Now that winter has hit St Pauls, NC, your heat pump should be in heating mode, keeping your home warm. If, despite the mode it’s in, the heat pump sends out only cold air, you’ll be in for a season of chills and discomfort. To help you avoid that, let us tell you a few reasons why your heat pump might actually be stuck in cooling mode while you think it’s in heating mode.
A Faulty Reversing Valve
Heat pumps have the ability to do double duty as heating and air conditioning systems. By controlling whether refrigerant moves through the heat pump in one direction or the other, the reversing valve determines whether the system is in heating or cooling mode.
For a variety of reasons, the valve may malfunction and end up stuck in the wrong position. So, though you may think your heat pump is in heating mode, it may really be in cooling mode. If so, the system will probably also churn out cold air without cycling.
A Refrigerant Leak
Refrigerant is the substance that heat pumps use to remove heat from the air in one area and transfer it to another area. If your heat pump loses some of its refrigerant, it may not be able to generate much warm air at all. Since refrigerant is toxic, trust only trained professionals to deal with leaks.
A Dirty Outdoor Unit
When in heating mode, your heat pump should extract heat from outdoor air and deposit that heat into your home. To perform the first step of this process, the refrigerant in the system’s outdoor coils must absorb heat from the surrounding air. However, if these coils are dirty, they will not make enough contact with the air to do this successfully.
The solution to this problem is to clean the outdoor coils. Our trained HVAC technicians can do this for you as part of annual maintenance services.
Don’t just endure the cold in St Pauls, NC this winter. Call Cape Fear Air, Electric, & Plumbing right away and ask for our heating repair services.
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