Short Cycling

During normal operation, your heating and cooling system cycles on when it gets a signal from the thermostat to start warming things up or cooling things down. It cycles off when the set temperature is reached.

A properly sized and operating system may only run for 3 to 5 minutes and be off for hours in mild conditions, or it may run for several hours with very short off cycles on hot days. The system cycling rates are based on the thermostat “cycles per hour” setting alongside the thermostat requested capacity (load value)

AC short cycling is an abnormal cycle, where your air conditioner or heat pump turns on and off much more frequently. We enforce a minimum run time of 3 minutes and a min off time of 5 minutes with compressor operation. The shortest cycle would be 7 minutes. This extreme short cycling is not possible unless there is a system issue (which means a hot house).