41 Year Old York Heat Pump

My 41 year old York heat pump struggles at temps under 32℉ and can't keep the house at 70℉,
It's now about 64℉ in the house, (even though I turned the thermostat up to 72℉) which really isn't too bad.
I'm dressed up more and drinking warm water and hot soups.

A modern heat pump is keeping my house at 68F when it's 12F outside, using no heat strips/aux heat.

This modern heat pump is a single-stage Trane from 2017.
 
When I lived upstairs over my mom in NH, there was a gas fired kitchen stove that also had a furnace function.
The living room also had a gas furnace. They heated nicely but I reacted to gas so I had the LR one taken out.
Then I decided not to use the kitchen one either, so I was only using a quartz column heater and an electric oil filled radiator for heat.
Some mornings I remember it being 50*F in the kitchen. But we made do without burning gas furnaces.
My dad was a foreman for a gas company for 33 years, and gas served us well for many years until I realized I felt better if I'm not around gas.
They take oxygen from the air and I don't do well with things that take oxygen from the room air.

High efficiency gas furnaces don’t use any interior air for combustion. They draw outside air in, burn it and exhaust it outside. That’s the route I’d go when/if you need to replace your HVAC.
 
That's weird, my gas furnace doesn't need baseboard heaters, electric heaters hidden in the ductwork, or other band-aids when heat is actually needed for survival.

My heat pump is maintaining 68F at 12F outdoor without using any of that....

....and doing it for a lot less money than it would cost to run the propane or oil furnace which are my only other options.

Some of us live nowhere near natural gas lines.
 
I might as well shut the unit off when it's below 32*F and run the quartz heater and Pelonis disc furnace.
It seems like the heat pump is really not making any heat and is just pulling up crawl space air that's around 65*F.
That's not really heat, even though it's better than the 5*F temperature outside it's supposed to be tonight.
I should be able to run these for 2 more days, until Monday when it's supposed to go up to 40*F.
I don't want to wear out my heat pump by making it run almost non stop.

What I want to get is one of those Dr Infrared heaters.
The reviews of them are good and I think it would be a good unit to use when the temp goes below freezing here.
Luke, Good Luck to you and yours the next few days. Please let us know the results of running the space heaters as you have suggested. Please for safety's sake follow the mfgrs directions and do not use them with extension cords or with outlets that may not have the proper circuit protection capability.
 
My heat pump is maintaining 68F at 12F outdoor without using any of that....

....and doing it for a lot less money than it would cost to run the propane or oil furnace which are my only other options.

Some of us live nowhere near natural gas lines.

^This.

My heat pump is still pushing out 82 degree air (68 degrees at air filter intake) at 11F ambient outdoor, looking at how it has performed from 30F to 11F shows it would probably still be ok down to near 0F as the indoor temp rise has been dropping 1 to 1 with outdoor temp drop. If we hit 8 degrees as projected I am guessing my vent output will probably be down to about 78F which should still be ok for my 68F set point.
 
^This.

My heat pump is still pushing out 82 degree air (68 degrees at air filter intake) at 11F ambient outdoor, looking at how it has performed from 30F to 11F shows it would probably still be ok down to near 0F as the indoor temp rise has been dropping 1 to 1 with outdoor temp drop. If we hit 8 degrees as projected I am guessing my vent output will probably be down to about 78F which should still be ok for my 68F set point.

Mine just hit the setpoint of 68F and shut off. Thermal camera pointed at front door mat says it's 12F outside.

I adjusted the Honeywell thermostat to 3 cycles per hour for additional efficiency. Fewer cycles per hour is more efficient.
 
Heat pumps are simple things, but NOT understood by most. Look at the graph. The "efficiency" or CoP (coefficient of performance) drops as temps drop. BUT that's not all that drops. So does BTU output. Clearly, the colder it is out, the MORE BTU needed. But heat pumps don't work that way.

graph_cplt48_lg.gif


A 5 Ton (60,000 BTU) unit might produce 1 Ton (12,000 BTU) of heat at -10°F.

blog_heatpump_Fig%201.png
 
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Clearly, there are modern heat pumps that are better than older units. However, look at the graph above for reality. None of them are powerful when it's really cold out. The "Artic" one in the graph above is an air to water unit, and that does change the dynamic a bit.

