My neighbour (a Daily Mail reader) has just had a new boiler fitted replacing a 30 year old Potterton.  She knows I have the Ecodan and am happy with it but almost visibly shuddered when I suggested she should get one.
I then pointed out that she already owned three heat pumps - her fridge, freezer and split air conditioner, installed about 15 years ago - and was met with a blank stare.
On the renaming topic, I agree probably better to stick with what we have.  But if push came to shove, I think "Heat collector" is worth consideration as an alternative.
 

@downfield Warming McWarmFace? 😉 Toodles.

@toodles - very good! How about Heaty McHeatFace?

More mundanely, having thought about it, and yes I know it is not very creative, I do think 'heat pump' is the best term. It's short, two one syllable words, and it does succinctly describe what it does (the it does what it says on the tin test). A pump is device that moves something, usually (but not always, eg a proton pump) a liquid or a gas, from A to B (and a heat pump does do that, as the means to move what it really moves), and by adding 'heat' it tells us that it's primary purpose is to pump (move) heat from A , outside, to B, inside. If it (the name) ain't broke, then don't fix it!

Posted by: @downfield

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My neighbour (a Daily Mail reader) has just had a new boiler fitted replacing a 30 year old Potterton.  She knows I have the Ecodan and am happy with it but almost visibly shuddered when I suggested she should get one.

I then pointed out that she already owned three heat pumps - her fridge, freezer and split air conditioner, installed about 15 years ago - and was met with a blank stare.

On the renaming topic, I agree probably better to stick with what we have.  But if push came to shove, I think "Heat collector" is worth consideration as an alternative.

 

...which is why boilers eventually need to be banned.  I don't doubt that similarly minded people will/have complained about recent floods.  They need to learn that you cant have everything (that's more or less a function of the laws of thermodynamics).  Sadly, when politicians speak that truth, they get criticised down and eventually voted out.

I made a resolution a while ago that, when someone tells me how bad some decision made by a politician is (at any level and of any political persuasion), I simply ask them, 'OK, so if you don't like what x is doing, what would you do?'  Some times they just give an answer which is physically impossible, but more often than not it forces them to think.  Whether it has any long term effect I don't know, but the fact is that criticism is cheap, solutions are rather more difficult!

I'm not suggesting this is a better name, but isn't it more of a Temperature pump than a Heat pump, in that it raises temperature?
So it collects heat and pumps up the temperature?

Posted by: @downfield

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I'm not suggesting this is a better name, but isn't it more of a Temperature pump than a Heat pump, in that it raises temperature?

So it collects heat and pumps up the temperature?

Maybe not.  The point about pumps of all kinds is that they act against the natural flow of what they pump, and that is exactly what a heat pump does. 

Water naturally flows downhill, due to the laws of gravity.  If you want water to go uphill you use a water pump.  

Energy (heat) naturally moves from a warm body to a cold body, due to the laws of thermodynamics.  If you want energy to move from a cold body (the outside air) to a warm body (the inside air) you use a heat pump.

Temperature cannot be pumped as its just a measure of the amount of thermal energy in a body not something that can flow.  Its the energy that is pumped!

@downfield Temperature Elevator? Toodles.

@jamespa Yes of course you are correct.
I was just thinking about the layman's concept of what a heat pump is doing, and at a superficial level it seems as though it is converting/ (transforming?) a low temperature to a high temperature.

Posted by: @downfield

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@jamespa Yes of course you are correct.

I was just thinking about the layman's concept of what a heat pump is doing, and at a superficial level it seems as though it is converting/ (transforming?) a low temperature to a high temperature.

Fair enough, but the idea of a pump and the idea of energy/heat are both familiar to laymen, so I can't see we need to do anything (by way of explanation) other than tell people that it is pumping energy (or heat), which is exactly what it is doing.  People are also familiar with the fact that hot things get cold when placed near cold things!  You cant really 'convert' temperatures any more than you can 'convert' the height of water in a bucket.  You can raise it by putting more water in, or lower it by pouring water out, but you cant convert it. 

In my book 'every day is a school day', and if we dumb down/misrepresent things that people are perfectly capable of understanding (which most are I would suggest) then we are on a slippery slope to facts becoming 'flexible' or 'matters of opinion'.

I fully support (and actually quite enjoy the challenge of) keeping explanations of everyday devices as simple as possible (whilst remaining reasonably accurate),  but I personally find it difficult to see how one could improve on either the simplicity or accuracy of 'heat pump'.

There is, or at least there used to be until all the text books got rewritten, something called abstract conceptual thought. It's basically an ability to think in the abstract, and by no means everyone has this ability. Take for example a red biscuit tin, and ask someone without abstract conceptual thought whether it is (a) blue or (b) not blue. They won't get the question, and will what do you mean, it's red. GPs using clever fancy analogies to explain illness are likely to come up against similar baffled responses from their patients who lack abstract conceptual thought.

All of which is to say we should call a spade a spade, and a thing that pumps heat (energy, but as it is in the form of heat, let's stick with heat) a heat pump. @jamespa has hit the hail on the head, pumps are things that move things against their natural flow, and you don't need abstract conceptual thought to understand that, I think it is fair to say all understand that a bicycle pump puts air in a place where it won't naturally go. Likewise heat, or warmth, is a universal experience that all can understand. Given these things what is the simplest, clearest name for some thing that moves heat against the natural flow? A heat pump of course...

But - there is a problem! What a heat pump does is extract invisible heat heat from the colder outside air, and somehow gets it into the warmer house. I think that is where the problem lies, because you need to understand the abstract conceptual thought that the outside colder air still has enough heat in it, heat that that can be extracted and then pumped into the house. So maybe heat extractor? No, because for most people a household extractor gets rid of something they don't want - eg extractor fans -  which is the opposite of what a heat pump does (though of course we do use extract in other circumstances to get something from out there and pull it in to where we want and can use it, as in extracting (dare I even mention this) fossil fuels from out there, so we can burn them in our homes and cars. 

What about heat compressor? It takes the lower grade heat from outside and compresses it into something useful that we can then use to heat our homes on the inside. And a heat pump even has a compressor in it! But it is an ugly word with a lot of syllables, and lacks the concept of movement. A compressor compresses, it doesn't move.   

Which leaves me with heat pump. It is a bit too clever by half (because it glosses over the how do you get useful heat from colder outside air question), but for the time being I think it remains if not the best term, then at least the least bad.

Posted by: @jamespa

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In my book 'every day is a school day', and if we dumb down/misrepresent things that people are perfectly capable of understanding (which most are I would suggest) then we are on a slippery slope to facts becoming 'flexible' or 'matters of opinion'.

Couldn't agree more, the only caveat I would add is that getting the balance right between accurate but getting too complex and understandable but getting too dumbed down is not a simple matter! 

Posted by: @cathoderay

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But - there is a problem! What a heat pump does is extract invisible heat heat from the colder outside air, and somehow gets it into the warmer house.

Last time I looked the air in my bicycle pump wasn't visible either!

Perhaps we should call it a reverse refrigerator, a rotaregifer (pronounced rotary_giffer or rotar_eggiffer)

@cathoderay Energy relocator is also accurate but, it doesn’t really cut the mustard does it?! Toodles.