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Comment by cake-rusk | Hacker News Reader

An AC is a heat pump too.

I don't know what the deal is about people saying heat pumps are expensive. They used to be a little pricier than AC units, but it's just a 4-way valve in addition to one.

I just looked it up, and I can buy a heat pump for 200-400 euros (depending on desired output), installation is ~400 euros. Why are you paying 20-30x for something identical? This sounds like a price difference created by government behavior, like with solar panels and related hardware which seem to be significantly overpriced in north america.

> This sounds like a price difference created by government behavior

It's a price difference created by market segmentation of heat pumps as a luxury product in the US, and the relative lack of qualified installers due to our under-investment in education in the trades.

Is this some country specific terminology? At least in Australia I've never seen an air conditioner that didn't use heat pump technology. Aside from evaporative cooling that is.

Air conditioners (the things that can make a room colder, but not hotter), are indeed heat pumps, but in the US when we refer to a "heat pump" we mean the same technology, but with a reversing valve so that it can make rooms both colder and hotter.

Interesting. I’ve never seen one that couldn’t heat and cool before. Even crusty 30 year old window units can do both. Seems almost absurd to not utilise it both ways.

You have to specifically look for cooling only AC where I am. Most ACs come with heat-dehumidify-cool mode selection and therefore qualify as "heat pumps", as far as how the term is used. I think it's just quirks of regions that traditionally didn't have ACs by default.

A Heat pump is just AC with more valves.

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