My heat pump works the first couple weeks of the winter the proper way and then all of a sudden it will start blowing freezing air into the house until my set temp goes well below what its set for and then the emergency heat will kick on and run forever to get the temperature to rise to what I have the thermostat set for. Once that reaches the set temp the HP immediately switches back on and starts blowing cold air again and it repeats what I told you before. This never stops until I finally just turn on my emergency heat. I know about the thaw cycle and have been told maybe that's what is happening but as little as I know I do know that is not it because I could let it run and that will continue for hours.
We did have someone look at it a couple years ago and he said he couldn't find anything wrong with it and that is normal for a HP system. I am no fool,, nobody in the world would own a HP system if they had to pay huge bills every year to have heat because they had to use their emergency heat.
Please tell me what you think it could be. We have had this unit for 7 years and it has never worked properly. I am sooo tired o huge electric bills in the winter.

What sort of outside tempratures are you talking about here... heatpumps are really only efficient down to 32F. They will quickly reach a point below that there isn't enough latent heat in the air for them to work.

Where you live makes a big difference in how well they will work for you... if tempratures get low enough long enough you would really want one with a geothermal loop rahter than a surface mounted exchanger.

If its -10F where you are I'm not surprised it doesn't work.


However I do think there is another problem...perhaps a thermostat malfunction? Is the unit icing up when this happens? Has it been checked out by a professional recently? A few years might be too long between inspections.