Derek Cole explains how heat pump backup heat works: it kicks in below 40°F and during defrost cycles to supplement your system. You'll hear noise and see steam during defrost, but that's normal operation.
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Foreign. Hey, this is Derek Cole, and welcome to the Derek Cole Podcast. This podcast is all about home comfort and energy savings. The majority is really comprised of short audio clips of advice and answers to questions that we've been asked over the years. We also kind of sprinkle in the Ask Derrick Cole show audio, which is a much longer Q and A kind of program. If you like this episode, and I hope you do, I would love for you to share it on social with others. Just take a screenshot of the program and hashtag it Derek Cole so I can see you. But let's get into today's episode. If you have a heat pump, your backup heat will come on. I know sometimes that kind of freaks some. Some folks out when the backup heat is on because it's, you know, it's straight electricity is running up your bill. But really the backup heat serves two purposes. Mainly is to supplement the heat pump. So in this area, when. In this area, if you have a heat pump, when it gets below 40 degrees, it really starts to need help reaching the set point in your house. So if you got it on 72, it needs help getting there because it's so cool outside, so cold that you need something to add to it. That's why you have the backup heat, the strip heaters, for, for that reason. The other main reason you have the bag of heat is because of a defrost cycle. So what happens when you have a heat pump and it's in heating mode, it's actually extracting the heat from outside. So when that happens, frost builds up on the coals. So at some point it needs to get rid of that frost. So what happens is it actually reverses the flow of refrigerant and turns into AC mode. So in AC mode, you're taking the heat outside from the house outside. So when that happens, it's going to melt off that frost. So your backup heat comes on because you know you don't want to be cold inside. So when that happens, your backup heat will come on as well. And what's really, what's. What's really strange is it makes a very loud noise when it switches over to the defrost cycle. So usually you hear the loud noise, you look outside, you see your heat pump, steam's coming out from it. So you think something's wrong when it may be the defrost cycle. So I just didn't want you to freak out. It is going to happen with these, you know, cooler, cooler days, cold mornings, cold nights, the steam will happen from the heat pump the backup heat. Your secondary heat will come on to supplement all that. Well, what did you think? If you found any value in this episode whatsoever, please share it with your friends. And I encourage you to also rate and review on this platform. If you want to be really awesome, download the last six episodes, take a listen. It would really help us out with the rankings on this platform. Thank you so much for listening. Please reach out on social if you need any help or we can help in any way, please reach out. Until next time. Talk to you soon.
