Heat Pump Not Reaching Heat Setting

[franzen_torres]

I have a fairly new (less than 6 mos.) Lennox CBX32MV Signatue Elite 4- ton heat pump. For the last 2 days, the temp around DC has dropped below 30 degrees F. My heat setting is at 70 degrees but the thermostat never shows the actual room temp go higher than 65.5 degrees. The thermostat says "auxiliary heat on" but I don't feel any toasty warm electric heat air coming out of the registers - just the usual heat pump ambient air. Is there something wrong with my heat pump, or is 70 degrees just impossible to attain if the outside air is below 30 degrees? Anything I can tweak without calling for repairs or voiding the warranty? Thanks for any insight.

[drydem]

If the air coming out of the vents created by the auxillary heat is not warmer than the surrounding room air temperature - then there is a good possiblity that the auxillary heating coils might be malfunctioning or broken. If the HVAC is under warranty then call the installer to fix it.

[Red Green]

"franzen [e-mail]" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

If your system is that new you should be seeing 20 degrees or better delta between what's going in the return and what's coming out of the registers.

When the aux is on and electric kicks in, it should be putting out air well over 100 degrees. Part of the breeze you feel is your electric meter spinning :-) Use the warranty. If you wanna do a quick check beforehand check your main panel box to see aux heat is tripped. Then, there is probably a separate breaker for the aux heat installed someplace near the air handler (could be in the attic area). There may be cartridge fuses at that breaker. Check them with a continuity checker. Kill all the breakers before pulling the fuses. Still, treat it like it's hot anyway when you pull the fuses. They make a non-conductive cartridge fuse puller:

[Ralph Mowery]

Unless way below 30 deg you should be able to get to 70 deg in the house. I set my thermostat to 70 and it almost never gets off that (never more than 1 deg either way). At 20 deg it is still 70 in the house. Not sure if my electric heat strips comes on or not when it is that cold outside.

Your uint is less than 6 months old. That means you probably have not even used the heat. Call the man.

[S. Barker]

Mine pulled something similiar a couple weeks ago. I had it set on 60 and the temp inside was 52. I turned it off at the thermostat, then turned the power to the outdoor unit off at the breaker panel for one minute. Then turned the breaker back on, and reset the thermostat. It's been fine ever since. I did call the man who installed it. He's gonna come look at it.

s

[curmudgeon]

There are also limit/overload switches in the electric heat circuit...if one fails, it will kill any output from the coils.

[Red Green]

"franzen [e-mail]" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Just a thought. The aux should work regardless but when the heat pump was installed, was a matching condenser coil installed? That can affect the eficiency of the heat pump significantly in some cases.

Then there's the undersized/oversized question. Many many variables go into it which is what the seller/installer should hae evaluated. How many sq ft and how many ton unit is it is a starting point?