Emergency Heat Setting: When to switch what you need to know

Published On: May 21, 2022Categories: Advice and tips

Brrrr! Now that the cold months are settling in, your furnace may be working overtime to keep up with the dipping temperatures. Heat pumps used as a first-stage heat resource may malfunction and leave you confused about whether you should flip your thermostat setting over to emergency heat. Not sure what to do? Here are some tips to help you decide when, or more importantly, when not to use your emergency heat setting.

WHAT IS EMERGENCY HEAT?

Also known as “auxiliary heat”, this is the second stage of heat that your thermostat runs on when the temperature is too cold for your heat pump to extract heat from the outside.

Since this second stage heat source is designed to be just that, secondary, running your heat pump on emergency heat increases your HVAC system’s energy usage and results in escalating energy bills.

HOW DOES EMERGENCY HEAT WORK?

In most cases, an emergency heat’s so