Air source heat pumps

It all starts with the sun. The sun warms our atmosphere and the outer layer of the earth's crust, and in one year the energy it sends to the earth is 50 times higher than the total energy consumption of our planet: a vast and inexhaustible source of energy.

There is always plenty of thermal energy in the air, even on cold winter days and at night. And not only in Florida or the south of Spain, but in countries like Sweden or Norway, where thousands of houses already have heat pumps.

A heat pump only needs a heat source (the outside air), two heat exchangers (one to absorb heat and one to release it) and a relatively small amount of drive energy to keep the system going.

In a Daikin Altherma system the source is the outside air. The pump extracts energy at a certain temperature, raises that temperature and releases it into the water running to your low temperature radiators, underfloor heating or fan coil units. Between the two, the heat is moved by a working fluid.

As the working fluid passes through the evaporator and extracts heat from the air, it turns into a gas. This is where the compressor comes in: when you compress a gas, its temperature rises (inflate a bicycle tyre and you can feel the air warming through the rubber).

Inside your house the second heat exchange takes place when the compressed gas enters the condenser, a surface colder than the gas itself. The gas condenses and releases its heat, and that heat warms your home.