My husband and I noticed a few days a go, the house was still cold even after the thermostat was turned up to about 75 degrees. Neither does the unit automatically turn off.
We live in Texas so at any given day the temp may be 80 degrees today and 30 degrees the next day. As a matter of fact, we had a couple of 75-80 degree temps last week and this is when I noticed there was a problem. I'd turned the A/C on and set it about 72 degrees because I knew the temp was going to reach about 80 degrees later that day. My husband and I left the house, about 7a.m and returned about 6 p.m.that evening. When I walked in the house, it felt like and oven. Although I could hear the unit running, it was blowing warm air. I turned the thermostat to the "off" position and waited a few minutes before turning it back on. When I turned it back on I set the thermostat at 65 degrees. The temp in the house changed just "barely". It never got 65 degrees in side the house. So we finally turned the unit off again and used the ceiling fans for the remainder of the night. The following night, the temp dropped outside to about 40 degrees. I switched the thermostat from A/C to heat set the thermostat at about 70 degrees. The unit came on (automatically) during the night and ran constantly but the house was ice cold the next morning. After a couple of nights using a space heater AND panicking thinking about our electric bill!) I switched the thermostat to "Emergency Heat" setting and began using it. The house heated up immediately and the unit now comes on/turns off automatically. We've been running on the "Emergency Heat" mode for the past few days.

Can you tell by what I've describe what the problem could be? Are we damaging the unit running it on Emergency heat? Also, how long should we continue in the Emergency heat setting?

Mrs. J Robinson

Sounds like you have a problem with the heat pump portion of your system. Im not a heat pump guy, so all I can do is suggest you call in a pro. Now, it will hurt nothing to run the system in emergency heat, as this just kicks the heat pump off and turns on the backup heat sorce whether it be electric coils in the furnace or gas furnace. Many older heat pumps will not produce enough heat when the temps get down below 30 or forty degrees outside, so you would have to kick it into emerg heat at that time, but, since the coolling isn't working right either, I would guess there is an issue with the outside heat pump unit. Just keep it on emerg heat until you can have the unit looked at. Or maybe one of the other pros here can give you some things to check. Good luck and please let us know how things work out.

Your AC unit will stop blowing hot air when the outside handler is frozen and so it goes on "defrost" mode. The emergency heat is your back up and it is okay to use it. I've had this problem every winter in Florida becauase the AC units down here aren't meant for such extreme cold weather conditions. Your options are to upgrade your unit or continue to use the emergency heat as needed. Some people say it will run up your electric bill; however, we have never experienced that because we run it on auto so just as if it was on normal heat, it will turn on and off as needed.

Sounds like you need to have somebody look at it. When you are in regular heat or cool does the outside heat pump come on? I would start there. If it doesn't come on I would start by checking the circuit breaker and make sure it's not tripped. If it is running look at the two copper lines that come off the bottom/back of the unit. If they look like they have frost on them then you might have a problem. I would recommend checking the air filters as a first step, if they are dirty then this could cause problems due to insufficient air flow. Start there.