When you think about cooling a hot building, you probably don't think of heat pumps. In fact, you likely think of using an air conditioner instead. But as it turns out, a heat pump can both heat and cool, and in some applications, it's preferred to separate heating and cooling systems.

​Simply put, a heat pump is a device that uses a small amount of energy to move heat from one location to another. Not too difficult, right? Heat pumps are typically used to pull heat out of the air or ground to heat a home or office building, but they can be reversed to cool a building. In a way, if you know how an air conditioner works, then you already know a lot about how a heat pump works. This is because heat pumps and air conditioners operate in very similar ways.