The outside temp is finally over 20 degrees, so the heat pump has been running for the past couple of hours. Not bad… it’s a little odd to have what feels like barely-warm air coming out of the registers, but the noise level in the basement is a little lower (no gas burners or vent blower on), and the temperature is staying just as steady as with the furnace. We’ll see what the gas & electric bills look like.
Overall, the new system works much better than the old one. The temperature is staying much more constant, without the plus/minus couple of degrees we were seeing with the old furnace. I attribute that partly to the thermostat, and partly to the fact that the old furnace seemed to be just too big for the house. The air temp coming out of the old furnace was over 140 degrees F, so it would heat the house up in a BIG hurry. The downside was, it would also bump the thermal limit switch on a regular basis. During the old furnace’s last day or two of life it was cycling on and off every 5-10 minutes and still not keeping the house up to the set temperature.