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How much setback is reasonable on a heat-pump thermostat?
With a heat pump, does a modest overnight setback usually make sense, or can recovery use enough auxiliary heat to cancel out the savings? I’m curious whether the answer changes between single-stage and variable-capacity systems.
Do auxiliary-heat lockout settings or thermostat recovery features change that trade-off? And what’s a useful way to judge the results without treating a longer run or normal auxiliary-heat use as a fault?
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1 reply
A longer heat-pump run by itself doesn’t tell you whether a setback saved energy. Compare HVAC energy use across several periods with similar weather, keeping comfort settings consistent and changing only whether the setback is enabled. If you can see heat-pump and auxiliary-heat use separately, track both; otherwise, compare total HVAC energy.