Heat Pumps and Electric Heating - Auxiliary heat strips stay on

We have a Bryant (FV4 Air Handler) 698B Electric Heat Pump. We turned off the entire HVAC system on April one. That is on the Tstat I put it on hold and changed the mode to OFF. We have noticed that a couple of the registers in the family room felt very warm in the morning, as if it had just been blowing heat, then stopped. The fan has not been running. We kept checking this out from time to time, and have now found the one of the auxillary heat strips has been on constantly! The Tstat still says OFF, the weather has been pleasant, the fan doesn't blow. But the registers directly over the air handler were the warm ones. The only way to get them to shut off is the throw the 2 breakers on the panel of the air handler. I tried to turn on the A/C today (it was hitting 80 in the house) It will all kick on fine, but that strip is still on! So much for saving electricity this last 6 weeks! Any ideas why these strips won't kick off? From what I can gather I might need to change out the heat contactor(s)? Ideas?

TIA,
Homesteadergirl
Log Cabin Rental Business Startup - Cabinstartup.com - DIY Log home. (http://www.cabinstartup.com)

Hi The most likely problem is you have a bad sequencer in the heat strip section. If you can post some photos. we can walk you thru it. Sequencers are cheap. Have you recently installed a new thermostat?

Thanks Daddyjohn! I think we found the problem. After taking everything apart in the air handler and testing a bunch of the wires (I know nothing on this, but thankfully, hubby does) He found the problem...seems a half dozen screws were inside the unit, one of them making a contact and causing one heat strip to stay on. We cleaned them all out of the handler and tested, and all seems to be working fine now. Don't recognize the short little black screws (not drywall screws) so who knows if one of my kids dropped them down the register, or if they were left behind at install or a repair that we had last year? Just glad it is fixed and I can cancel the repair call that I had in.

Thank you for your time!

Good job! I'm happy to hear you figured it out.