I can’t think of too many things more sweet then waking up on a December day and walking outside in a long sleeved shirt and some shorts. This may seem like small potatoes to some but when you have spent much of your life in the north, being outside in shorts during december is fairly remarkable. Just being able to sit and enjoy my coffee with all the sun and blue skies is something I will never take for granted. I also will never have to flip on the furnace again. I spent so much of my time dealing with the effects of cold weather. All the shoveling and pulling people out of ditches are over. I now live in the land of the heat pump. The heat pump is one of our most versatile innovations. It’s actually quite amazing. We all know how great the heat pump is at providing cool air during the summer. And let me tell you, down here we need every bit of cool we can get for about three months during the depths of summer heat. However, the fact that all I have to do is move a switch on the thermostat to have heat is amazing. The heat pump actually reverses the refrigerant flow to extract heat energy from the outside air. That just blows my mind. The heat pump can pull that heat energy from ambient outside air all the way down to nearly 45 degrees. The temps rarely drop low enough to bring on the supplemental electric heating element. But, it’s there if I need it.