Heat Pump Repair

Most Florida homes are heated by a heat pump, which is simply an air conditioner that can run its refrigerant cycle backwards — collecting heat from outdoor air and moving it inside. That makes it the most efficient way to heat a house in this climate, and it also means a single piece of equipment carries the entire year. When it fails in January the fault is often invisible in July, and vice versa.

The failures unique to heat pumps are worth knowing. A reversing valve that sticks or fails leaves the system stuck in one mode, so the classic symptom is an air conditioner that works perfectly and a heating mode that blows cold. A defrost board or sensor fault leaves the outdoor coil iced up on a cold damp morning. A failed auxiliary heat sequencer means the electric strips never engage on the few nights they are genuinely needed, or worse, engage constantly and produce an electricity bill nobody can explain.

That last one is the most expensive fault in Florida heating. Auxiliary heat strips draw an enormous amount of power compared with the heat pump itself, and if a control fault has them running whenever the heat is on, the house is warm and the bill is three or four times what it should be. It is a fault that never announces itself — you only find it by looking.