Beware of the Con Artist: How to Spot and Stop Home Maintenance Scammers

[karel]

We just got our heat pump installed. I tried to do my homework on deciding which way to go. They just finished installing yesterday so this morning we decided to try out the system. We live in the Pacific Northwest. Right now the temp is about 50 degrees so not too cold. I started out at 58 degrees in the house and turned it up to 62 degrees. A half hour later of constant running and the house has come up one degree. I called the company to ask them if this was normal. I was told that to come up 4 whole degrees to expect 2 to 2 1/2 hours for that amount of temp to come up. WHAT?? Everybody told me how "efficient" this was going to be. I told them this system is very INefficient if it takes that long. They said, oh no, this will cost you much less than plain electric heat. I told them that was called "COST EFFECTIVE" and had nothing to do with efficiency. Well, they didn't know what to tell me - that this was the way heat pumps work. Why didn't somebody address this before. Or didn't I research this enough. It never occurred to me that it wouldn't heat my home. I'm really upset by this whole $8,000 experience. BTW, my house is 1900 SF and I got a 2 1/2 ton 14 SEER American Standard with a 3 ton air handler. Thanks for letting me vent. karel

[scott21230]

Ummmm, heat pumps are alomst the same as air conditioners, and work equally bad. Looks like normal operation to me.

[Doug Kanter]

I can't speak to the efficiency of heat pumps, but I know this: 12 years ago, we had an ice storm here in upstate NY. My house was unheated for a week, so it got down to 35 degrees inside. Once power was restored, it took about two days for the place to feel comfortable again. It's not just the air you're heating, but all the objects in the house, too. The thermostat has no way of knowing how cold your furniture is. Get your house up to a comfortable temp for a few days, and THEN see how much the thing runs in order to maintain that temp. There may still be issues, but in just one day, I don't think you can accurately determine that.

[badgolferman]

Blizzard of '93? I was in Utica at the time. That was a nasty storm, even by NY standards. It took two days for me to dig the cars out of the driveway.

[Doug Kanter]

I don't recall if it was 91 or 93. But, only two services were able to reach our street, which had a 6" layer of ice on it: The phone company (which amazed me), and the cloth diaper delivery guy, who said NOTHING could stop him. Must've been 91. My son was out of diapers by the time he was 4.

[nlbauers]

In my line of work, efficiency is just a measure of energy input vs. energy output. Your system consumes very little energy and converts the vast majority of it to heat, making it very efficient. That doesn't mean it will heat your house quickly, it just means it doesn't waste a lot of the energy it consumes. Electric heat is less efficient (even if it heats your house quickly), because it uses more electricity to produce the same amount of heat. It seems the metric you are disappointed with would be BTU per hour.

I realize that quibbling over definitions is not going to make you feel better, in fact, it may just annoy you. I understand your disappointment if you were told that high efficiency meant that the system worked quickly. Especially since it tends to be the case that the more efficient the system the slower it will work. Sounds like there was a misunderstanding along the way.

[Jeff Wisnia]

Learn your terms better, karel. Efficiency is definitely a term applied to heat pumps (We have two heat pumps in our home and two in our business.) The term relates to how many BTUs of heat are delivered in the house per unit of electrical energy consumed, in comparison with directly converting that electrical energy to heat with resistance heating.

Heat pumps typically don't have a very high "recovery rate" which means there's only so much heat (BTUs per unit time) they can put out and that's usually somewhat lower than with a gas or oil fired system. So, they will take a while longer to raise the temperature than those other systems, but what you need to look at is how much electricity they consume while holding the house at the selected temperature once it gets to that temperature.

If your life style is such that you don't need to keep the place warm for 16 to 18 hours a day, and maybe want to come and go several times a day, then a heat pump may not have been such a good choice for you if you want to "turn the heat down" down while you are away and want it to warm up again quickly when you come back in.

You didn't mention whether your system is equipped with auxillary electric heaters. (All our own systems are.) If you don't have them, then adding them might be a good way for you to accomplish the rapid temperature rise it seems you feel you are missing.

