Heat Pumps and Electric Heating - Heat Pump Question

I have a strange question for you guys. I had problems last winter with my York heat pump. I would turn it on heat and it would run awhile then at some point it would just stop blowing warm air, would start blowing cold air, and the EM Heat light would light up, which come to find out was a sort of message saying something was wrong. We had the local guy come out several times and he could never find the problem, so what we ended up doing the whole of last winter was using the EM Heat function rather than just heat. This bypassed the heat pump part of the system and just used the electric heat and it worked great all winter. When it got warm during early summer we ended up having to start calling about the problem again because we needed the A/C. Turns out after several trips and diagnostics, the repair guy found what I believe he said was a bad connector. A/C worked great all summer. Now it is winter again and the heat pump works great when its mildly cold outside, but sooner or later I might need to use the electric heat again so last night I decided to test it since it was very cold out. It was about 74 degrees in the house, and I switched it over to EM Heat, went back to bed. Some time later I woke up very cold. The EM Heat was on, but it wasn't blowing any heat at all and the house was around 68 degrees so I turned it back on heat. Today I tried the EM Heat again and same result, it just isn't blowing warm air, and the only thing we have had done was the stuff our local guy did trying to find out what was wrong with the heat pump/ A/C. Do any of you have an idea why the EM Heat isn't working? Thanks for any suggestions you can offer.

if its calling for heat and not getting any sounds like a wire might of come lose and not getting any power to heat strip . id call a service guy out and see why its not getting power . and just a thought on the reg heat problem from last year it might be a bad reviser vavle

Turns out the heat problem from last year was caused by a bad contactor. I just quit using the regular heat and used backup heat all winter and didn't worry much with it til summer rolled around and I needed that part up and working. Now on the heat strip thing.

I went out there earlier tonight and took off the front three covers to look for loose wires or connections and maybe to look at the heat strip itself. Well, I didn't find anything that looked much like a 'heat strip' and I didn't find any loose wires at all either. I removed three panels from the front, one containing the capacitors, connector/s, and computer. Behind the middle was the blower motor, and the last panel just appeared to be the fuses from where power runs in. Where would the backup heating unit be housed and maybe if you could tell me what it looks like, that'd be great. I would like to try and figure this out without having to call a service guy out if it is something I can do. Thanks for any additional help you guys can supply.

Is this a Package unit? If not, than you dont need to go out to check the heat strips, they would be in the air handler inside your house. If it is a packaged heat pump than at best only the conections of the haet kit would be visible. In some cases none of the conections of the heat kit will be visible.While trying to diagnose the Emergency heat on a haet pump you would use the same basic steps as diagnosing a standard electric furnace. It could be a bad sequencer, a bad high limit switch, a burnt fuseable link or any number of other things. Best advice would be is that if you have to ask where the heat strips are than you should search out a reputable service tech that you can trust and let them do their magic.

Hi there, On most of the heat pumps i've seen the heat strip is located at the "top" of the air handler or just before the duct work "plenum" starts. Sometimes they will have a pair of ceramic insulators and round limit switches at the ends. It will take a good bit of dissassembly to get at them and it is really a job for a good tech as alot of wires will have to be removed just to get to the things in most cases. sometimes there will be sheetmetal between the heat strips and the wire area. Good luck.