On Jan 30, 6:44 pm, "Ralph Mowery" wrote:
"bill" wrote in message

...

My daughter is complaining about high heat bills. i bet the elect
resistence elect coil is on a lot. how do i tell when the coil comes
on? and how do you turn it off? what turns it on? when temp is
below 32? if compressor is ok, why would coil come on? she had the
system checked and they said ok. wonder if they checked out operation
of coils. thanks for any insight. bill in Maryland

One big thing to watch for with a heat pump is turning it up and down. Does
she change the temperature or just sets it at one place and leaves it there.
Most of the time the heat strips will come on if you go up about 3 or 4
degrees at one time.

Yes! That is a major drawback in some circumstances.
I used to have all-electric. The thermostat fortunately did have a
light to indicate when the electric backup was on. I'd turn the heat
down quite a ways when I was gone. Upon return, I'd turn it up just a
few degrees at a time, keeping the electric backup from coming on. I
eventually got around that by putting a toggle switch on the
thermostat. The backup would only come on when I wanted to let it; I
could set the heat to warm up however far I wanted without worrying
about the electric backup.