HTH,

Jeff

[karel]

Thanks so much Jeff and nlbauers. Those explanations are very understandable to a non-techno type such as me. I wish these explanations were presented to me sooner by the different companies, but, I suppose, they were there to sell me a system and if I didn't ask the correct questions they were under no obligation to point out certain inadequacies. I just had no idea that it would take soooo long to heat my house. Our other house has oil heat and it heats up almost instantly. Thanks, Karel

[SQLit]

A heat pump reverses the inside and outside coils, ( very simplified ). Heat pumps do not work very well below 45 F. Some would say 40F. I live in the desert and have my windows during the times when it is below triple digits, so heat is not an issue for me.

Call the folks back with your best sugar voice and ask to speak to the "trouble shooter or owner". Then politely ask for them to measure the heat output, while you are there. Have them explain the process to you. Inside all of the paper work you got on your unit. There are charts on what to expect on the cooling, and heating output of the system. These charts are based on a given outside temp and some other factors.

SEER has nothing to do with heating. I can not see your installation from here, seems small for the size of the home. Might be time to call AS, but they will probably send you back to the contractor. Best wishes.

[George E. Cawthon]

All the answers about efficient are irrelevant. Any system that starts at 58 degrees and takes a half hour to raise the temperature 1 degree is inadequate. The slowest heating systems are those with heat grids in the ceiling, and it doesn't take that long, I know, I lived in an apartment that had that type of system. We turned the heat down in the day and turned it up when we got home, but we didn't turn it down much more than 8 degrees. I think two 1500 watt heaters would heat faster than your heat pump.

I don't know if it isn't working correctly or if it is sized wrong, but I think it is the former. Heat pumps are slow because the output temperature is lower than gas or oil heat. However, you should be able to go from 58 degrees to 68 degrees in less than an hour with the unit running constantly with your size house. It might take longer to stabilize, i.e., for temperature to not drop for a while when the furnace goes off.

Lot's of people here (Boise) have heat pumps.

[nlbauers]

Your welcome, and I'm not saying that nothing is wrong with the system or that it should take that long to heat the house. You should contact the company and make sure everything is working properly and that the unit is sized correctly for your house. There may be a problem, I just want to make sure that you and the people you are talking to understand your issue.

Neil

[Bishoop]

I second the suggestion of adding heat stirps if they are not already installed. That will give you quick warmup and then you can switch to the more effecient heat pump for maintaining the temperature you desire. If they are installed your thermosat should have a switch labeled "Aux" or something to that affect. That will activate the heat strips during times when you want a quick heat up. Just remember to switch them off when the space reaches your comfort zone.

The heat strips will come on automatically instead of the heat pump if the outside temp is something lower that around 40*F.

That's the system I have here in Central Florida. The times when the house has really cooled down in the "winter" the auxilliary heat (heat strips) bring the home up to our comfort zone very quickly.

BTW, the heat strips are installed in the outside unit where the heat pump is located.

[Joseph Meehan]

It may be efficient but it sure does not sound effective. There are a lot of things that go into sizing and the operation of a heat pump so it is possible the slow recovery time is due to it running in its most efficient mode. It could be normal. When it gets really cold you will find that it will actually put out more heat, but it will be working on direct resistance heat and that is only 100% efficient. Right now you should be above 100% efficient (yea I know that sounds screwy but heat pumps can operate at over

100% pumping more heat than energy consumed.

[Jeff Wisnia]

Our auxillary heaters are located in the inside air handlers, downstream from the "coils".

We're in the Boston area, so the outside temperature does go as low zero degrees F a few times during the winter, and the auxillary heaters are pretty much working full time on those occasions.

From what I've been able to tell, our winter heating bills are fairly on a par with those of our neighbors who use fuel oil or gas heat, and the cleanlyness, low maintenance and additional safety* gained by using heat pumps for winter heating make sense to me.

