Just visited someone with a heat pump, gotta question.
The outdoor temperature was in the 20's, I realize there
was precious little heat out there for it to relocate to inside.
So the strip heaters needed to be doing their thing. But when
the thermostat would initially call for heat, the blower would come
on, and the heat pump would obviously be attempting to do its thing
first, rather than immediately kicking in the heaters. So the unit is
blowing cold air.
Does a heat pump thermostat have a 2-stage sensor bulb, so that
when it gets colder in the house because the heat pump isn't finding
any heat out there, the heat strips get cut on? Or is there a time frame
that goes past before the strips get cut on? The blower was delivering
cold air. Obviously, any air coming out of the vents that was not being
heated would be felt as cold, simply becuse it was room-air temperature
moving past us.
The thermostat was a General Electric unit, and I'm generally not
impressed with GE stuff anyway. But my awareness of heat pump stuff is
extremely slim, and I need a better overview of how that works. I realize
that temperature setback is not seen as a good idea at night, because of
it being a heat pump, but it would be damned agravating to have a cold
breeze blowing past at night, too. Is this a typical problem encountered,
especially since there are units that sense outside temperature and cause
the
thermostat to bypass the attempt to drag heat from outside when it's below
30 degrees or so? Is the GE thermostat the bottom of the line? Is there a
reasonably priced unit that incorporates outdoor sensing and doesn't cause
the unit to be blowing cold air?
Educate me, please. Or give me some favorite URL's. Thanks ahead of time.