For comfort all through the year in Florida, a heat pump offers benefits that few other systems can match: effective air conditioning during the long summers, and the right amount of heating during the short and mild winters.
Since you expect a heat pump to act as both an AC and a heater, it’s a serious problem if it stops doing one or the other. If your heat pump is only blowing cold air, you need to look into it to see if it requires repairs from a professional company like Ierna’s Heating & Cooling. If you can’t get your heat pump to give you warmth when you need it, call on us for excellent heat pump repair in Trinity, FL.
What’s wrong with my heat pump?
Here’s something to keep in mind when dealing with any problem with your heat pump: it uses the same process—heat exchange through cycling of refrigerant—for both heating and cooling. To change from one to the other, the heat pump alters the direction of the refrigerant’s flow. If either the heating or cooling function fails, it may indicate a problem with the system’s ability to change the direction of the flow of refrigerant.
First, however, make sure you have the thermostat set correctly. See that you have it turned to heating and not cooling mode. Check over the programming: perhaps you have accidentally set it to turn on at too low an indoor temperature and it isn’t receiving the signal to switch over to heating. The thermostat may also have a miscalibration, which means it will sense incorrect temperatures and not switch to heating.
However, if the thermostat appears to be working accurately, then the likely reason the heat pump is stuck in cooling mode is that the reversing valve inside its cabinet is broken. The valve is what makes a heat pump different from a standalone air conditioner: it changes the flow of the refrigerant. The valve is either in a relaxed or excited state; an electric current changes it from one to the other. Whether the excited state turns the heat pump to heating mode or the relaxed state does depends on individual manufacturers. However, any failure of the valve will keep the heat pump locked in one mode.
It needs the training and tools of a professional in HVAC repairs to replace a broken reversing valve. If you think you need to have the reversing valve in your heat pump replaced, call Ierna’s Heating & Cooling. We’ll send one of our NATE-certified technicians to give you the heat pump repair in Trinity, FL that will put your system back to the heating mode you want for the rest of the winter.