On Jan 24, 3:38*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jan 24, 2:47*pm, noname87 wrote:

I was wondering I could change the settings on my thermostat to "heat
pump without AUX heating". This should prevent the thermostat from
ever turning on the emergency heat. This would allow me to set the
temperatur at night lower and allow the heat pump to bring the
temperature up in the morning without turning on the AUX heat. I would
only do this when the outside temperatures are above 40. Currently, I
have only a minor setback at night because the thermostat calls for
AUX heat if if sees the teperature difference greater than 1 or 2
degrees which happens if I set the temperature back more than 2
degrees at night.

The recovery mode on your thermostat should be keeping it from using
the resistive heat when it brings the temp backup. *There might be
some programmable parameters on it you need to change so it knows how
long to try before it lets the aux heat kick in. *You could also start
the ramp up "manually" with several small programmed increases during
the early morning. *You might have to start pretty far in advance.

Also thermostats differ in how programmable and flexible they are.
Take a
look at a Honeywell VisonPro TH8320 installation manual as an example.

http://www.wmitechnologies.com/pdfs/vision-pro.pdf

IMO, SRN's posts accurately describe what's going on. As he pointed
out,
while a heat pump's efficiency drops as the outdoor temp declines,
even
at 25 deg, a decent one is still producing over 2X the heat you'd get
using resistance
heat. So, the advice to go to 100% aux heat makes no sense to me,
unless
you want an even higher bill.