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Notes -
A heat pump is basically an air conditioner unit that you can switch from circulating cold air and discharging hot air to circulating hot air and discharging cold air.
Heat pumps can have in theory +200% efficiency. This means for every unit of energy it moves two. So for heating, it takes one unit of energy to move two units of energy from your cold end to your hot end.
This number is only really impressive when you’re comparing to electric heat. Where 1 unit of energy going into your baseboard heater provides something like 1 unit of heat in your house.
If your burning #2 fuel oil (or any other fossil fuel really), it may not be cheaper without pairing it with a geothermal cell. There’s a few kinds of geothermal cells, but they’re basically wells or loops of pipe buried in the ground. Since the ground temperature is something like 55 degrees and water has a very high specific heat, it is easier for the heat pump (air conditioner) to pull heat from that water then from the probably much colder air (while heating). It’s also easier to discharge that heat when you’re cooling so it’s a savings on air conditioning too. Even at the same temperature, the water can transfer much more heat.
TLDR
Heat pumps are better than baseboard heat, but may not be more cost effective than fossil fuels unless paired with geothermal.
I’m not an HVAC guy, so anyone that is please correct any misunderstandings I have.
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