So…do you folks who live where it snows have heat pumps to run your air conditioning and heating system? How does that work in a colder climate?
Here in lovely uptown Phoenix, temperatures plummeted to a near-unheard-of 32 degrees last night. Eek, say we.
Along about three in the morning I woke up to an icy breeze wafting across the bed. The heat pump was grinding away, and it was blasting out cold air. As the night wound on, the heater never kicked off…and the house temperature dropped!
If the dogs and I were huddled in a shivering mass with blankets and pillows piled atop us, my poor little roommate must have been a block of ice. She’s sleeping on an air mattress — the roommate gig being a temporary thing — and so she’s on the tile floor. It’s cold in that room on a warm night! It must have been like a refrigerator in there along about 4 a.m.
This morning I called my favorite AC repair dudes. They said the problem is, when the ambient temperature drops below 32, a heat pump freezes up and starts blowing cold air into the house. Advice: shut the system down for three hours. Turn it back on. If it’s still blowing cold air after an hour, turn it off for another hour. Turn it back on: if that doesn’t fix it, call them and for a bargain $80 they’ll come out and see what the problem is.
LOL! This should get interesting.
The reason I’ve never had this problem is that left to my own devices, I don’t run the HVAC at night. After a summer of $250 air-conditioning bills, I can’t afford the cost of running a heater all night long. Normally what I’ll do is pile on the blankets at night and then during the day warm the area where I’m parked with a space heater. If it gets really cold at night, then I’ll turn the heat on first thing in the morning, just long enough to take the chill off.
But Roommate, resisting the plot to turn her into a snow zombie, raids the thermostat and turns it to around 70 degrees when she wakes up shivering along about 4 in the morning.
Not unreasonable, do you think? There’s really no good reason for her to be miserable all night.
So along about 5, I get too hot and then I sneak out into the hall and turn the thermostat back down to 68.
Heeee! The battle of the old ladies.
Well, one of them isn’t exactly old. But she’s reaching that age at which women start waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. 😀
So we’ll try the “shut it off” routine today and hope it works. After the $600 pool bill, I can’t afford another service call this month.
Meanwhile, I have to make a Costco run this morning. While I’m there, I’ll try to find those heated throws they had the last time I visited, and I’ll grab one for her. After she heads up to San Francisco to join her DH, the dogs and I will be glad to have a warm spot on the sack, especially if the winter stays cool.
My son says he’ll bring her a space heater that won’t set fire to her possessions — mine are those bowl things with the red-hot element in the center, effective but not something you want to turn your back on.
Meanwhile, chalk up another entry in the Annals of the Floored and Flabbergasted: a heater that freezes when it gets cold outside.
Most everybody uses forced air for heating and cooling. Heat pumps have started getting more popular, but really only in the few years as it’s just been in that time that the technology built in can allow them to work effectively in cold temps. I think that was a huge barrier in the past outside of the warm weather climates.
They’re much more economical for summertime cooling in these parts. Most of my summer AC bills are half of my son’s, with his regular gas-pack. His house is 500 square feet smaller than mine, and he’s never home in the daytime.
Get a heated mattress pad–they range from cheap (Walmart) to $$ (Lands End). The LE one may be on sale–we got one last year. Love them!
Dang! Wish I’d seen this before taking off for Costco — that probably would be the answer for her! But I think the throw will help. And it won’t stay this cold for long, anyway.
I have a heat pump. As the outside air temperature approaches freezing the system operates less efficiently, but I’ve never had it freeze up. On my system the air handler periodically defrosts the outdoor condenser. I thought that was standard on all heat pumps, but I could be wrong.
That may be so in cooler parts of the country. In these parts, the manufacturers may feel they can dispense with that nicety. Also, mine is a low-end brand — Goodman — and so it may not come with that feature at all.
32 … IN PHOENIX?…That’s just crazy….We heat our place with wood as electric rates are just out of sight here. The wood comes from rental property maintenance…Green and Cheap! The really crazy thing is that in this “neck of the woods” our weather has been uncommonly WARM with highs in the 70’s and lows in the 50″s at night….Loving it!!!
I think some of the newer homes here in MN allegedly have heat pumps, but I’m sure we would not buy a house with one, my husband is not a fan of them for cold weather areas, and me – I always want the option for real heat.