The sweat gleams across his forehead as he steps out into the sauna-like air. With tools in hand, he begins walking toward his objective, providing the greatest of summer relief, air conditioning.

Bob and Tim were on a job where one of the other technicians had been having a hard time with a persistent leak. He thought the leak was somewhere in the indoor unit, but he could not pinpoint it.

Your role in this troubleshooting situation is a follow-up to visits by other technicians who responded to this customer’s complaint about the cost of operating their heat pump in the winter. Opinions offered so far range from a possibly failing reversing valve to improper use by the customer.

Bob and Tim were on their way to the shop on a hot Friday afternoon when Bob got a call on his cell phone from his wife who said, “The air conditioner is not working and my mom and dad are coming from out of town tonight. What are we going to do?”

Every year The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co. (HSB) investigates numerous small refrigeration unit failures. The primary reason for the majority of these failures is poor or non-existent preventive maintenance for the unit.

Bob and Tim were at a retail store where the manager had called and said there was no cooling. The system was a 5-ton heat pump. After talking to the manager, Bob and Tim turned the thermostat to the “fan on” position to see if there was power to the unit and the indoor fan started. The heat pump was a split system, so they went up to the roof.

In this month’s troubleshooting situation your customer is requesting a second opinion on a proposed repair to their air-source heat pump. The homeowner originally called for service when they noticed that the house wasn’t cooling down as they would like.

A new customer called and wanted their commercial unit serviced. The customer was a retail store and the manager seemed to think that the unit was not performing up to standard. The unit would run most of the time, even in mild weather, and did not seem to cool the store as well as it should.

Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS), located in the Atlanta metro area, is the largest school system in Georgia. The school district runs a full preventive maintenance program on most of its mechanical equipment. And it continues to add new preventive maintenance job plans for pieces of equipment that didn’t have one before.

Bob and Tim were at a no cooling call, the first of the year. They turned the thermostat to cooling and put it on a low setting so the heat pump would come on and stay on. They went to the outdoor unit and felt the leaving air and the piping and Tim said, “The unit is running in the heating mode. I wonder what is going on?”