Heat Pump question - better control of aux heat
Hi! I've been evaluating home automation software off and on for several years, and stumbled upon HomeSeer last week and have decided to take the plunge. The black friday sale is helping make up my mind!
One of the things I am very interested in addressing is my HVAC system. I don't have a regular schedule - sometimes I am out of the house during the day, sometimes I work from home. My upstairs HVAC system is a heat pump, and I'm having constant issues with the aux heat kicking in after recovering from a setback. I understand below certain temperatures the economics of not setting back, but when the weather is mild enough I would like to be able to set back, and have the heat pump recover in a semi-intelligent way.
I have one of the Honeywell thermostats that supposedly "learns" the recovery time and won't kick in the aux heat unless absolutely needed, but even after some extensive googling and setting things through the advanced menus I'm still not very happy with it - it was 45 degrees outside this morning and it kicked the aux heat in right away
So, is anyone using a setup with a heat pump and HomeSeer that will do something similar to what I want? Nirvana would be setting a wake up time the night before and having the system start the heat pump at the appropriate time based on the current outside temperature. If it's a day I won't be at home, I probably wouldn't even want to change the setpoint in the morning, but instead change it for the evening. Theoretically with a system as powerful as HomeSeer this should be eminently doable.
Since this is a secondary furnace (I have a gas unit on the first floor) and theoretically I should never need the aux heat (other than to cover for if the heat pump goes into defrost mode - I think it's happend maybe four times in the five years I've been in the house) I've toyed with leaving the aux heat off of the thermostat - but I would rather "do the right thing" if possible. I wouldn't want the heat pump to not be able to defrost, for example.
And actually, that's a secondary project - since the defrost logic in my current heat pump is timer based and doesn't seem to take into account the external temperature, adding some more smarts to that process (if doable) would be awesome as I'm sure unnecessary defrosting is a huge energy waste since in defrost mode you are basically air conditioning your house in the winter
I'm hoping someone has already done something like this and I have just not been very good at searching and finding the thread. If so any links to threads I obviously missed would be welcome.
One of the things I am very interested in addressing is my HVAC system. I don't have a regular schedule - sometimes I am out of the house during the day, sometimes I work from home. My upstairs HVAC system is a heat pump, and I'm having constant issues with the aux heat kicking in after recovering from a setback. I understand below certain temperatures the economics of not setting back, but when the weather is mild enough I would like to be able to set back, and have the heat pump recover in a semi-intelligent way.
I have one of the Honeywell thermostats that supposedly "learns" the recovery time and won't kick in the aux heat unless absolutely needed, but even after some extensive googling and setting things through the advanced menus I'm still not very happy with it - it was 45 degrees outside this morning and it kicked the aux heat in right away
So, is anyone using a setup with a heat pump and HomeSeer that will do something similar to what I want? Nirvana would be setting a wake up time the night before and having the system start the heat pump at the appropriate time based on the current outside temperature. If it's a day I won't be at home, I probably wouldn't even want to change the setpoint in the morning, but instead change it for the evening. Theoretically with a system as powerful as HomeSeer this should be eminently doable.
Since this is a secondary furnace (I have a gas unit on the first floor) and theoretically I should never need the aux heat (other than to cover for if the heat pump goes into defrost mode - I think it's happend maybe four times in the five years I've been in the house) I've toyed with leaving the aux heat off of the thermostat - but I would rather "do the right thing" if possible. I wouldn't want the heat pump to not be able to defrost, for example.
And actually, that's a secondary project - since the defrost logic in my current heat pump is timer based and doesn't seem to take into account the external temperature, adding some more smarts to that process (if doable) would be awesome as I'm sure unnecessary defrosting is a huge energy waste since in defrost mode you are basically air conditioning your house in the winter
I'm hoping someone has already done something like this and I have just not been very good at searching and finding the thread. If so any links to threads I obviously missed would be welcome.
Comment