Video: Advancements in Heat Pump Technology

MENLO PARK — Host, Sarah Rutan: If you’re thinking about switching to solar power in your home, you should also consider installing a heat pump for your HVAC system. Today we’re in Menlo Park with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Mike Rebholtz of Alternative Heating & Conditioning Solutions to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Mike Rebholtz: I’m here today to talk about heat pumps. A lot of people are questioning, you know, what is a heat pump? What do they do? How will it heat my home? Does it air condition well? Is it efficient? And I really start talking to people about heat pumps when we’re talking about if they have solar and they want to start getting off the grid or if they’re on propane and they don’t want to use propane to heat their home. They want to use electricity. So, when we heat and cool on a heat pump, we’re doing it with electricity.

They’ve become very efficient. They’ve become a lot more – they produce a lot more heat than they used to. We’ve gone from an R22 refrigerant to a 410A refrigerant, which means that it could produce six to ten degrees more heat than they ever used to. Efficiencies have gotten much better. They’ve gone to variable-speed compressors, which are very efficient. And they don’t pull a lot of energy off the grid immediately. They just gradually come up. And so we find that heat pumps have a really good place here in the Peninsula with a lot of people that are doing solar.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.