Does your Orlando AC have a heater? How to tell in two minutes

Every year around the first cold front we take a wave of calls that start the same way: "I switched it to heat and nothing happened — I did not even know if this thing had heat." That is a fair question in Orlando. Furnaces are rare here, and the heat you do have is hidden inside equipment that spends nine months a year doing something else.

There are three possibilities for a typical Central Florida home. You have a heat pump, you have a straight-cool air conditioner with electric heat strips, or you have an air conditioner with no heat at all. Here is how to tell them apart without opening anything.

1. Look at the thermostat

If the thermostat has a setting labelled "Emergency Heat", "Em Heat" or "Aux Heat", you have a heat pump. Those modes exist only on heat pump systems, because they tell the thermostat to skip the outdoor unit and run the backup electric strips alone. A thermostat with just Heat, Cool, Off and Auto tells you less — it could be wired to a heat pump or to strips — but at least it confirms there is something to switch on.

2. Look at the model number on the outdoor unit

The data plate on the outdoor unit usually says "heat pump" or "condensing unit" in the description. Where it does not, the model number helps: Goodman heat pumps start with GSZ or GLZ (versus GSX or GLX for straight cool), Carrier heat pumps with 25H (versus 24A), Trane with 4TWR (versus 4TTR), Rheem and Ruud with RP (versus RA). If you send us a photo of the plate we can tell you in about a minute.

3. Run the two-minute test

1. 1Set the thermostat to Heat and raise the setpoint about five degrees above the room temperature.
2. 2Go outside. If the outdoor unit starts running, you have a heat pump. If it stays off while the indoor blower runs, you have strips or nothing.
3. 3Wait ten minutes and feel the air at a supply register. Heat pump air is mild — roughly 90–100°F. Strip heat is noticeably hot. Room-temperature air after ten minutes means nothing is making heat.

What if there is no heat at all?

This is more common than people expect, especially in homes built before 1990 and in budget system replacements where the heat kit was left out to hit a price. The air handler almost always has a factory slot for one. A 5 kW kit suits a 1.5–2 ton system, 8–10 kW suits 2.5–3 ton, and 15 kW suits 4–5 ton — sized to the equipment and to what the electrical panel can carry.

Supplying and installing a kit typically runs $450–$1100 in Greater Orlando, more if the panel needs a new circuit. It is a single-visit job and it requires a permit in most local jurisdictions, which we pull as part of the work.

Which one is better to have?

A heat pump, comfortably. It moves heat from outdoor air rather than generating it, so it delivers roughly three units of heat for every unit of electricity, where a strip delivers one for one. In Orlando that difference is small in dollars because we heat so little — but on a system that runs strips all winter because the heat pump quietly failed, it shows up as a doubled January bill. If your "Aux Heat" light is on for hours at a time, that is worth a diagnostic.

Whatever you have, test it on a mild day in October or November rather than on the first cold night. That week is when every HVAC company in Central Florida is booked solid, and the difference between a Tuesday appointment and a Friday one is usually just who called first.