Dual Fuel, All-In-One Hybrid Heat Systems Explained
If you’re shopping for a new furnace, energy efficiency and comfort likely top your list of priorities. A hybrid heat system in our region meets both criteria. Such a system combines all the energy efficiency of a heat pump with a gas or propane furnace. Because temperatures in this region stay relatively mild throughout the heating season, these hybrid systems offer affordable and reliable heat.
What Is Hybrid Heat?
A hybrid heat pump combines the heat pump components with those inside a combustion furnace in one single package.
A heat pump combines air conditioning and heating in one appliance by moving heat from one place to another. In the summer, the pump gathers it from your home’s air and deposits it outdoors. In the winter, a reversing valve changes the flow of heat. The pump extracts the heat in the air outdoors, warms the refrigerant with it, and sends it through the evaporator coil inside the air handler to heat your home.
A combustion furnace uses a fuel to create heat inside a burner in the air handler that warms a heat exchanger. The air blowing over it picks up the heat to warm your home.
Hybrid Heating System Benefits
A heat pump works well until temperatures fall below freezing. At that temperature, it struggles to extract enough heat in the outside air to warm a home. Most pumps come with an auxiliary heating coil to compensate, but that coil uses far more energy than the pump does for heating.
Hybrid systems automatically switch the heating function from the pump to the combustion furnace when temperatures fall below a preset point. Instead of burning fuel throughout the winter, you’ll only need it during our coldest periods. A heat pump heats with much higher efficiency than a gas furnace does until the heating coil kicks in. You’ll save money and energy by using the pump during mild weather and gas when it’s colder.
Learn more about J & J Mechanical, Inc.’s hybrid heat options, or give us a call today at (855) 800-1341 to schedule outstanding HVAC services for your Greenville area home.