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Old 10-12-2019, 12:36 PM   #1
LoneStar
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Question heat pump question

We own a new-to-us 2018 305RL. We are not new to 5’ers, but we’ve never had a heat pump in the 5’er until now.
We tried using our heat pump a week, or so, ago, and the heat pump seemed to do fine until the middle of the nite (when the temp dropped below freezing).
We woke up cold—the heat pump quit working.
Do I have a problem to tend to? Is there something up there that froze-up, causing the heat pump to quit? I’d think a ‘heat pump’ would have the ability to heat the trailer (and itself), at least to a point.. The low that night was 27°F.
I’d appreciate any knowledge you can share..
oh, and before you ask, “why didn’t you just use your furnace?”, I’ll state that earlier that day we learned the igniter/circuit board for the furnace went hay wire. Murphy’s law was in full effect! lol
I’ve since replaced the board w/one from Dinosaur Electronics (made in USA w/3 yr warranty)
What’s your guess as to what’s going on w/our heat pump?
TIA
 
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Old 10-12-2019, 01:02 PM   #2
fatcatzzz
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We use our heat pump all the time and work great down to temps around 40 degrees. if you are in temps lower than that use furnace or some aux. heat source. We use an electric heater to keep the chill off during the night then furnace when we get up in the morning. Hope this helps.
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Old 10-12-2019, 01:25 PM   #3
Leftie Canuk
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The heat pump merely transfers heat in the outside air to the system refrigerant, which then releases the heat into the coil in the furnace, which circulates the heated air in the coach. Once the outside temperature gets close to freezing (32 F, 0 Celsius), the heat pump can no longer extract heat from the outside air. Probably a good rule of thumb is to switch to LPG or electric heat when the outside temperature is forecast to be lower than 38 - 40 F. There may be more accurate information in your coach's manual on the HVAC system.
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Old 10-12-2019, 02:10 PM   #4
mlh
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These heat pumps will only work down to above 30 degrees. Newer home units will work down to -15 and still put our it’s rated BTUs but not these.
Sorry
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Old 10-12-2019, 02:33 PM   #5
DQDick
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We use ours down to about 37. After that the furnace or fireplace and electric heaters have to take over. If it's 30 or below then the furnace has to come on since I don't want to feeze my pipes.
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Old 10-12-2019, 03:14 PM   #6
LoneStar
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Thanks for the info. We were kind of in a bind (being without a furnace), so we went the heat pump route. If our furnace hadn’t been on the fritz, I wouldn’t even touched the heat pump.
I failed to earlier mention that we were dry camping, initially. We stayed the nite (dry camping) when the furnace (circuit board) failed, as I learned of the failure pretty late at nite; the next day we picked-up camp and moved a few miles down the road to a place w/full hookups.
We did use the elec. fireplace & a ceramic heater, some, and they did fine.
I simply wasn’t aware of the heat pump’s parameters, but I’ve got it, now!
Again, thanks for the info & wisdom.
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