• Psythik@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    6 months ago

    No we have both, and they’re still heat pumps. The direction the heat pumped is irrelevant; the fundamentals are the same.

    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Yes, air conditioners and heat pumps are indeed the same thing. Americans just don’t call the two-directional heat pumps air conditioners for some reason. I guess they don’t believe you can condition air by making it hotter. In my country, we consider heating part of conditioning.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 months ago

        We call it HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning), and so do other countries that speak English for a reason. It’s different from heating in that air conditioning can also involve controlling air humidity/quality.

        Heating gets its own because until reversible heat pumps, it was a separate system that only heated the building (sometimes not even the air directly in the case of heated floors).