Many households in Southwest Florida rely on heat pumps to keep homes cool and dry in summer. If you’re thinking about installing one in your home now, your timing is good. Energy-efficient heat pumps are more technologically advanced than ever. A few innovative features help to maximize performance and conserve energy, while also prolonging the life of your heat pump air conditioning.

Some advanced features to look for in a heat pump:

• Two-speed compressors. Most heat pumps use single-speed compressors, which run at full speed at all times. Two-speed compressors allow heat pumps the flexibility to run closest to the capacity that’s needed at a particular time, conserving energy and reducing compressor wear. Two-speed compressors also work well with zoned cooling systems.
• Variable-speed or dual-speed motors on the indoor or outdoor fan blowers (or both). These motors keep air circulating at a comfortable rate. This saves energy, reduces cool drafts, and creates less noise than blowers running at full capacity all the time.
• Desuperheaters. Found as part of many high-efficiency heat pumps, these auxiliary heat exchangers recover otherwise wasted heat from the pump’s cooling mode and puts it to work heating water — often at least twice as efficiently as an electric water heater.
• Scroll compressors. Compared to piston compressors, scroll compressors are quieter and last longer.

At Conditioned Air, one of our goals is to help educate our customers about energy efficiency while maintaining or improving comfort. If we can answer questions for you — about heat pump air conditioning or other innovations — please contact us anytime. We’re proud to serve Southwest Florida, including Naples, Ft. Myers and the surrounding areas.

For more information about other HVAC topics, click here to download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.