Ok, Educate me.... On Heat Pumps

[{OF}BadDaWg]

Number one:
How does a heat pump work?

Number two:
Is it economically feesable to put a programmable thermostat on a heat pump with the auxiliary heat strips in it?

Reason I ask this is, when the temperature drops more than 2 degrees, the aux. heat strips come on till the temp. gets up to where the heat pump alone can make up the temp.
Now, If I were to program......

6:00am/// 68deg
8:00am/// 64deg

3:00pm/// 68deg
11:30pm/// 64deg.

Would it be better to just let the heat pump run at 68deg all the time?
Or knock the temp down to 64 and when the time came to let it come back up to heat, have the auxiliary strips come on and watch the electric meter act like a flying saucer trying to lift off from the side of my house?

Do you see my problem?
It has to take a ton of electricity to charge those auxiliary strips, so would I be better off to just let the pump itself run?

Next question........

What do you know about these???
Authorized Eden Pure and Sun Twin Dealer - EdenPURE 1000 XL - Rated To Heat up to 1000 Square Feet
The finished part of the basement, is to cold.
My daughter is whining, and justifiably so.
She brought me a thermostat up Saturday and showed me a 5 degree difference from the upstairs to the basement.
The finished part is almost exactly 1000 sq. ft. down there, so I think this would be the best way to warm it up???

Come on..... somebody take me to school, cuz I ain't smarter than a 3rd grader!!!

[{OF}Malicious Assault]

You could go with electric base board heaters in the basement, each has a thermostat and can be set for individual control. They would prob. heat the basement well. As for the rest of it I have forced air gas furnace and have a timer that sets the temp lower during the day and bring it up to comfort level when we are home. Does save a little on the bills. Don't know what affect it would have with a heat pump. But with the few degrees your adjusting I would think it would be best to leave it at 68. Mine is set for 63 when no one it home, 71 when we are up and about and 68 at night.

[{OF}BadDaWg]

Thanks M/A
I like the heater because....... It absolutely cannot catch anything on fire!
Or so the advertisement says!



I did have a programmable in the old house, and it saved me a fortune with the gas heat.

Oh man????????? I just don't know!!

[{OF}G_Man]

I'm assuming that you have a heat pump that has a fan coil blower that blows air around/into your house??

A "heat pump" actually defines your basic airconditioning unit, except it only works in one direction. An air conditioning unit pumps heat from the inside of your house in warm weather and rejects the heat outside, the effect is "cooling" for your house air conditioning cooling coil (evaporator). It is a compressor that uses refrigerant to pump "transfer" the heat from inside your house to the outside.

A "heat pump" like you have in your house has a device on it called a reversing valve. It reverses the process of a normal air conditioning unit so that it pumps heat from the outside of your house and rejects it inside, again using refrigerant. The net effect is "heating" from the air blowing across the refrigerant coil (condensing coil). By switching the reversing valve, the heat pump is switched from cooling to heating through the thermostat wiring and control as needed.

Even at relatively low outdoor air temperatures there is "heat" in the air, so the compressor pumps that heat back into your house. The compressor also uses electricity, and generates its own heat while running, and this is also transferred through the refrigerant to the heating coil in your house making it more efficient. Heat pumps are very efficient at about 50 F outside air temperature.

One of the characteristics of a traditional (air source) home heat pump, is that the colder it gets outside, the less heat it can pump into your house, so the heat pump compressor needs to run longer to keep your house warm, and when it is shut off and starts back up, it takes longer for it to recover. If you set the thermostat setpoint temperature back too far, it takes a long time to recover, and if you have the auxiliary heating strips like you have to help improve recovery time, you burn alot of electricty trying to catch up. Heat pump systems are designed on the heating side to almost run continuously on cold (design) days to maintain comfort in the house, so don't treat it like a gas furnace. It is designed to run. You will also notice that the air temperature from the heating coil is a lot lower than you will get from a gas furnace, even the real high efficiency gas furnaces. Eventually, when it gets very cold outside, below 37F, the heat pump system reaches it's balance point, and that is when it runs continuously to maintain your house temperature. Once it gets below the balance point, the supplemental electrical heating will kick in anyway since the heat pump will not be able to keep up. At this point about the only choice is to lower you house temperature to where you can stand it, to help reduce the use of the expensive supplemental electrical heating. For this reason, the further north you go, the fewer heat pumps you will find, especially the residential type, unless they are the water source type. I've known people here in Michigan that have had the air source heat pumps systems installed, and had such problems in cold weather, that they ripped them out and put in a standard gas furnace.

