from below ground is more complicated than getting it from the exterior air, so geothermal installations are more expensive and require a suitable area of land or water to be available.
However, geothermal heat pumps offer a number of advantages that can make them worth the extra cost and installation complications. Unlike the outdoor air, which experiences a range of temperatures, the area underground remains at a near constant temperature all year. This allows geothermal installations to be even more efficient in both heating and cooling than their air-source counterparts. Geothermal heat pumps already utilize water to transfer heat with the ground, so some models include the additional ability to transfer heat to your home’s water to provide nearly free water heating when they operate in cooling mode.
If you like peace and quiet, you also might enjoy the fact that geothermal installations are quieter since they don’t have an outdoor compressor like air-source heat pumps and air conditioners. Their components also tend to need less maintenance and last longer.
If you want more details about the differences between air-source and geothermal heat pumps, contact us at Bill Joplin’s Air Conditioning & Heating. We’ve been in business since 1978 and are proud to satisfy the HVAC needs of homeowners in McKinney, Frisco, Allen, and other nearby communities.
