Help with Heat Pump Question.

10 years ago

A question to all HVAC techies out there. I live in southern Mississippi and think my heat pump is not working properly. We just had a weather system that came through and dropped temperatures down to about 10 degrees for a couple of days but last night the temperature only drop to the low 30's. The one thing I noticed is that when I woke up around 2:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep is that the outside unit would run for about 30 minutes then cutoff for about 5 minutes and then cut back on for around 30 minutes and kept doing that the whole time. I have a vent in my bedroom that sort of blows at the bed and noticed that it felt like cool air blowing on me so I got up and when around to several vents in the house and they all had cool air coming out of them. I have the thermostat set to 63 at night time in the winter so the next time the unit came on I got up to check the themostat to see what it showed for the inside air and it was 63. I think the unit is set to come on only when the ambient air in the house drops 2 degrees below the set point temperature. So my heat pump runs even though the inside air temp. is the same as the set temp. I do not know if this has something to do with it but last year my wife got up one morning and noticed water dripping on the floor from the ceiling. I went up in the attic and found that the water was coming out the front of my Aprilaire filter housing. I called the repairman out to look at it and said he found that the freon was low and that my coil had a hole in it or something. He put freon in the system and it has not happened again. I was wondering if this was a sign that the freon was low again. My unit is a Trane XR15 with a VS air handler - 4TEE3F65B1 and I have a HW Vision Pro IAQ thermostat if that helps. Please let me know if this normal or do I need to call the repairman out again.

Comments (5)

tigerdunes
10 years ago
You possibly have a leak. Was the leak repaired on earlier visit? Should be under warranty if system is less than 10 yrs old, at least parts. You rec'd a gas n go which is not acceptable and unprofessional.

IMO
klem1
10 years ago
I wouldn't rush to call the repairman. The weather you just experienced caused a lot of air to air systems to struggle. If the emergency heat works, switch to that until the sun and outdoor temps have time to dry the outdoor unit of ice. After that,switch over to normal to see if it works ok.
sktn77a
10 years ago
What you may have been hearing was the outdoor unit defrosting. Whithout knowing how your system is set up, its hard to diagnose. Stay away from the last guy who just "gassed and went" (to coin Tigerdunes' phrase)!
tigerdunes
10 years ago
I agree with Klem. Weather should be moderating to more average winter temps. Watch your system and see if it behaves like it use to. If not, get a Trane Comfort specialist out to check your system. I am concerned though about the previous visit. If freon was just pumped in without finding and repairing a leak, then you are just wasting your money and can expect more trouble in the future.

Trane condensers with electronic demand defrost usually perform quite good in cold and harsh winter weather.

IMO

This post was edited by tigerdunes on Fri, Jan 31, 14 at 15:57
ibjammin
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I will wait and see how it performs the next few days since the nights will not be as cold. I called the technician and he said he will be back out to warranty the coil. Thanks again. I know I can always get professional advice here.