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by jotato 961 days ago
I live in the pacific northwest. Winter are low 30s at night for 3 months out of the year :( Granted, highs are mid-high 40s so it works fine during the day 90% of the time
2 comments

If the unit is sized correctly for the appropriate climate, then its broken. There's no reason the system cant deal with 0C, the COP should still be well above 1.

Get the refrigerant level checked by someone that didn't install the system.

For what its worth this is why I don't like to rely on heat pumps. Furnaces are really primitive, simple devices: little more than a heat exchanger and a blower. A heat pump has a hermetically sealed volatile liquid undergoing phase changes by a compressor with seals.

They're cool. They're efficient. They're great.., but they're also far more complicated and we're living in an era of cheaply built consumer goods

30F is hardly anything.

Mitsubishis can work down to -13F/-25C and still have a COP of 2.08:

* https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/keep-warm-this-wi...

* https://mylinkdrive.com/viewPdf?srcUrl=http://enter.mehvac.c...

Heat pumps that look like standard ACs often can run at 100% capacity down to 5F and still have a COP>2 (1=resistive heating).

Also worth perhaps looking into how leaky your house is:

* https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/blower-door-tests

and then after that maybe insulation.