Air Conditioning, Heating and Plumbing - Advice, Discussion and Tips from ARS®/Rescue Rooter®. Welcome to the ARS/Rescue Rooter Home Connect, your online resource center for information, answers and interactive advice about air conditioning, heating, plumbing and drain maintenance. As part of our commitment to providing exceptional service, we created the ARS/Rescue Rooter Home Connect to be a useful tool with many helpful ways to find what you need.
I have a heat pump which is currently set to operate as a conventional heat system and is heating with the aux/em heat only. When I put the programmable thermostat in "Heat Pump" mode, the condenser compressor comes on as it should along with the aux heat but after a few minutes of running the aux heat contactors begin to chatter. This has caused the control transformer to burn out on two occasions. I want the system to operate as efficently as possible, but can't afford to keep replacing transformers and thermostats. I am using a Hunter model 44905 programable thermostat going to a Gibson 3TB split unit and by all appearances, it is wired correctly. I recently replaced both aux heat contactors and the transformer and thermostat. Could this be an issue with the outdoor thermostat (if one exists) or has my expert service company mis-wired the unit in some way. If the OD thermostat could be the culprit, how do I determine this?
There are a lot of variables involved in this problem with your heat pump. The one thing that we at ARS/Rescue Rooter can tell you is not a variable is that transformers don’t just go out. There almost always has to be a short somewhere that makes this happen. This could indicate that either something is incorrectly wired, the wire itself is cut/damaged, or (less common but possible) the programmable thermostat is shorted. I would recommend having a low voltage expert come out to locate the short and get it repaired.
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