Let's be clear, the folks who have heat pumps that "work well" when really cold, have well sized units. It's not magic to understand that a unit twice the size will produce twice the heat at 0°F.
 
All heat pump do not work well under 32. Most have auxillary heating sources(electric, gas or oil) Geo thermal heat pumps do work if the ground is above 32.
 
I turned the unit off and am going to try running a quartz heater and Pelonis disc furnace.
I think my heat pump was only pulling up 65* air from the crawl space and I don't want to wear it out prematurely..
I’m sure being cautious is prudent in this epic weather event however if it quits today you are about 22 years beyond what the life expectancy is. When you’ve
framed this in “ wear it out prematurely” (41 years!!) - I have to ask…do you think it’s even working at all now and how long are you expecting it to live?
 
Luke,

Seems pretty safe to assume your heat pump is old and or undersized or featured for really cold weather- maybe not.

You cannot stand any combustibles, even though most house size gas units feed and exhaust to outdoor air.
this rules out, nat, kerosene, propane, catalytic, diesel,

You dont want to pull more electric than you are running now cant recall - one or two wall 1500/ 5K BTUheaters?

The math is real, you just dont get a lot of heat from that to cover a severe cold snap.

Do you have a 50 amp dryer plug?

The all season RV guys use a true electric 30/ 50 amp electric heater you can build a box for that really makes heat this not help you now, but you could get an HVAC guy to plumb it into your ductwork or simply set in a corner of a room- you'd be sending between 20 and 40K to your registers.

 
I have 4 of these heaters in my NY office, as the Natural Gas roof mounted unit has not worked for the last 2 years.

They are silent and each provide about 5000 BTU of heat. Reliable, with long life. I put each one on a different circuit breaker. Although they can't heat my office to 70 degrees on a 20 degree day, they can reach temperatures where my printer will function :) (unlike last year where I had no heat at all)

I left yesterday and am back in FL, where I belong :cool:

 
Let's be clear, the folks who have heat pumps that "work well" when really cold, have well sized units. It's not magic to understand that a unit twice the size will produce twice the heat at 0°F.

It's a 4-ton unit in a 3300 sq ft house. Not oversized for AC, they did a manual J calc.

The difference may be that my house is tight. Before the drywall went up and the insulation went in I sealed up every gap and crack I saw with polyurethane caulk or Great Stuff, and after it went up I sealed the top plate in the attic with Great Stuff.

There could be 30MPH winds outside, and if I'm in this house, I can't tell.

That was NOT true of my old house.
 
^This.

My heat pump is still pushing out 82 degree air (68 degrees at air filter intake) at 11F ambient outdoor, looking at how it has performed from 30F to 11F shows it would probably still be ok down to near 0F as the indoor temp rise has been dropping 1 to 1 with outdoor temp drop. If we hit 8 degrees as projected I am guessing my vent output will probably be down to about 78F which should still be ok for my 68F set point.

My heat pump ran pretty much continuously from about 11pm last night till about 11am this morning. It maintained the 68F temp even without using any aux heat (though the thermostat tried to turn it on, it can't).
 
When it gets below 0F, I routinely shut off the heat pumps and go back to hot water boiler heat. But when it goes above zero again, the hot water boiler heat goes off and the heat pumps go back on. The heat pumps here are modern, frigid climate Mitsubishis. I call them my "Mitsubishi Zeros".
 
It was 24℉ at 4am today, and at 6:30am it was 15℉, and at 8am it was about 11℉.
It seems to be holding at 10℉ at 12:30pm.

My 41 year old York heat pump struggles at temps under 32℉ and can't keep the house at 70℉,
It's now about 64℉ in the house, (even though I turned the thermostat up to 72℉) which really isn't too bad.
I'm dressed up more and drinking warm water and hot soups.
I'm running a small ceramic heater. I also have a radiant quartz heater that I haven't used yet.
It heats very well at temps over 32℉ and it cools nicely in hot weather.
At temps under 32℉ it seems to stay in defrost mode a lot, and when it does it tends to blow cool air into the house.
I could replace the whole system for $6,000 or deal with it the way it is.

I was thinking of getting a bigger heater to use on days like this but I'll probably be OK with what I have.
I had this old heat pump worked on last summer for $325 because it wasn't working right and it's been fine ever since with the exception of the below 32℉ issue.
Your heat kit is inoperative it shouldnt be blowing cold air on you in defrost. Also explains why it can't keep temp
 
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