I’m buying a townhouse and it has a heat pump. The home inspector said he turned on the heat and the compressor on the heat pump would not come on. It does come on for AC.
I called an HVAC guy who came over and told my realtor the compressor will not come on by design because it senses the outside temp as being hot, and that it is fine. I was not able to be there so I havent spoken to him directly yet.
Can anyone confirm this is a common design? I want to trust what he said but I’m just worried that come winter the heat won’t work and I’ll have to shell out a ton of cash for a new heater. I’ve got a really short inspection contingency period that ends tomorrow. I don’t know why a home inspector wouldnt know this either. Won’t use him again.
I believe a heat pump has what's called a thermal coupler which is placed in the system to prevent running and over heating the unit, however you might get the unit to kick on at 5:00 am or so, the very coolest part of the morning before sun up? You may need to run the AC for a few days to cool the interior to 65 - 66 degrees or so to insure the thermastat would actually sense a colder tempurature than a heater tempurature setting of 72.
Make sure you wait about 15 minutes between turning the AC off and re-starting the heater. Provided the outside tempurature is below 85 degrees or so, the heat pump should fire up?
Either way if everything else is working it should be fine come fall. If in doubt buy a home warranty plan for 1 year for $350 dollars it’s pretty cheap insurance!
Just make sure the home warranty covers the whole heat pump of that type and style?
Thanks for the reply. We’re gonna meet Monday at 8 AM and give it a try. Should be cool enough. I also spoke to the owner of the company since apparently the tech didnt even look at the system, just turned it on at the thermostat and made his assessment. Anyway the owner told me he has a few landlord customers with old systems and that he can always fix these things with a new component. There’s never a reason to replace the entire system unless you want greater efficiency. And since the AC works we know the compressor works. I was thinking about the warranty idea too. Not a bad one.