When temperatures get very cold here (say, 20 or below), my condo really struggles to maintain temperature, while giving me alerts that the Aux has been running too long. This is why it is only used in an emergency situation. 03/21/2018 21:34 Subject: Ecobee 3 & Electric Heat Pump Error • Your auxiliary heat source is running • too often. When does this happen? Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. With these 2 thresholds its an EITHER/OR. This is just telling you that you're spending money. So the auxiliary heat literally costs about 3-4 times as much to run! Thanks! Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, https://www.reddit.com/r/ecobee/comments/7wdnfx/comment/dtzqnjm?st=JRZ13936&sh=cd0dbc25. Auxiliary heat running too long. I have the Ecobee set to automatically control my auxiliary heat, but it seems to usually kick in when the temperature is 2 degrees below where I’ve set it. W2, AUX and or E (Emergency) wiring connections will normally connect to the ecobee3 W1 terminal. As we mentioned above, AUX heat usually costs up to 50% more than heat transfer , which means if your system is running on AUX heat when it shouldn’t be, your heating bill is likely going to be a lot higher than you’d like it to be. Out of the box, the Ecobee does one thing very, very wrong. Just change the alert for the aux to more than three hours? I would recommend to set a value for these thresholds first and that should eliminate the aux heat turning on sooner than needed. If your Ecobee thermostat is running too hot, click here to see how we ended up fixing ours. I got a notice that my axillary heat has been running for over a hundred and 80 minutes in the last 24 hours and at that was too long. Some heatpumps can take longer than others to warm up and finally start giving heat. I'd never set a temp to kick on AUX. If your Ecobee was recently installed, it’s possible that the settings haven’t been changed from the factory pre-sets. I think there is a setting that will allow me to adjust that time period where it notifies me of this, but I don't want to cause damage to the furnace. This is called aux heat min temp in thresholds. You may be able to get away with less if your system is oversized or you have a well insulated home. This happens most often when it is cold – less than 30 degrees. Compressor to Aux Min Runtime is how long it attempts to run the heat pump before kicking over to Aux heat. I think I'm having a problem whereby the Ecobee isn't actually activating the auxiliary heat on my heat pump. I installed the ecobee 3 this weekend and have received this message twice now, once yesterday, and again this morning. For me, with electric resistance heating, some of them didn't make a lot of sense at their defaults -- for instance, the Ecobee will lock out the heat pump from running if it's below 35F outside. The ecobee also has a comp to aux runtime, that I had disabled, until it got really cold. This is known as running on “auxiliary heat.” Generally, this can’t be controlled manually, but is instead switched over to automatically when your system either senses that it has been running for too long, or too much ice has built up on the outdoor coil and it needs to begin a defrost cycle. Wrap Up Sometimes, finding the best thermostat for heat pump with auxiliary heat can be quite challenging – but as long as you know what to look for, the process should be quite easy. 300 seconds is fine by honeywell and me. Low thermostat battery alert. I installed the ecobee 3 this weekend and have received this message twice now, once yesterday, and again this morning. How Emergency Heat Works. I have been using the ecobee since April and I have noticed this winter that my HP is not quite keeping the house warm without using the auxiliary heat a lot. Short version: the ecobee supports more stages of heating and cooling than the Nest Thermostat E, for both conventional systems and systems with a heat pump. Here is a screenshot of the message. What exactly do you recommend? Before getting to the technical part, let me clear a common dilemma to most individuals, does ecobee work with a heat pump- absolutely yes, depending on the version of the ecobee kit you got, you can configure the heat pump into the ecobee home kit. I am doing a sleep schedule. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Now it is set to two hours. When its gets with 1.5 degrees of room temperature, the back-up heat cycles off and the heat pump continues to run trying to keep up to reach temperature, but it cannot. ** Auxiliary Heat. Yep! 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