It keeps blowing and blowing and blowing.
Dec 13th, 2006 by Jason
So the heat pump in our new place sometimes keeps moving air long (30-45 minutes) after the thermostat has stopped calling for heat. Sometimes not. The whole situation makes me rather pissy as blowing room temperature air makes no sense. Well, at least not during the winter.
I replaced the orig. Datsun-B210 looking thermostat (that was 15′F out of calibration) with a nifty Honeywell VisionPro (hoping that the orig. thermometer might be the problem), but no luck.
Looks like my next step is to waddle around in the attic tonight and see if I can find the blowers wiring guide and see if there is an option to stop this madness.
Are you sure that it isn’t still heating? Did you have a heat pump at your old place? Heat pumps work differently than furnaces in that they very slowly heat the air, it may feel like it is just moving room temperature air. (They tend to have to move more air, i.e. blows harder, to move enough to acually heat the place.)
Then of course there is the cool-down period but that shouldn’t last 30-45 minutes, and should be even shorter with a heat pump than a furnace.
Some people opt to have the system blow air all the time, it keeps it filtered, and clean. (Of course that is usually done at a low speed.)
The old place had a high-efficiency gas furnace with a kick-ass variable speed fan. It was the meaning of ‘true love’.
Over here, one of the reasons I went for a new thermostat was that the old one didn’t show when it was calling for regular heat. The new one shows everything. It even knows how to handle DST in 2007+.
When I left this AM around 9am (I was soooooo late), the temp inside was 70 and the thermostat was set to 65 and the fans were blowing. The thermostat was programmed to drop to 65 at 8am, so there was really no reason for the fan to be running much after that.
I think I killed the air handler tonight. It works, but makes a really horrid buzzing sound when it’s not handling air. Thankfully it’s halfway warm outside, so I’m leaving the whole system turned OFF and calling for help tomorrow AM.
You late?! Say it ain’t so! I guess if you have to call for help, that means you’ll be late again tomorrow. Sorry about all of the problems. How do you like your new digs other than that?
oops… Sounds like it might be time for another furnace with a “kick-ass variable speed fan.” I know I sure would like a setup like that. (That and a more efficient A/C unit.)
I just want to move the water heater and furnace out of the usable basement space, and to somewhere I don’t care about. (That and get one that doesn’t sound like a jet engine.)
So what happened? Did you get anybody to come out?
Yup.
Had the same cute HVAC guy come out as the week before (when we signed up for the twice-a-year maintenance check program).
After being up in the attic for an hour, the only thing he noticed was a spark or two, but he couldn’t track the source down.
He undid and redid all of the wiring on the unit, and so far we haven’t had any problems.
Then again, it’s been almost 70′ each day, so I don’t think the heaters been on much. heh