Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Heat Pump

New and installed (Goodman 4 ton, 12 SEER) on 12/13/01. Home 1700sqft. Night's get down to maybe 36F outside. The thermostat is set at 76 degrees. From early eve, temp in house about 73. Throughout night, the HP runs 2-5 minutes then shuts of for 5 minutes. then goes thru the same cycle whole night...with the temp in house steadily dropping. About 5 am when we get up it is 68-69 degrees. And the HP has been running almost half the night. Wife then turns the thermostat to 80 just to get the HP to heat the home. About 6:30 when we go off to work it is about 73 degrees in home. So it heat from 69 to 73 in 90 minutes. When we go to work, we drop the thermostat back to 76. We have had our contractor come out 5-6 times since install telling him this same info. He has done (who knows really what) some vent adjusting, different thermostat but nothing changes. We are really afraid of what our high effiecient new HP is going to cost us in electric bill! Any recommendations????

You've given some good info on your problem and upfront I will say to you, don't try and correct whatever it is by yourself. The unit is just over one year old and you've said the contractor has been out 5-6 times. Surely, you have a one year parts and service warranty and I'm sure Goodman would stand behind it. The "labor" part of the warranty is of course, offered by the installer. And if he doesn't honor that, then I'm afraid you picked the wrong contractor. No doubt the problems bvegan, and they were notified, prior to the one year aniversery date. That said, your short-cycling problem could be due to a number of things. First, the heating anticipator in your stat should be set for the low voltage load. Let them do it. Some installers simply open up the king valves on the new unit and let it rip. On some installations, this won't cut it and this becomes more important with a heat pump. Some guys simply don't want to spend the time to balance a system out. There could also be a defective pressure control. You might have a defective defrost control or mother board. One other area is, you might have the thermostat in a poor location, one that effects the actual nominal household air temp. In other words, it could be too close to an outlet, and that air temp 9is effecting it. I would kind of doubt it, but it would'nt be the first time. You have, with a heat pump, booster electric heat. It serves as a second stage of heat, if the o.d. unit can't cut the mustard. It also comes into play when the o.d. unit goes into defrost. THIS, also needs to be checked out by the technician. You need to contact the person that signs the checks at the contractors place of business and have a little chat with him. These problems are installer/equiptment problems , not customer. If you didn't have a legitimate licenced contractor for this and got some joe blow, then this advise might all be for naught. If this is the case, then have a good upfront talk with him in good faith. Ask him to get in touch with Goodman for help and keep your fingers crossed. If you have hired a licenced contractor, then ask that their best tech come out and check out the whole system. Go to them first. If no luck, then get in touch with the state licencing board, or a local HVAC contractor group, or maybe even the local city/county building and licencing department. Maybe a permit SHOULD have been pulled on this. Were I you, I'd get on it yesterday b4 time heals all wounds. Unfortunately , in all of the building trades, good technicians are a dying breed. I hope you can resolve your problem.

Thanks "ahasbeen"!
It appears to have been the "heat anticipator"