The end of gas and oil-fired heating systems is sealed, at least in Germany, but heat pumps also have some unconstrained advantages.
No one can escape the term heat pump any more. But very few people know what it actually is. Only one thing has been heard again and again: It's not supposed to be cheap. But is that true? We explain the answer.
A heat pump is a heating system that basically works like an inverted refrigerator. The idea is simple: a heat pump extracts energy from an external heat source, for example from the air, and uses electricity to bring it to a higher temperature so that it can then be used for heating. This works in four steps:
evaporation, compression, condensation
and expansion
The first step is the evaporation of the coolant. The evaporator contains a liquid refrigerant that evaporates at relatively low temperatures. The heat from the air or the ground is sufficient to make this possible.
The second step follows: compressing the vaporized refrigerant in the compressor, which is powered by electricity. This increases the pressure of the refrigerant and therefore also its temperature.
In the third stage, the heated refrigerant is fed into the condenser. During the condensation process, the coolant releases its heat to the water in the heater.Finally, the fourth step is the expansion of the coolant. The refrigerant becomes liquid again, but is still under pressure. The expansion valve returns it to the original, low pressure level and from there it returns to the evaporator. There the process starts again. As a result, the heat pump brings the heating water to the desired flow temperature and the radiators heat up.
If you're thinking: "That all sounds very exciting, but what does it mean for me?", I should tell you that heat pumps in Mallorca are among the technical installations that are subsidized. This means that you can use the new technology and save money at the same time. Let's be honest: who wouldn't want that?
So if you're interested in a heat pump today, you should find out all you can about combining it with solar or photovoltaic energy. More about the funding options
