(12-27-2022, 11:06 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(12-27-2022, 05:23 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: After living through a weekend of insanely low temperatures and seeing how much a heat pump doesn't work well in those situations we're looking into something we can use to supplement our electric heat. Seriously, heat pumps don't work well when it doesn't get above freezing for highs and lows are in the lower teens. I don't care if our neighbors or local government don't approve. We don't need their approval anyway. 

When it gets this cold it is life threatening and people need to be able to use what they can afford or, as in our case, supplement a system that wasn't built for these temperatures. Tonight it will get down to 18. Tomorrow night is our last night below freezing for about a week. It really does suck to hear the thing run all night but it's not really heating your house much.

Heat pumps are basically useless once the air temp is below 40. In Florida a small resistance heater is fine as a supplement for the rare freezing day.  In NC you'd want some sort of furnace or fireplace as a backup.  Maybe a space heater. 
But that heat pump will be back to kicking butt and saving you big bucks once the air temp is back above 40.