Doesn't AC mean air? Air conditioning? There's no air involved here - it's basically antifreeze pumped through the floors/ceilings. The heat exchanger is an enclosed chamber where warm molecules exchange across into a cool chamber, in summer it's warm molecules from the brine that was in our floors/ceilings and the cool air is the 11c brine that runs through pipes in the ground. across a fin/radiator. It's all completely enclosed. The only "AC" is in the enclosed heat exchanger where warm and cold air molecules move between chambers.

▲

comrade1234 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh I should mention though, there is a compressor that compresses a volatile gas that is the carrier of the heat from the warm to the cold chambers. But it's so efficient that it's pretty much free to cool kostenlos/free cooling) using ground temp (11c here). Heating in winter does cost something because we like to be warmer than 11c.

	▲	Kim_Bruning 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So an 'air conditioner' is the same class of technology, except (typically) it works air/air . A modern minisplit air conditioner can't get a CoP as high as your awesome ground source system, and with 11C ground the ground source system has a superpower the minisplit can't quite match. That said, a minisplit is cheaper to purchase and install, is easier to retrofit on an existing home, and still has a CoP well over 1. This is why I think the semantic debate is a distraction when there's practical problems to be solved. I'd think we'd want all our homes electrically heated and cooled with CoP>1. The debate should be between heat pump technology and older heating methods, not necessarily between cousins.
	▲	sghiassy 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A heat pump that cools and an Air Conditioner are the same thing

▲

UltraSane 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AC means any kind of refrigeration technology used to cool a building lower than the outside temperature.