Heat Pump Help
3It was 8 degrees below the cold setting in my house this morning and the heat pump was still blowing cold air.
I turned the temp setting up- blowing cold air.
Set the thermostat to off- still blowing cold air.
Set the thermostat to heat and set it to 90- still blowing cold air.
Turned off the breakers- no cold air. Turned them back on, cold air on all settings including off.
Is it worth driving to Home Depot an buying a new thermostat or is it time to call in a professional? Thermostats are pretty easy to install, right?
- 6 comments, 29 replies
- Comment
The one that’s in there now is a hundred dollars. Yikes.
If you decide to try changing yourself make certain you shut all the breaker off. If you touch that common (usually blue) wire it is super easy to blow a fuse on unit in attic. It is really annoying and hot to go change that fuse.
@raccoon81 I just took the thermostat off- so many wires. I guess I should call in the heat pump guy. I cut the power before I messed with it.
Did you try replacing the batteries?
@joebuddah I didn’t know it had batteries until I took it apart. They were all corroded. Oops. I cleaned it up, put new batteries in, and it seems to be working OK now. I’m not sure exactly what the batteries do since they’re corroded in the other thermostats and they are working. What do the batteries do?
@joebuddah @sammydog01 Not all thermostats have a hot wire to power them. Many older systems do not. The way around that used to be the old mercury switch style thermostat. As electronic thermostats became more popular, if there was no hot wire they would be powered by batteries. My current system has no hot wire but my thermostat has the option to be powered either by batteries or by a usb cable plugged in to the wall. I’m using the usb option because it tends to burn through the batteries pretty quickly. Only problem is when we lose power it interrupts the wi-fi connection for a day or two.
@cinoclav @joebuddah This one is maybe 10 years old. The thermostats remembered settings after I took out the batteries which were really too corroded to be working anyway. Maybe it loses its settings after a long outage? I don’t know. It’s electrical heat so it’s not like it will keep working when the power is out. The clocks were wrong. Do the batteries just keep the clock on time during power loss? I don’t mess around with the programming any more.
@joebuddah @sammydog01 Sometimes they have a button cell battery in there too just to keep the settings in memory. How old is your house?
@cinoclav @joebuddah 25 years or so. We had a new system put in though. Heat pumps are a bitch.
Just checked the manual- 3 aaa batteries only. It’s supposed to flash lo batt when the batteries need to be replaced. It never did. Maybe they do nothing at all?
@joebuddah @sammydog01 They definitely do something as you could see with the problems you were having. You may have simply missed the flashing period. I know I don’t ever look at my thermostat. It’s programmed and I ignore it. Make sure to change all the batteries and do the same for your smoke/CO detectors while you’re at it.
@cinoclav @joebuddah Out of 4 units with 10 year old corroded batteries only one is a problem. Looking around on the internet the only thing the batteries do is back up settings for long power outages. And the manual says you can program the thermostat sitting in a chair. I have a feeling there’s something else going on that I fixed at least temporarily by cleaning everything out.
@sammydog01 Why do you have 4 thermostats? Exactly how big is your house? I don’t think I know anyone that has more than two, usually one for downstairs and one for upstairs if they have separate units.
@cinoclav @sammydog01 Honestly i don’t know. When my thermostat stopped working. Thats what did and it fixed the problem
@cinoclav You haven’t seen the @sammydog01 mansion?
She needs that much space to store all of the crap that she buys.
@Barney @cinoclav @sammydog01
@Barney @RiotDemon @sammydog01 I think I jumped here from the Frankenstein thread.
Thermostats are easy, the wires are all color coded and swap one for one. If you get the same thermostat you don’t even have to mess with the wires, just swap out the unit on the original base plate. $100 for thermostat beats $200 for the service call plus $100 for the thermostat. And if it doesn’t work and you still have to call the heat pump guy you can tell him what all you have done.
@djslack I found one at home Depot that looks exactly the same. I’ll give it a shot if it stops working again. Which I bet it will. I can probably also return it if it’s something else.
The case was full of battery acid so maybe something important was corroded. I guess I should have read the manual.
@djslack @sammydog01
@chienfou @djslack @sammydog01
Research has documented that Americans don’t read the manual unless all else fails. In Japan they read the manual before they try/do/assemble/etc. anything. So no worries. Proof you are American.
@djslack @Kidsandliz @sammydog01
well damn… I guess that makes me Asian by default…
(still get pissed when the manual is not complete, i.e. only a ‘quick start’ type flyer…)
@djslack @sammydog01 Battery acid corrosion on a PCB can cause problems that a simple cleaning really will fix.
