Derek Coleman and William Skipper explain why heat pumps frost over in winter. A thin frost layer is normal and melts automatically, but solid ice means the defrost cycle isn't working, often because a sensor is misplaced or the refrigerant is low.
Hey, this is Derrick Coleman with William Skipper and welcome to the Comfort Experts. Today we're talking about your unit freezing in heating mode. I'm not talking about frost, I'm talking about ice on the unit. William, we get a call a lot of, "Hey, my unit is frozen, it's in heating mode.
What's going on with that?" Well, we are obviously talking about a heat pump. If you see ice on your gas pack, it's because it snowed or there's ice outside. Heat pump is typical where you're going to see your ice at. Now there is a difference, like you said, between frost and ice. Frost is normal on a heat pump. It will frost over. These things come with a defrost capability built into them. What it does is it judges temperature of coil, temperature of outside, and time. Depending on the brand or the style of unit, it could be one of those three or all of those three. So Once that unit determines it's time to defrost, it will come and melt the frost off, and then it will go back into its cycle. Basically what I'm doing is turning the air conditioning on for just a few minutes. It allows your auxiliary heaters to overcome that air conditioning to thaw out the outside coil. We bring in the hot refrigerant outside to melt the ice. Now if it is a block of ice, there is an issue, and it can be one of a few things. You got your defrost function that's completely malfunctioning. Your defrost sensor's just not sensing the temperature of the coil, or you could have refrigerant issues. You could have refrigerant issues if it gets to that point. But if you got a block of ice, there is an issue. Frost is normal and okay, but ice is not.
Yeah, we've seen a few situations in which the defrost sensor was not really located in the proper place.
That's right.
So by the time it was coming to the sensor, it was already frozen because it was in the wrong spot. So if you need us, call us or go online and check us out, 1houraircarolinas.com.
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