• MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    5 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
      ·
      5 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).