@chienfou @djslack @sammydog01
Ahh but do you read every single word before you even unpack whatever it is? If you don’t do that then you don’t match that country. I’ll have to find the study again to see the descriptions of the most common behaviors in other countries. I found the study entertaining.
@Kidsandliz
No, I usually unpack it then look at the manual so I have the product to refer to… guess that makes me more “Asian-American”
@djslack @Limewater @sammydog01 Or it can also destroy things completely, as I found out inside the remote for the TV I was given this week.
@djslack @sammydog01 Batteries that leak will ‘gas off’ corrosion throughout the t-stat. If/when you get a new one, remember to program it correctly for your system. It’s very easy if you take it one step at a time.
@djslack Some are easy, some not so much. I replaced the 20 YO thermostat installed when our house was built with an Ecobee “smart” thermostat. I wired the new one up just like the manual said, it lit up and responded to programming, connected to the WiFi, etc. but the furnace would not turn on. Back and forth with tech support over several days, sent them pictures of old and new wiring, furnace info, etc. - they were stumped. I finally found the original installation manual that the furnace installer left behind, read the fine print and discovered a switch on the furnace main control board that configured the voltage for the thermostat input. Changed the setting and voila! the furnace finally came to life.
BTW, once past the initial installation and programming, we have been pretty happy with the Ecobee and it does make a difference in the heating/cooling bill while maintaining comfort.
Usually call a professional if doing or trying to repair something will make it worse like me being dead. That being said wanted to put the same thermostat is my new house as I had in my old one and could have bought it on Amazon for $ 85.00 and the heating/AC wanted $ 150 to install it if they provided it and they would give me both a one year warranty on both the thermostat and installation. So let them so it.
I had the opposite trouble Friday night when I came home from work… house was warm when I walked in, air blowing was same temp as outside air. Temp in house was 79, thermostat set for 76. Fan running constantly.
Figured that my compressor was toast (20 yr old A/C unit) so turned off the ‘cool’ setting, and left the fan running to move some air during the night.
Called an A/C guy in the morning, who showed up about 1400 as I was getting ready for work. Called and said I would be late so I could walk him through the problem.
He pulled the side panel off the unit and lo and behold, the capacitor was crapped out. Swapped in a new one, and 20 minutes and $225 later we were good to go.
I would have been happy to do the swap myself, had I:
Much like working on a car, I don’t mind the process, but my diagnostic skills are limited.
Oh well, it’s cool (literally) now.
@chienfou We had the inside (evaporator) unit blower motor run capacitor die in our HVAC system last month. I immediately told my father I could get a new cap from the surplus store down the road for $10, which saved us hundreds on a service call and labor. I had the new cap in and the system running again in under 10 minutes.
@chienfou Having a pool pump, well pump, and responsibility for keeping 4 a/c units in 3 houses working, I know all too well about having bad capacitors. The Florida heat must be making them go prematurely. I’ve had every single a/c unit blow a capacitor as well as every motor for the pool and well pump. Seems to be every other year one of the devices will blow and require servicing.
I bought a Fieldpiece meter that has a capacitor tester and a spare capacitor for every a/c and pump motor I own. Got sick of paying someone $89 for the service call and $100 or more for a capacitor worth $5. When something stops working, that’s the first thing I do now – test the capacitors. If the meter says the capacitor is good, then I have to call the technician.
The Fieldpiece meter was sort of expensive considering I have fluke multimeters already but none had capacitor checking abilities. But saving myself from a single service call paid for the meter.
?
@chienfou @PooltoyWolf What kind of surplus store is this? I don’t know any place to buy stuff like that locally, but I’d like to.
@chienfou @Limewater It’s an amazing local institution called Skycraft Surplus, they’ve been here in Winter Park for many decades. They do sell some of their inventory online, but the experience just isn’t the same as visiting the store!
skycraftsurplus.com
EDIT: Here’s an excerpt from their ‘About Us’ page.
@cengland0 @chienfou Our system is 25 years old and so far the combo cap in the outdoor unit has failed twice and the blower motor cap in the indoor unit only once, just last month. That’s not bad for a system originally installed in 1996! It’s the second one, which replaced the unit put in when the house was built in 1978.
@chienfou Had a similar furnace issue once - a thermistor failed, but I did not have the knowledge/experience to diagnose the problem myself. 20 min and $150 later (to replace a ~$2 part) the technician had the furnace working again.