Here’s how a heat pump works, and why this is a technology to keep an eye on even if your HVAC is in pristine shape. How heat pumps workThe heat pump itself isn’t a new invention–its roots go all the way back to the 1850’s. Ground-source heat pumps or geothermal heat pumps extract heat from underground to heat a home during cold seasons and reverse when it gets warm out. There are even some systems, dubbed hybrid heat pumps, which work the same as traditional heat pumps, but stay connected to a furnace system just in case of extremely cold weatherHow a geothermal heat pump works. The benefits of a heat pumpEnergy efficiency is the main benefit of a heat pump, since it takes heat and moves it around instead of generating it from scratch the way that a boiler or furnace does.