This spring we had the two outside heat pump units at home replaced with new ones at a cost of about $3,300 (Including an optionally purchased 10 year warranty from Trane.) The old units had survived 19 years without needing maintenance or repairs beyond my DIY capabilities, but one failed in February and the other seemed "feeble" so I figured shelling out what amounted to only $165 a year "replacement cost" was a pretty fair deal.

Jeff

• See another post here from me today regarding a major gas company screwup in the town next to the one we live in.

[Stretch]

Karel,

Your unit size sounds fine to me. I live in a 2000 square foot house in Myrtle Beach, SC and I have a 2-ton heat pump with 4KW strip heat.

Please note that it is usually a bad idea to run strip heat unless it is below about 35 degrees outside.

If you switch the thermostat to "Emergency Heat", you shut off the heat pump compressor (the cheap heat) and run strip heat ONLY. Strip heat is typically only 1/3 as efficient as the heat pump at your conditions. That means it costs three times as much to operate as the heat pump for the same amount of heat. Emergency Heat also means you will get LESS heat, NOT more heat. Use Emergency Heat only if there is something wrong with you outdoor unit, like a broken fan blade or heavy ice buildup.

If you post your email address with spaces around the "dot" and "at", I will email you our 4-page instruction sheet on "Care and Operation of Your Heat Pump". That should explain a lot of things you need to know.

Don't set a heat pump temperature back at night in the heating season, it will increase your electric bill.

Hope this helps

Kevin O'Neill "Stretch" O'Neill-Bagwell Cooling & Heating

843-385-2220 sixfoot7 @ sccoast dot net

[karel]

After talking to a tech at the installing company, they told me to check the thermostat. It was on AUX heat. I changed it to work on the heat pump and tried it out again and the temp went up 3 degrees in 20 minutes. MUCH better. The house is empty since we just purchased it and THEN found out the heat didn't work. We had to get this straight before we could occupy it. I'll check it tomorrow morning again when the temps are the coolest to see if I can get the temps up quicker. Thanks everyone. Karel

[karel]

BTW, we have 2 10KW heat strips for those that were asking. Karel

[Duane Bozarth]

Something still doesn't sound right then...the AUX position should allow the heat strips to kick in but shouldn't keep the heat pump from running as well.

The 20 kW of aux heat isn't much, granted, by itself, so the slow heat up rate makes some since.

Many installers will interlock the aux heat w/ the outside temperature so that they won't kick on until it's below somewhere in the 20s just to prevent the needless use of them. Perhaps they got something like that mixed up where it kept the heat pump unit off, not the aux heat.

[Al Moran]

The other thing to watch out for so that your bill does not skyrocket is this: Most heat pumps have "heat strips", these look like large toaster coils. If your thermostat has an "emergency" setting, then most likely you have heat strips.

Now here is the expensive part about heat strips. Most heat pump stats have a 3 degree offset for these strips. This means; if it is 65 degrees in the house and you set the thermostat to 69 degrees (greater than 3 degrees) these heat strips will come on until the 3 degree differential is satisfied.

So now you have the heat pump doing its thing and the heat strips doing their thing. This gets expensive really fast. To solve this problem, never set the thermostat more than 3 degrees above the room temperature as indicated on the thermostat.

Sorry to hear about your experience with heat pumps, but I do this for a living and never recommend them to my customers unless there is no other soulution. When the outside air temperature goes below about 50 degrees they work like crap, usually pumping only luke warm air.

Lastly, if you had the system installed over the summer I would demand the company come out and check the freon level. If there is even the slightest leak then it will also blow luke warm air since it must be properly charged to run in the heat AND ac modes.

[George E. Cawthon]

Well, the PNW is not Florida, so heat strips (auxiliary heat coils) are a must have. Any installation without them is remiss. How would you heat a house when the temp drops to 10 F if you didn't have the auxillary heat coils? BTW, I don't know for certain, but I think heat strips are located in the air flow system. Heating the compressor unit would be very inefficient.