Bob and Tim were taking a break and Bob began explaining some of the tips that he has learned in servicing heat pumps. Bob said, “Let’s go over some of the service problems that you may have with a heat pump.”
Technical Training Associates, an independent training firm in Tucson, Ariz., has established a new website at www.hvacrtroubleshooting.com that focuses on HVACR troubleshooting and equipment servicing. The company is also offering two videos on specific troubleshooting problems related to heat pumps.
Our troubleshooting problem involves a split system heat pump in which the outdoor unit is operating in an 85°F ambient, and when you arrive in response to the customer’s no cooling complaint, you find the indoor fan operating normally, and you also note that 240 volts is read at L1 and L2 of the outdoor unit.
In this month’s troubleshooting situation, the customer hasn’t called because their HVAC system has stopped cooling. You’re there because they’ve requested a preventive maintenance check of the five-year-old equipment to determine if there are any potential problems that would affect the system performance in the future.
Bob and Tim had left this residence a few days ago when they discovered that the four-way valve on the home’s heat pump was stuck in the cooling mode. They tried several things to get the valve to do its normal changeover to the heating mode and couldn’t get it to function. The valve would need to be replaced.
Bob and Tim were on their way to a service contract routine procedure when the dispatcher called and asked them to go to a residence that had no heat and had a very sick family member. They needed heat as quickly as possible.
In this month’s troubleshooting problem we have a customer who can only tell us that their heat pump “isn’t working” and “the temperature in the building isn’t right.” When you arrive, you confirm the system isn’t operating properly. The indoor fan motor is running normally, but the building temperature is far from the thermostat set-point.
