When your heat pump won’t switch modes in the fall, you may be stuck with cool air when you really need heat. This can feel alarming as temperatures continue to drop and you’re left in the cold. But luckily the problem is usually a very easy fix. It usually has to do with the reversing valve on your heat pump.
When you need to schedule a repair appointment for heat pump problems in San Juan County, NM, give our team a call. We are here to help for all of your heat pump needs. You can also keep reading to learn more about why your heat pump might be stuck in cooling mode, and what we can do about it.
Reversing Valve
The component on a heat pump that allows it to switch between heating and cooling is called a reversing valve. When you have a separate heater and air conditioner, changing settings on your thermostat triggers one unit to turn off and the other unit to turn on. With a heat pump, it triggers the reversing valve to switch modes. When your heat pump switches modes, the direction that refrigerant moves within the lines reverses.
For cooling, refrigerant moves in one direction to take heat away from your home. When your heat pump is set to heating mode, it moves in the opposite direction to bring heat in from the outside. The primary reason for your heat pump to be stuck is that the reversing valve is not working. Most likely, the reversing valve is stuck in one mode — like cooling — and cannot reverse the direction of the refrigerant.
This is usually a very easy fix because our team can repair or replace the reversing valve with a new one so that your heat pump will switch effortlessly between modes. This is a very common problem to identify at this time of the year when you are changing settings over from cooling to heating ahead of the winter.
Other Heat Pump Components
The reversing valve is not the only component that sets your heat pump apart. Although the reversing valve tells your heat pump when to move the refrigerant in different directions, there are also a variety of components that go into making this function actually happen. There may be cases when your heat pump does in fact switch over to heating mode, but still continues blowing cool air because there is a different problem. Your heat pump isn’t able to execute the needed steps to bring heat into your home.
If we visit your home for a service appointment and find that the reversing valve is not in fact the problem, we will troubleshoot until we get down to the root issue and fix it, so that your heat pump can work in both heating and cooling mode. After all, this time of the year you may alternate between heating and cooling, depending on the temperatures each day.
Don’t waste your time with the run-around. Give the Robbins Heating & Air Conditioning team a call to schedule your appointment for heat pump service and let us do it right the first time!