My advice in the winter is to set your thermostat where you want it, and let it run, but on the coldest days you may still see the booster heater strips come on and lowering your thermostat then would help save some bucks. The programmable thermostat would be great for the air conditioning cycle, but I wouldn't use it much on the heating side, unless you use it for smaller setpoint changes.

And BTW any supplemental electric heating device will be expensive if you use it much.
The unit you are looking at for you basement is 1500W = 1.5KW = 1.5KW hours each hour it runs. How much do you pay per KW hour?

If your system design can support it, many people are now "zoning" their houses both with gas fired furnaces and heat pumps. A motorized damper is put in a couple of branch ducts, like one going upstairs and one going downstairs. Two thermostats are used. One in upstaris and downstairs as an example. If the downstaris thermostat "calls" for heat, and the upstairs thermostat isn't, the upstairs damper is closed, the downstairs damper is opened and all the warm air is directed downstairs where it is needed. A local reputable heating company could evaluate your system and install this type of solution if you are interested. That's where I would spend my money if it can be done.

[{OF}BadDaWg]

Holy $hit G_, I knew that one of {OF} would be knowledgeable in this.
Was I right, or what!!
Man, I thank you a ton.
I have a guy that's suppose to call me, and come over this week to install the programmable stat, I was going to just wait and ask his opinion.
(none of the wire codes match, and I wasn't going to _ick it up)
Don't need it now!!
Though you may have hit a very, very good point with the air conditioning.

The stat I bought, is a Honeywell that is auxiliary strip acceptable.
I may just go ahead and have it put on.
But, I will take your advice.
That's what I needed, someone that knew what they were talking about, instead of guessing.
Makes sense too, when you say how it operates.
Just like the reason they say to buy a air conditioning unit smaller than you need because it is better to let it run than start and stop.

Setting it from say from 72 down to say 78 during the day, when we are all at work. Lets it run longer at the time when we get home.

Did that make sense??
LOL

Again G_, THANK YOU

[Skull]

cut and paste... muhahahaha

[{OF}G_Man]

I didn't mean to make it sound like turning your stat up for AC and down for Heating doesn't save you lots of money.

In summer, with a programmable stat, setting your house at say 78 or higher during the day saves lots of bucks. Even though the system runs continuously when you get home at the thermostat sets itself to 72 say trying to recover, the net savings in energy cost having the system off while you are not home is very big.

The same goes for heating, even on a heat pump system. Where you can get in trouble with a heat pumps system is on severe cold weather, if you set it back too far, it may not recover, or take a real long time and comfort becomes the issue, savings be damned. I hate being cold.

It's a pretty simple principle for energy savings. When something is turned off, you save money.

What you need to do with a heat pump system is determine where that point is for your house(during the real cold weather) where your system doesn't recover too well, or it is running on the supplemental electrical heat too long, which is more expensive because the heat pump compressor and the supplemental electrical heat strip are both running. At those outdoor temperatures is where you may want to decide not to set the temperature back so far with the programmable stat. Watch your electric bills, or even read your meter yourself, and you will be able to tune and maximize your energy savings balanced against comfort level.

[{OF}BadDaWg]

I'll read some more on the furnace and get back with ya.
The guy did leave me the paper work for that.
And the friggin 80 gallon water heater....... that;s gonna' hurt!! LOL

[{OF}BadDaWg]

Ok, I'll leave it be in the colder months. (constant temperature)
Yes, I'll also watch the consumption.
The summer though.......
Are you saying also that a heat pump / air conditioner, it is also better not to turn it up in the summer when were not here for at least 8 hours??
Because on a regular air conditioner, it is much better to turn it up.
Ya, it runs a bit longer when you turn the temp back down, but is that not when a air conditioner performs it's best?

I guess what Im asking now, is, in the summer.
With a heat pump type air conditioner, should I monkey with the temp while no one is at home.
Is it more economical?

[{OF}BadDaWg]

Bear with me here..........HA HA HA HA HA