I have natural gas forced air heat in my house, and to save money I will often turn it way down and just heat up the room I'm in with a small electric heater. Today I finally got around to putting away my window air conditioner, when I got an idea.
I know that heat pumps are much more efficient for electric heat than a resistive element. Would it be possible to turn a small 5000 BTU window air conditioner into a miniature heat pump? I mean, I'd have to highly modify it of course, but how would the heat output compare to a normal electric space heater?
Basically, if I just installed the air conditioner backwards, would I get 5000 BTUs of heat from a 5000 BTU air conditioner? If that's the case I would get over 8 BTU/watt rather than the normal 3.4 BTU/watt for resistive heaters.
I know, I have way too much free time. :-)