I’d never heard of electric heat pumps until she moved south.
I’d always lived right up near the Canadian border where the weather is frosty and wet for most of the year.
We heated our house with a gas furnace and never bothered with a/c. We dealt with sub zero temperatures, snow and blizzard conditions, and snow shovels, ice scrapers, rock salt and wool coats were necessities. Our up-to-date location is sizzling and sunny just about year round. The Winter time brings temperatures down into the forties, however they don’t last long and the two of us never get snow. The summers are tepid and humid with temperatures that soar into the nineties or even the triple digits. The house the two of us bought is outfitted with a heat pump. The real estate agent was truly gleeful by this and considered it an asset. I researched heat pumps to understand what the two of us were buying. I l earned that heat pumps provide both heating and cooling capacity… Rather than burn fossil fuels to create heat, the plan takes advantage of existing heat. During the warmer weather, it operates almost exactly prefer an cooling system. It uses refrigerant to pull heat out of the house and transfer it outside. Once the two of us switch to heating mode, the plan pulls ambient heat out of the outdoor air, compresses it to a higher temperature and delivers it indoors. The heat pump is appealingly clean to operate. It minimizes our carbon footprint, keeps running costs low and provides an especially healthy residing space. The plan is whisper-quiet, effective at handling excess humidity and won’t dry out the air during the winter.