So here's what I mean by this. Let me start out by saying that this winter has been one of the warmest on record, at least since I've been alive, so it took us a while to even start wanting to consistently use the heat pump to heat the bedroom. But once we did, we were running into an issue where the damn thing would turn on, open the louver, and then do absolutely nothing. No fan, no noise, nothing. So, I emailed support. To their credit, they do get back to you very quickly. And what it boiled down to was one of the stupidest things I had ever heard. Apparently, the heat pump feature will not work if it is below 41 degrees outside.
Excuse me, what? A feature that it supposed to warm up your house when it is cold outside doesn't work when it's below 41 degrees? What the actual fuck?
Okay, I kind of get it, if you know how heat pumps work (This video from Technology Connections is an amazing deep dive explainer if you are interested) is that they take the heat energy from the cold air and make it hot. It's exactly how and A/C works but in reverse. It's co-efficient of energy is nearly 1:1, which is why I wanted to use it to heat my bedroom, and to also control the warmth of the room better than the shit-tastic old-school thermostats I'm stuck with in this apartment. When they were originally manufactured, they had an issue with working in very cold temperatures because THERMODYNAMICS. The radiator would freeze over and stop the unit from working. But engineers have overcome this problem for the mini-splits by including a defrost cycle. Also, I just want to point out that I used to own a Hisense portable A/C with heat pump, that had both an intake and exhaust hose, and it worked JUST FINE in the winter. I assume it's because instead of pulling in outside air from the intake hose to heat the room, it would intake the air from the unit itself, like it does in Fan mode (I always hated that fan mode doesn't work by taking in outside air, that would make a lot more sense to me and allow me to use the A/C a lot less often, but I digress). Either one of these solutions would work here but they instead gave me a completely different solution (because the engineers didn't bother to think about these things). Instead, the solution they gave me was to expand the exhaust house out of the hose-in-hose unit, and hook it up to the window kit by itself. Apparently by decoupling the intake hose from the window, it will allow it to intake room air, which would keep the unit above 41 degrees. (Or use Fan Mode, like why wasn't this just coded into the design?!!) But anyway, this already presents two problems.
1. There is no connector to attach the exhaust hose by itself to the window adapter. When I asked customer service about this, they literally just shrugged their shoulders at me. I am not joking. They said they haven't made anything to help attach those two pieces together and suggested plexiglass (????) for what, I'm not sure. WTF.
2. THERE IS NOW A GAPING HOLE IN THE WINDOW KIT WHERE THE INTAKE HOSE USED TO BE. This is the biggest mind-fuck of it all. Imagine, it's winter. Like, it's fucking cold outside, you know. You had such good intentions by buying a heat pump to heat your space because you like the environment and it's cheaper to run. But not if it's fighting against the cold air coming through the gaping hole in your window!!! FFS. It's already bad enough, to be honest, to fight against the inevitable leakage of cold air coming in through the window kit regardless of how much tape you use, but this is god damn ridiculous.
I was furious at this point, because I paid an extra $200 for this A/C to have a heat pump feature, and I have to now deal with this bullshit to even get it to function. But I was determined to figure something out because dammit, I PAID FOR IT. So, I put tape over the intake hole, and stuffed it with foam and cotton batting. It's not perfect; it looks like shit and it still leaks cold air but at least it works.
But wait, THERE'S MORE! Yes, the incompetence of the engineers is not over yet, my friends. Because after I fixed this issue, I was presented with another. I am shaking with fury as I write this because this could have all been avoided if they programed the fucking thing to intake room air when running in Heat Mode. I attempt to turn on the unit in the night because it got cold, and it wouldn't turn on. According to the app, it was under 41 degrees inside. How is that, you might ask, when the intake hose is now inside the house? (Takes a deep breath), the exhaust hose is just sitting in the window, as as it sits there, cold air is just slithering its way down it and settling inside the unit. I scream into the void. Why was this never an issue with my Hisense unit? Why would a $400 piece of shit work better than this?!
I don't bother to email customer service this time. I had already sent a long-winded email that was not super friendly letting them know my feelings on this thing. So again, here I am figuring it out myself.
And I do - I have an epiphany.
Fan mode pulls in room air, right? Well now, if I run the fan for just a couple of minutes, it will blow out all the cold air that settled inside the unit and replace it with warmer room air. And this actually works. I use their app to set a schedule, 6 times a day the fan will run for 2 minutes each time, blowing out any cold air so that when the temperature drops inside the room to 61, it will turn on unencumbered. After all this fucking effort, it finally works like it's supposed to. No thanks to Whynter or their "engineers".
I just can't fathom that nobody else in the world has run into this issue. Maybe I'm a unique case because I like to keep my bedroom temp between 62-64 degrees. I sleep hot, and I get warm way too easily. Maybe people that use this as a real heat pump to keep their entire house warm don't run into this? I mean, I don't know why not, but I can't possibly be the only one!
So in the end, I can still pretty much recommend the Whynter A/C without heat pump, which is, luckily, $200 less, unless I run into some weird-ass issue during the summer months. I guess we'll see!
