Heat Pump Mystery ???

M

movieman

New Member
Location
Williamsburg, VA
Greetings! I recently moved to Virginia and my 7year old home has a heat pump. During the summer, the "air handler" was replaced and a new Honeywell thermostat installed as well. The outside compressor was 5 months old when we moved in last June. Our experience up north has been with gas forced-air furnaces.

We're freezing in this place! The house seems poorly insulated to begin with and with the recent cold nights, the unit seems to run almost constantly during the night with only 10 minute breaks. Then the "auxiliary heating" message lights up on the thermostat occasionally and I'm told that's not good either. I need help understanding this type of heating system!
 

We're told that "emergency heat" should only kick in when it's extremely cold and that it will more than triple the electric power consumption. What I'm saying is that the system just doesn't throw much hot air to heat the place.
 

Heat pumps are effective until the temperature gets 35 or below, then the emergency heat will come on if it is set up to come on, otherwise it has to be turned on manually, most everyone in Texas and in the South use heat pumps, I can see people in the North not using them.

Here is a link that might help..

http://www.hannabery.com/faq4.shtml
 
Gas furnaces put out heated air at around 130-140 degrees. But a heat pump, when it’s cold outside, puts out air around 90 degrees. And the colder it gets outside, the lower the temperature it puts out. Your body's temperature is around 98.6 degrees, so that 90 degrees "feels" cold to you. But it’s still heating your home. It just takes longer to do it. If you're used to gas heat it will be harder to adjust.

Don't make the mistake of turning the heat way down when you leave the house in the winter for short periods. It will take forever to heat back up. I finally had to replace my heat pump and put in a gas furnace because my house wasn't insulated well enough, even after I got blown in insulation in the walls. OTOH, my parents had a new double-wide mobile home that was extremely well insulated and tight and their heat pump was great even down to 20 degrees outside.

I just felt I was getting old enough that I didn't want to put up with feeling cold in the winter. The AC with a heat pump works great in the summer, better than straight electric.
 
The air coming from the vents won't feel warm like it would with gas heat. That will take some getting used to if you have been used to getting really warm air from the vents. I keep my thermostat on 72º and the temperature stays a steady 72º. You may want to set yours a little higher. I am comfortable at that temperature but some people want it a little warmer. If your heat pump is seven years old, it should be an energy efficient model. So turn the temperature up until you are comfortable. It will only cost pennies more. My emergency heat doesn't come on until the outside temperature gets to 20º or below. That rarely happens here.
 
We also moved from an area where we always had natural gas heating to the county where we currently live that has no natural gas and was heated with a heat pump. Our house was 1700 sq. ft. when we bought it and we immediately added on another 2100 sq. ft. The darn place never got warm. We finally had a unit called a "Monitor" installed in the family/great room-it uses kerosene,which was cheap at the time but not so much now. That would heat the entire downstairs and the only rooms that still needed heat were our master bedroom and bath which were the only upstairs rooms. Next house was heated with diesel,that was pretty efficient but then diesel got very high too. The house we are now in heats with propane and has just a regular furnace. Not the cheapest but the place is well insulated and,of course,being in California,it rarely gets that cold.
 
Thanks to all for the good advice and general info. I've had our service tech back in and he made some adjustments to the new thermostat. Evidently the unit needs to "learn" our on/off schedule as it relates to the outside temps over the course of a few days. Unseasonably cool nights lately. We obviously need to adjust to southern living with heat pumps!
 
Jackie22 said:
Heat pumps are effective until the temperature gets 35 or below, then the emergency heat will come on if it is set up to come on, otherwise it has to be turned on manually, most everyone in Texas and in the South use heat pumps, I can see people in the North not using them.

Here is a link that might help..

http://www.hannabery.com/faq4.shtml
Click to expand...

Yea, heat pumps only good in mildly cooler weather; serious cold needs more firepower(nat.gas; propane, heating oil or wood).
 
"I need help understanding this type of heating system!"

The info given is pretty accurate. The heat pump is in reality an air conditioning system operating in reverse. The refrigerant's direction is reversed in "heat" mode by a device called a "shuttle valve", often a source of trouble itself.

"Heat" is extracted from the cold outside air, and concentrated in the very same coils within the air-blower duct which serve to cool the house in warm weather, then circulated within the house. I suspect not all A/C guys fully understand heat pumps, and there the problem is compounded.

The alternative heating source in a heat pump system usually is electric, comprised of something the industry calls "heat strips", a fawncy name for heating coils just like you can see in your bread toaster. You system may have one or more failed heat strips, and thereby is unable to provide adequate heat. Impossible to state with certainty given known facts. Heat strips are easily checked using an Ohmmeter, or during operation , a clamp-type Ammeter.

Just a few cents worth! imp
 
Well we've now had the HVAC techs out here twice. They sold us a new thermostat that was supposed to solve all the problems. The
"aux heating" red light came on a couple of times and we're told that's not a big deal; not to worry unless it goes on and stays on for an hour or so. It's been a little warmer here lately so no major issues so far. I'm thinking that we need to throw away our old conceptions of what numerical temperature we should be set at. Back in NY that was always 70 degrees to be comfortable. Here, we may need to go higher, and not set it back very much at night. So we'll see how this goes the next few nights and advise.
 
movieman said:
Greetings! I recently moved to Virginia and my 7year old home has a heat pump. During the summer, the "air handler" was replaced and a new Honeywell thermostat installed as well. The outside compressor was 5 months old when we moved in last June. Our experience up north has been with gas forced-air furnaces.

We're freezing in this place! The house seems poorly insulated to begin with and with the recent cold nights, the unit seems to run almost constantly during the night with only 10 minute breaks. Then the "auxiliary heating" message lights up on the thermostat occasionally and I'm told that's not good either. I need help understanding this type of heating system!
Click to expand...

movieman said:
Well we've now had the HVAC techs out here twice. They sold us a new thermostat that was supposed to solve all the problems. The
"aux heating" red light came on a couple of times and we're told that's not a big deal; not to worry unless it goes on and stays on for an hour or so. It's been a little warmer here lately so no major issues so far. I'm thinking that we need to throw away our old conceptions of what numerical temperature we should be set at. Back in NY that was always 70 degrees to be comfortable. Here, we may need to go higher, and not set it back very much at night. So we'll see how this goes the next few nights and advise.
Click to expand...

If your heating is totally electric, let us know if you see a big increase in your electric bill..
 
Some modern houses here have air source heat pumps, but they also have multi-fuel (logs or coal) stoves too. Their efficiency goes down as the air gets colder so only effective in milder areas. Much better to have a ground source heat pump, but that needs quite a bit of land to bury the collecting pipes.
 


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