G.E.'s New Heat Pump

Home builders and owners have long dreamed of a cheap and practical heat pump to maintain comfortable temperatures in homes both winter and summer. This week the dream was a big step closer to reality. General Electric Co. unveiled a new, three-ton model of its Weathertron heat pump specifically designed for the mass home-building market. The new G.E. pump will heat or cool a seven-room house in temperatures ranging from --20DEG to 120DEG. Cost: about $2,000, including installation.

The pump operates by electricity, uses a motor compressor and coils much like a refrigerator to keep the house at comfortable temperatures. In summer it draws the hot air out of the house through ducts, runs it over a refrigerated coil, circulates the cooled air back through the house. In winter, the pump draws in the cold outside air, picks up heat from it by passing it over an even colder coil; the heat is then transferred by fluid to a compressor, which raises the fluid to a high temperature, passes it to a second coil used to heat inside air. When the outside temperature falls below 20DEG, thus lowering the system's efficiency, an extra electric heating unit goes into operation to help heat the air.

General Electric already has orders for 1,000 heat pumps to be installed in a new housing project at Cape Canaveral, Fla., hopes that four times as many heat pumps will be sold in the next three years as were in the last seven years. Biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance is the fact that the pump is still too expensive to operate in any but mild Southern climates, where little heating is needed in winter.

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