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We have problems with our heat pump keeping the house warm when it gets into the 20s and below.
There is a thread on the NC forum where many posts say they hate heat pumps, and generally they don't work well here and the cost savings is not worth the discomfort or expense of supplementary heating.
How do you feel about your heat pump? Almost everyone here has one. What steps do you take to supplement your heat when the HP doesn't keep up? Do you switch it to emergency heat setting?
Thanks
Of the 4 houses on our little road, only one house has a heat pump. It is not very effective at our altitude of ~5,000 ft: lower air density per cubic foot of atmosphere, usually cooler to colder ambient temps, etc. Our neighbor with the heat pump has to crank his and kick in the aux heat setting. And, not very efficient. (The same situ applies to oil fired boilers/heaters at our altitude, fwiw.)
He does supplement his HP heat with a propane 'fire place', and a wood stove in a big fam room.
Forget/don't know your altitude, but they tend to be not the best method in the HVAC world. Also, if your unit is not new/newer it is a bit behind the 8 ball as performance of HVAC systems has made significant leaps in the past decade and even in the past 5 years.
My 50Cts...
GL, mD
We have problems with our heat pump keeping the house warm when it gets into the 20s and below.
There is a thread on the NC forum where many posts say they hate heat pumps, and generally they don't work well here and the cost savings is not worth the discomfort or expense of supplementary heating.
How do you feel about your heat pump? Almost everyone here has one. What steps do you take to supplement your heat when the HP doesn't keep up? Do you switch it to emergency heat setting?
Thanks
Nooooo..... never put it on emergency heat setting. Your bill will triple or quadruple! When you are on auxiliary heat, it runs only on heat strips. In normal weather conditions, depending on your altitude, you shouldn't have a problem with a heat pump. This has been a very rare winter, and if your heat pump is older, and you feel the need to replace it, go with a forced warm air gas furnace. In the meantime, everyone should have a heating company contract so they come out at least twice a year to make sure your system is full with Freon, and your system is running at peak efficiency. I just went through the joy of having my system bite the dust during the week we were below zero over here near Brevard. Ran on aux. heat for 7 days which only for those days, boosted my bill $96! while waiting for the new system to arrive and be installed. Bought the whole system, inside and outside, middle of the line 14 SEER Trane, close to $6,000 (only 1200 sf home). No gas service in my house, but it is in the street. Contractor said add another $3500 for a gas system, more involved with venting thru the roof, bringing the gas in to the house, and so forth. So the new heat pump was a no brainer. Repeat after me: say no to auxiliary heat.
A supplementary gas or wood heater would get you through cold spells. The only way I've read to get a heat pump to work well below 30 degrees is to put the heat exchanger in the ground via geothermal piping.
We have a heat pump but it's only efficient down to 34 (I think) degrees. After that it switches to propane. Our garage apartment also uses a heat pump but it switches to heat strips when it gets too cold. You are only talking about 1,000 sq/ft though. I would never use heat strips in our house. The electric bill would kill us.
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
Our heat pump jumps to auxiliary heat by itself!! Even though it is programmed for just regular heat, we have noticed on really cold mornings it automatically switched to auxiliary heat all night. Our bill will be outrageous -3,200 sq ft home ! I will call our heater guy and see what's going on. It is a seven year old Maytag.
If you are at any real altitude = colder winter ambient temps, I would look at heating options in lieu of heat pumps, regardless of what the 'heater guy' pitches, imo. Even newer tech heat pumps are quite inefficient in cold/colder ambient winter temps, esp for a house of that size, that is lived in 24/7 vs an occasional winter visit house.
GL, mD
Unfortunately, if you have what is now considered a larger home (+2000 ft), and live at a higher elevation (+3000 ft), you will need to have a backup heat source that is fossil fuel based, oil, propane, or better if available , natural gas. You could also get a wood stove, then you will need to prepare to chase wood to burn. No real cost saving solution, when the weather is unusually cold, as this past January, no other solution than to plan for higher heating cost, no matter what you are burning. Makes you wonder what people will be doing to heat their homes 100 years from now?
I have a heat pump in my home, about ten years old, and also a propane fed gas log fireplace with a blower on it. My heat pump works very well, granted Im in Candler at about 2800 feet in elevation, but its also how you run it. I have done some improvements to make our home more energy efficient including stopping air leaks, adding insulation, etc. A lot of people don't understand how to use emergency heat on their heat pump and they think their bill is going to triple. This winter i did some testing to see the difference. I keep my house set at 68 degrees constantly. I could save some money by programming the stat to lower a few degrees while we are at work but it is more efficient to leave heat pumps alone. First off a heat pump will not heat a house when it is below 35 degrees. I have a rather "dumb" heat pump, at least thats what I call it, and it does not do a good job of telling itself it needs to call for auxiliary heat on its own such as the heat strips. So i manually switch it back and forth. This was not a great comparison because of different weather but the month of December we ran the heat pump in its normal mode and used the gas logs about 3 hours a day. 1 hour first thing in the morning and 2 hours in the evening. Now in January, each night/day it was going to be below 35 i made my heat pump only run on E. Heat. I was prepared for the triple electric bill but wanted to see what the difference was. Same as Dec, I ran our gas logs for about 3 hours each day, 1 am 2 pm. At night if it was going to be below 35, almost everyday in January, i switched it to E Heat. and sometimes left on during the day. And guess what, my electric bill went up a little over 1 whole dollar! I think it was like $1.40 exactly. My fiance and I were shocked!
Your heat pump is going to waste energy if its 15 degrees outside, the outdoor unit is running and by the time your thermostat realizes the outdoor until cannot keep up, then it kicks on your auxiliary heat while your outdoor unit is still running and wasting energy. Newer, more efficient units will make this switch almost automatically. Mine will not. So if you have a cheaper, dumber heat pump give it a shot. The E Heat will pump out hot air which heats the house faster therefore it is using less energy to run in the first place and the outdoor unit is taking a break.
We have a heat pump on one of our two units (main floor and basement). Like Young, ours has a propane auxiliary unit (basically a propane furnace in the air handler). The thermostat determines when to switch to the auxiliary unit, and that is selectable. I have it set to switch at 35-degrees.
Our upstairs unit is a heat pump with an electric emergency heat mode. As QC said, when those turn on, the electric meter will spin fast enough to take flight.
In cold weather when I expect the downstairs unit to be running primarily on propane, I keep its thermostat set a couple of degrees higher than the upstairs unit. That makes it work harder, but since it is more efficient below 35 degrees (especially so the farther below 35 it gets), it prevents the upstairs heat pump from running constantly trying to maintain a temperature.
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