Reply to Dual fuel (heat pump with auxiliary gas furnace) - what settings for maximum efficiency and/or cost savings?

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Reply to "Dual fuel (heat pump with auxiliary gas furnace) - what settings for maximum efficiency and/or cost savings?"

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[quote=Anonymous]For efficiency, you have to balance your cost of gas and cost of elec against your specific appliances and house. Generally, figure out where the heat pump begins to struggle then supplement with gas. For my parents house, it was around 35F, but that was 30 years ago in a different climate zone.

For higher and lower temps across a day, that depends so much on how consistent your schedule is and how your house is set up. The real benefit when turning the heat down is how long it's at equilibrium at the lower temp before it changes back - that's where the savings are. The cost to heat back up was your savings from letting it cool down - those are about a wash. (Some say it "stresses the system" too much to do this, but I don't buy that argument outside rare cases of worn out systems. Programmable thermostats aren't some conspiracy for the early demise of HVAC units)

We have two zones at our house: basement/first in one and second floor in the other - and have kids off at college. All bedrooms are on the second, home office is in the basement. Our schedules have one or both of us working from from home for all but three mornings a week.

In the winter, we have our first floor at 72 from 6am until 9pm, then it's 62 overnight. It doesn't really cool off much until after 10:30pm or so unless it's [i]really [/i]cold out. The second floor is at 62 from 8am until 8pm - we really don't spend time there during the day and with heat rising, it generally doesn't run the heat unless (again) it's really cold out. The second is set for 68 overnight and 72 from 6am to 8am weekdays and 7am to 9am weekends.

In summer we don't do quite as much temp differential due to A/C dehumidifying. The first is 72/76 (day/night) and second is 74/70 (again, day/night).

These change during holidays, especially when the kids are home and both zones are used 20+ hours a day.

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