Air conditioning is often used as a way to cool a house during the hot summer months, but modern air-conditioning systems that use heat pump technology can also warm your home during winter.
How Can Air Conditioning Warm Your Home?
Air-conditioning systems use heat pump technology that reverses their usual cooling process. Even when it’s cold outside, these systems can extract heat from the outdoor air and transfer it inside your home by reversing the flow of refrigerant, which can turn your cooling system into a heating system. This process does work better in milder climates and where winter temperatures don’t drop below freezing. If you need air conditioning Gloucester, go to Ace Comfort Cooling or other companies for air-conditioning products and solutions.
Energy Efficiency and Cost Benefits
Using an air-conditioning system for heating can also be a way to save money. They are usually very efficient, and they can produce up to four units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed. A standard portable unit uses approximately 1.2 kWh of electricity every hour, and for a household running their unit for about six hours each day the electricity usage would be around 7 kWh. At typical UK energy prices, this translates to roughly £2.40 in daily running costs.
These calculations make them a more economical option than traditional electric heaters, which usually only provide one unit of heat per unit of electricity used. Modern air-conditioning systems can also come with smart controls, so you can control the temperature remotely through an app on your phone. Having these controls in place can help manage your heating costs and potentially save money.
Problems with Using Air Conditioning to Heat Your Home
In extremely cold conditions, when temperatures regularly fall below freezing, you might need to supplement an air-conditioning heating system with a more traditional heating system. Heat pumps do work well in British weather, but they may also take longer to warm your home up in a cold spell when compared to conventional gas heating systems.
