Heat Pumps and Electric Heating - blows refrigerated air during defrost

I have a Goodman 2.5 ton 13 seer heat pump with a something? white t-stat and I note that when the unit goes into defrost mode the air handler remains on blowing fridgid air into the house, it seems this is counter productive, is this normal operation?

No it's not. What type of auxillary heat does your hp utilize ? Is it electric heat strips or is it gas fired ?

For some reason your aux/emergency is not initializing.

Try putting the t-stat into emergency heat and see if you get heat then.

yes it does have heat strips (8KW) but it does this when I shut off the heatstrips at the circuit breaker so is this still normal operation? or should the blower shut off for this mode of operation

Even though you kill the power to the heat strips the blower will run when it calls for defrost or aux/emerg heat.

Why are you killing power to the back up heat ?

Im with Matt Why did you turn off the breakers??? When the unit goes into defrost its just a AC at that time. So the electric elements should come on at that time so the unit dont blow cold air into the home.;)

I have turned off the elements because I figured that they ran too much, the house is being remodeled and there is no ceilings so I just want to keep at 45 to 50

Then you will get cold air. Anytime the unit goes into defrost. At that time the unit is running in AC .To melt off the ice on the outside.

To recap. When your outdoor unit goes into defrost mode, wha it is really doing is turning on the air conditioner without the outdoor fan. That brings heat out of your house (just like in the summer) and melts the ice on the coils. It is supposed to turn on the electric heaters so you don't realize it is stealing heat out of your house to melt the ice but if you have the breaker turned off, you will just get straight air conditioning. It should only last 10 minutes. Depending on the part of the country you are in, you may begin to wonder how good an idea it is to heat with a heat pump. Defrost on demand instead of timed is a much better idea in the colder parts of the country.

Ken

I have a Goodman 2.5 ton 13 seer heat pump with a something? white t-stat and I note that when the unit goes into defrost mode the air handler remains on blowing fridgid air into the house, it seems this is counter productive, is this normal operation?

a heat pump in defrost is just like switching the a/c on, the aux heat strips are suppose to energize to offset the cold air

Thanks for all the replies, While I understand the defrost operative, I do not understand why the air handler can't cycle off or low so the effect is lessened, but then maybe it needs that air flow for the heat exchange to defrost.

you hit the nail on the head Greenguy the airflow has to be maintained so that the Defrost cycle (AC actually) is effective.