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I have a heat pump and it runs ALOT now that it is cold. Recent lows have been in the 20's. I understand that when it is cold the heat pump has to work harder to warm the house but I also thought that at a certain point it would stop running and an electric backup heater would start. I should point out that mine is not a geothermal unit.
How can I tell if my system has an electric backup heater and if it is being used? At what temperature should it kick in?
Thanks for all the info.
Dave
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Do you turn it way down during the day or night?
If so--it will never "catch up".
You need to keep the temp high enough so that when you turn the heat up it isn't running all the time.
Some thermostats have a light that comes on when the "emergency" Heat strips come on.
Just put the TV station that broadcasts the burning fireplace on that TV in your sig--and it will feel warmer.
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If your house is warm and it is being heated to the temperature set on your thermostat, then you can be sure that you have electric backup heating. Most properly sized heat pumps are sized to be able to supply all the heat needed down to about 30 degrees, after that the heat pump isn't able to extract enough heat from the air, so it uses the electric coils built into the indoor evaporator unit to supply additional heat to maintain the set temperature. You probably have two ways to tell that your electric coils are in use, the first is to look at the thermostat and see if you have a light labeled aux heat or emergency heat, if so then if the thermostat is wired properly when the electric coils kick in the light will come on, or the second way is to check the air temp out of the registers. With heat pumps, the air out of the registers normally feels cool, it is usually 80 plus degrees but being less than body temp it feels cool, when the electric coils kick in the air from the registers will feel warm because the air temp will be higher than your body temp.
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A previous thread here a few weeks ago pointed out that "aux" heat and "emergency" heat, while both supplied by the same mechanism, mean different things.
If your thermostat shows that "aux" heat is on, it means the heat pump is doing what it can but that the coils are on to supplement the heat pump itself. This would be normal operation in very cold weather ("very cold" depending on your heat pump).
If your thermostat shows "emergency heat," it means that the coils are on because the heat pump is not working and needs repaired.
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There is usually a "smell" that accompanies the electric coils as well. It's not bad, but it is distinct.
Also, your electric meter will spin like a mother*^$#@&^.
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[quote Ken Sp.]You need to keep the temp high enough so that when you turn the heat up it isn't running all the time.
Ummm, why? A heat pump is only more efficient than resistive heat when it is running as a heat pump. As long as the output air is above the ambient air in the home then it is pumping heat.
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Go to the thermostat and adjust the
heat to 90 and your heat strip will immediately kick in
and your air output will be very warm, not room temp
plus as with the heat pump. Most Heat Pumps are set up
for the Emergency Heat (Heat Strips) to kick in if the Thermostat
is adjusted up more than 5 degrees at any one time.
Norm
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I have a heat pump & when it gets very cold outside, I use small electric heaters in various rooms to help it out.
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My house was built with heat pumps. At the time, the local electric utility was bribing, err, rebating builders to install heat pumps. But fortunately, the backups are not electric resistance. They are full sized gas furnaces. Nice efficient ones.
Remember it costs the same to run your heat pump per minute as a heater as it does to run it as an air conditioner. The most cost effective uses for heat pumps are when there is no primary fuel heat... when the alternative is electric resistance heating.
One of my heat pumps failed... the compressor grounded electrically. It was almost as cheap to replace the outside unit with a standard A/C unit as it was to replace the compressor, so I went with a new much more efficient A/C unit.
I've since bypassed the heat feature on the other heat pump as well. Less wear and tear on the unit, and it is much cheaper to heat here with gas than with an air conditioner running backwards.
