Strait Cool Condensers
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Airflow Requirements - A typical rule of thumb for air flow requirements is 400 CFM per Ton (cubic feet per minute) for air conditioning systems and 450 CFM per ton for heat pump systems. Inadequate condenser air causes high head pressures which lead to compressor failures.

Ground and Water Source Heat Pumps
It is possible to relocate heat from the ground or water with a heat pump. Most of the time ground and water temperatures are higher than winter air temperatures so they are more efficient to use as heat sources. For example there can be a raging snow storm with air temperatures in the 0 ºF range yet the ground temperature 6 feet down might be 40 ºF. However those mechanical systems are a lot more complicated than air source heat pumps and although COPs of 4:1 or higher can be achieved, the much greater installation costs and increased maintenance and repair costs should be carefully considered compared to the expected extra energy savings.
Balance Point
The Balance Point of a heat pump is the outdoor temperature (usually between 30 °F to 45 °F) at which a heat pump's output exactly equals the heating needs of the conditioned space. Below the balance point, supplementary heat is needed to maintain indoor design conditions.
COP
COP or Co-efficient Of Performance is a way of describing a heat pump's efficiency. It is the ratio of heat produced to the amount of energy required to run the system. The COP is calculated by dividing the total heating capacity provided by the heat pump, including circulating fan heat but excluding supplementary resistance heat (Btu's per hour), by the total electrical input (watts) x 3.412. Another rating given to heat pumps is HSPF. Typical COPs for an air source heat pump under optimum conditions are 3 to 1. In other words for one dollar's worth of energy input you receive 3 dollars worth of energy output. However conditions are not always optimum. As outdoor temperatures drop so does the COP. At a COP of 2:1 you would still be receiving twice the heat output compared to straight electric resistance heating elements. (if electric elements were rated by a COP, they would rate 1:1) No matter how cold it gets outside the COP of an air source heat pump never gets any worse than 1:1. However it is not wise to torture the expensive heat pump under these conditions when the same output efficiency can be achieved by other means. The annual energy savings attributable to a heat pump are a result of the sum totals of all the individual COPs that the system operated under for the entire heating season.Most of the energy savings occur in the milder portions of the heating season when little or no back up heat is required and the bulk of the heating requirements are being met primarily by the energy efficient heat pump.

This section explains in basic terms the principals that are used to create the refrigeration effect. Graphics and animation's are used in an attempt to make it easy to understand the concepts involved.  First of all, did you know that there is no such thing as cold? You can describe something as cold and everyone will know what you mean, but cold really only means that something contains less heat than something else. All there really is, is greater and lesser amounts of heat. The definition of refrigeration is The Removal and Relocation of Heat. So if something is to be refrigerated, it is to have heat removed from it. If you have a warm can of pop at say 80 degrees Fahrenheit and you would prefer to drink it at 40 degrees, you could place it in your fridge for a while, heat would somehow be removed from it, and you could eventually enjoy a less warm pop. (oh, all right, a cold pop.) But lets say you placed that 40 degree pop in the freezer for a while and when you removed it, it was at 35 degrees. See what I mean, even "cold" objects have heat content that can be reduced to a state of "less heat content". The limit to this process would be to remove all heat from an object. This would occur if an object was cooled to Absolute Zero which is -273º C or -460º F. They come close to creating this temperature under laboratory conditions and strange things like electrical superconductivity occur.