Heat Pump Refrigerant & Clean Filter | #AskDerekCole Episode 103

Hey, on this episode we talk about my filters not getting dirty this time of year, and does my heat pump need refrigerant to heat the home? You ask your comfort and energy questions and they get answered. This is the Ask Derrick Cole Show. Hey, this is Derrick Cole. Welcome to episode 103 of the Ask Derrick Cole Show, answering your home home and energy questions. We have a few more on deck today.

Bringing on: Does my heat pump need refrigerant to heat the home?

Yes, it does. Believe it or not, it does need refrigerant for cooling and for heating. Now, what you can get away with on heating that you can't get away with on cooling is probably on heating you have heat strips which might fool you into thinking everything is operating normally Except that month you get the electric bill and you're like, whoa, what's going on? Well, your unit's out of refrigerant, therefore the electric heat has only been running and your heat pump has not been running. So that's why you have a high electric bill. Now when you switch over to the summer, obviously there's only one means for cooling, that is to have refrigerant in the system. So in the wintertime, yes, you need— because the heat pump can still heat, you know, all the way down to probably 20 degrees before it really just kind of needs more electrical heat than usual. But it needs electrical heat when it gets really below 40 or 35 to supplement the heat pump. But having no refrigerant in that heat pump does not mean it's not going to heat. It just means now you're probably going to use, if you have it, electric heat, emergency heat, whatever you call it, for your system, which would be a higher electric bill.

But that is something you definitely need.

And if you want to wait until summer, you definitely need it then.

But I will go ahead and get it fixed now because prices on refrigerant, they only go up. Okay, I haven't seen— have you— a price decrease come through here in the last— how long you been here?

Uh, 2 years.

2 years? Have you ever seen a price decrease? No. Our prices are so good that we're not coming down. That's never happened. So obviously it's better to take care of it sooner rather rather than later because of prices, but that's something you definitely need to do.

My filter is not getting dirty. I haven't changed it in months. Is that normal?

This time of year where it's kind of the middle part of warmer days, cool nights, so we've been kind of going through this method for the last few weeks. It might be normal. At that point, if your system is not running for that filter to not get dirty as often as if it was 95 degrees outside and weren't running all day long every single day, that might be acceptable. But if you're going months and months without— 1st of January, January 9th, we had that snowstorm. It was cold. It was really cold. So your heat was probably running the majority of the day. So If your filter did not get dirty that month at all, then we have a problem. If it's not running a whole lot, then I can see where you can kind of extend it 30, 60 days because you're not having that much of a runtime. But always, when you go through a period of using your equipment quite a bit, which is the winter and the summer, that filter should be checked and should be changed. But it's good that you're checking it and you're noticing that it's not getting dirty, but I would go a little further and check it more often and kind of keep an eye on because what could be happening is, is that air could be getting to your unit away from the filter or it could be not going back to the unit through your filter. It could be going through the crawl space, the attic. That's what you don't want to happen. But then again, we have not had that many long run times. This time of year. So that's something I would keep an eye on, but it's good that you're paying attention to it and seeing that it doesn't need to be changed. But I would keep an eye on it to make sure because, you know, that first week or second week of January where it ran a lot, if you kept your temperature anywhere near 66, 67, 68, it ran all the time. So we're getting calls about the unit won't stop running. And then again, you don't want it to stop running. So if it's running like that, the air should be going through your filter. Unless you have the cleanest house and tidiest house in America, that filter will be getting dirty. Does that make sense? I mean, it's something you have to keep an eye on because I can see this time of year when it's like today where it's 70 outside, you had a cold night cold morning, get a warm day.

So my unit probably is not running at home, you know, from 6 AM to, you know, midnight, maybe, if I got the temperature swing big enough. So you could get some extra life out of that filter, but that's something I would keep an eye on just to make sure you're not having another problem. All right, so episode 103 of the Ask Derrick Cole Show. Make sure you hashtag your questions #AskDerrickCole. And you might be lucky enough to have Carolina Askett on the show.