Jacob, to answer your questions--Firstly, we live in an area where all of the homes are electrically heated--there is no gas available--Interestingly, I had oil hotwater heat in my last house, and my electric bills here are less than my electric bills there were, not even counting the oil--

Anyway, the short story is that during the day, if I crank the thermostat up to the max, the house is warm, but at night, cold air comes out of the vents and the valve where the freon comes into the heating unit from the heat pump cakes over with ice(during the day, it is so hot you could burn your hand on it)--

The general feeling is that there is a problem with the timers and such things that regulate the vent cycles on the heat pump, and they need replacement, and the valve which changes it from a heating to ac unit is stuck and probably needs replacing--my current heating/ac people will be happy to repair the unit, but they point out that it will be kind of expensive--and that, at the end of it, I will still have a rickety heating system(they didn't use the word rickety)

The previous owner was a computer programmer who did his own repairs on the unit (including, apparently, adding freon to the system) and he made some novel, if not entirely understandable modifications to the system--the present timer is a device not normally associated with heating systems, for instance--

I am not an expert on this sort of heating system(I really can't understand how it can be possible to bring heat in from the outside in the winter, when it is hotter inside than outside) but I have examined both the heating/ac unit and the heat pump, and they sure do look rickety to me--