I bought a house this summer with a G E Weathertron thermostat circa 1984. What is the difference between the AUX HEAT and the EMERG HEAT setting. I know it reads NORM on the AUX HEAT setting, but the previous owner said he always kept it on EMERG HEAT. :confused:

Usually AUX and Emergency heat are the same on a two heat supply system. IE heat pump and electric furnace.

The aux setting is to turn on the heat strips if your heat pump can not provide enough heat and to clean the coil when your heat pump reverses it provides heat to off set the cold being produced by the heat pump in air condition mode.
The emergancy heat setting is only to used if there is something wrong with the heat pump unit. When in the emergancy mode the haet strips turn on every time your furnce turns on and can use a bundle of KW. Hope this helps

The thermostat in the emergency mode will lock out the heat pump and only energise the electric heat strips, while in the aux. position the thermostat will bring on the heat pump first and if more heat is required then it will bring on the electric strip heat. You may have a problem with the heat pump if the previous owner said to use the emergency heat option. Good luck, Mike