Proper use of Heat Pump?

[miles267]

Last year (season 1 of pool ownership), we used our heat pump on an ad hoc, manual basis. Switch on in morning, heat up during day, switch off at night as not to run overnight with dropped temps, then back on two days later, etc.

Are heat pumps designed to be left on to maintain a set temp overnight? Is it actually more efficient just to set a setpoint and allow it to maintain a temp, so that the difference between current temp and setpoint (heat) remains narrow during the early season?

Maybe I just have OCD and hear the sound of the unit running and think of an air condition running 24x7 for days. Perhaps the heat pump doesn’t actually consume as much electricity and performs a different function that can not be compared to an AC unit?

Currently it’s 80-85F+ daytime here with 65F+ nighttime temps. Night temps are of course raising > 65F steadily too.

What best practice do you all use?

 

[CJadamec]

If the heat pump is on it is running at full power. It is literally just an A/C unit running in reverse.

I have found it best to only run my heat pump during the warmest part of the day, form about 10am-6pm for me at least.

I leave it set to the temp I want and it turns on when the pump starts up un the morning and shuts off with the pump or when the water is up to temp.

Are you running your pump 24 hours a day? If you are you are wasting a lot of energy and accelerate the lose of heat from the pool at night which means your heat pump will need to run longer to heat your pool back up.

 

[miles267]

Thanks for the guidance. No, I’ve been manually turning the HP on/off on an as-needed basis. Though I’ve considered adding a program to turn HP on each day at 10:00am and off at 06:00pm automatically. Of course, I could then just manually override if pool won’t be used, bad weather, etc. Definitely won’t let it run for 24 hrs, overnight or when the air temp is cooler.