heat pump check list
DOES IT TAKE FOREVER TO HEAT?
A Heat Pump is a combination of electric strips and your actual air conditioner unit outside, in most cases a unit low on refrigerant will decrease the efficiency of you system, try looking for constant frost building on outdoor unit, also make sure the fat copper line feels warm to touch, please be carefull a second is enough to feel this...
NO FROST ON OUTDOOR UNIT?
As mentioned before the heat pump combines heat from both the outdoor unit and your heat strips, if you see no frost on outdoor unit then it could simply be a defective set of electric heat strips, you could look at your electric meter and see if there is a significant increase or follow the next step over ...
NOT SURE YET ABOUT HEAT STRIPS?
No problem at all, your heat pump thermostat should have an extra option for emergency heat, this will bypass the outdoor unit and relay completely on the strips, by trying this step you should get air a bit warmer than indoor ambient, if air feels about the same we might just need new strips...
TIPS TO SAVE ENERGY ON HEAT PUMPS!
On average a heat pump will pull about 15 Amps under normal running conditions, whenever the target temperature is withing 3 degrees of indoor ambient, once that difference is greater than 3 degrees is when that energy can jump to 4 times higher meaning 4 times higher electric bill, so increase the temperature a little at the time to save $$$