English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

My third research blog summarizes the information found at http://www.heatpumpcentre.org/. The site operates under the International Energy Agency and also claimed to be the world’s leading information center on heat pumps. Their goal is to speed up the use of heat pumps and related technologies. Again there could be some biased information on the site being that their goal is to promote the use of heat pumps, we will have to make sure to take only the relevant information from this source.

For my third source, I wanted something that would provide a little more detail for our primary reader, contractors, than the previous sources. The other sites had a lot of general information about heat pumps and their installation, but a contractor will want more than just general knowledge.

When searching through the site, I came across a few pages with detailed information on many aspects of heat pumps. These pages layout specifics about different heat sources, heat pump performance, and something I did not expect to find, working fluids. The page on heat sources gave the average temperatures of each source, along with when, where, and why each source should be used. Some pump performance information included comparisons of the COP and PER of the different heat pumps, along with a comparison to forced air systems. The section about the different types of working fluid will be very helpful to include in our white paper. It went into depth about when certain refrigerants should be used, how they should be used, and the plans to phase some of them out. This will be a great section to include for the contractors to give them information to make a decision on the proper working fluid.