Steve@Advance
Well-known Member
I'm sure several of you have heat pump systems in your home. I just installed mine last fall.
Now that the temps are falling, I noticed it was going into defrost cycle quite often. Any time it goes into defrost, the system reverses, it takes heat from the house, sends it to the outdoor coil to melt the ice, and turns on the emergency heat to compensate for the lost heat. A very wasteful situation!
I got to wondering why it was going into defrost so often, though there appeared to be no sign of ice on the outdoor coil. Did a little Youtube research, made a discovery.
There is a defrost board in the outdoor unit. It registers run time when the outdoor thermostat is below freezing. There is a set of jumpers (some have dip switches) that can be set for 30, 60, or 90 minutes. This setting determines how often it goes into defrost. I checked mine, sure enough it was set for 30 minutes!
The 30 minute setting is the factory default "worse case" for extreme cold, damp weather. Since I live in a mild climate, it should be set for 90 minutes. So if you have a heat pump, you'll want to have that timer set for your climate area, the longer you can get by between defrosts, the more efficient the system will be!
Here is the Youtube video that explains it, look at 4:50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_-pb-WU3o
Now that the temps are falling, I noticed it was going into defrost cycle quite often. Any time it goes into defrost, the system reverses, it takes heat from the house, sends it to the outdoor coil to melt the ice, and turns on the emergency heat to compensate for the lost heat. A very wasteful situation!
I got to wondering why it was going into defrost so often, though there appeared to be no sign of ice on the outdoor coil. Did a little Youtube research, made a discovery.
There is a defrost board in the outdoor unit. It registers run time when the outdoor thermostat is below freezing. There is a set of jumpers (some have dip switches) that can be set for 30, 60, or 90 minutes. This setting determines how often it goes into defrost. I checked mine, sure enough it was set for 30 minutes!
The 30 minute setting is the factory default "worse case" for extreme cold, damp weather. Since I live in a mild climate, it should be set for 90 minutes. So if you have a heat pump, you'll want to have that timer set for your climate area, the longer you can get by between defrosts, the more efficient the system will be!
Here is the Youtube video that explains it, look at 4:50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_-pb-WU3o