Heat Pump

[spindrift]

Tell me what I'm doing incorrectly. Currently 46* outside. 55* in the coach so I set the thermostat to 57* to get the HP to run. Turn the control to electric heat and I hear the generator give a little grunt. The HP "sounds" like it started but cold air is blowing out of the ceiling vents. Beginning at 55* interior temp, I raised the thermostat incrimentally by 1*. No change. At a thermostat setting of 60*, the gas furnace kicked on. I'm at a loss. Any ideas?

[TNTBaker]

Well, I can see that first off the furnace is kicking on because of temp spread between room temp and thermostat setting (it's supposed to). Should be temporary, then switch back over to HP. Did you give it some time?

[TNTBaker]

46 degrees is approaching the threshold where the heatpumps cannot heat very well, and it would feel like cold air coming out. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in soon!!

[spindrift]

The furnace only came on after I manually raised the thermostat setting to 60* (5* above an interior temp of 55*). Are you saying that I should have waited for the furnace to shut off, by itself, after it came on at the 60* mark?

[TNTBaker]

Well, the way I understand it, if there is a 5-10 degree difference between the temp and the desired temp, then the furnace will kick on to rapidly heat the coach, then shut off automatically and the heatpumps will resume. I would give it time and see if that is what happens.

[TNTBaker]

FWIW on the efficiency of the HPs at colder temps outside; we have not yet used the furnace, and we HAVE had some 40's temps... so far they can handle it. In fact, we are only using one and it's doing good.

[spindrift]

[travelin' texans]

The HP will not be instant heat & it takes awhile to displace the cool air in the ducts, it may take several minutes, but they work great to about 40+/- degrees.

[markw]

My experience last winter in FL with our 36re was HP down to 40. Below that the furnace. If you start with the heat pump at 45 ambient, it will take awhile to heat. And as said, a setting 3-5 deg higher than ambient the furnace will come on.

Mark

[0nTheRoad]

The HP on our coach works well to just above 40º, after that it just blows cold air. In the 40-45º range it isn't as warm as it is above 45º so that may be what you are experiencing. We went to bed last night with the HP on, the outside temp was ~46º and all was well, woke up this morning the outside temp was 38º and the HP was blowing cool air, the inside temp was down but not more than 5º below the thermostat temp so the furnace had not engaged.

Any time the thermostat is set more than 5º above the ambient temp the furnace will engage so if you want to avoid you have to raise the temp on the thermostat slowly, 1-2 degrees at a time.

[spindrift]

SUCCESS!!! Tried again this morning with no luck. Went outside and heard a strange clicking noise coming from the rear of the RW. Climbed onto the roof and the noise was definitely coming from the HP. Removed the black plastic cover and found the black plug in the picture barely attached to the spade ends on the controller. The "clicking" was the sound of the connection points arcing across one another. Cleaned the spades and the female connectors in the plug and now I have a fully operational heat pump. Life is good.

[0nTheRoad]

Don't you love it when you find an easy fix for problems!!

[Dave&Ginny]

Last week while we were camping in Iowa, our HP made a "CHUNK" sound as it cycled off. Hopefully this sound isn't a sign of an up coming issue.