I was thinking about installing a programmable thermostat but I have one question. I was told by the technician who did the walk through for my house that the heating is done in two stages: if the required temperature is no more than 2 degrees from the current temperature, just the heat pump kicks in. If the delta is greater than 2 degrees, pure resistance heating is used.
Since I imagine that resistance heating is considerably more costly than the heat pump, if you set the temp back at night such that it is more than 2 degrees cooler than the daytime temperature (which would make sense or else why bother with a programmable thermostat), it would seem that the savings achieved at night could be quickly lost when the resistance heating kicks on in the morning.
I suppose if your thermostat had enough settings you could bring the temperature up 2 degrees at a time for half an hour or so for each setting, but that seems kind of like a kluge. Are there any thermostats that do this automatically - i.e., recognize that the temperature is programmed to go from night time setting to daytime setting and then gradually bring the temp up without resorting to resistance heat?
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