What is that smell coming from my heat pump system?
More than likely what you are smelling is the back up emergency heat or electric heating elements in your electric furnace. On many systems the back up heat only comes on when it gets real cold and in many cases this happens rarely so what is happening is that the electric heat elements are coated with dust over the time they are not used and when they first heat up they actually burn that dust off and that is the smell. The smell is hard to describe but normally if there are other issues with your indoor furnace or air handler you will smell an electrical burn smell which we are all pretty much familiar with as it has a very unique odor.
