fan not turning due to ice

10 years ago

We had rain, ice on Tuesday night. We heard rattling sound coming from the heat pump while sleeping. When we woke up Wednesday morning, the air from the vent became cool. The fan of the heap pump was not running. I should have gone out to look at it, but I did not. Because of my laziness not wanting to spend 5 minutes in a freezing rain, now I have to guesstimate while ask opinion from you guys who even do not see what exactly happened.

I turned the heat strips on while the first stage off. I directly called the installer of my new hvac system to tell him the fan not running problem. He said that it's probably caused by ice. He said to call the office if the problem is still there on Friday (The regions here were pretty much shot down for almost 2 days). The temperature rose quickly upto upper 40s and almost all the ice has melted. I poured some warm water on the ice of the fan blades. I checked that no ice was present and then turned the unit on. It then has worked properly.

Should I be concerned???? We had icy rain and ice each winter, but my old heat pump fan was not caught in the ice ever. It's hard to believe that the new system was vulnerable to ice when there is defrost cycle running!!!! Where was the ice accumulated from? Of course, I am guesstimating now...don't know exactly what happened. Is the defrost function not working properly? But I wouldn't know if it is or not, because i don't think we will get temperature below freezing from now on until the next winter during day time.

Second concern: Since the fan was not turning (perhaps caught in the ice), would the action of trying to turn yet couldn't result in some kind of damage??? I hate to call the busy HVAC guys if there is nothing for me to worry about.

Please shed your light with me. Thanks

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Comments (5)

SaltiDawg
10 years ago
chueh,

I am just a homeowner. Is it possible that when you looked at your outside unit and saw your big fan not turning that it was simply in the act of defrosting?

As a layman, I would be surprised if your fan was actually seized up due to ice binding and resumed normal operation without having to reset a breaker, relay, or similar.

Again, just a homeowner here.
chueh
Original Author
10 years ago
Hi, Saltidawg, thanks for the reply. I did suspect it as you did. I actually waited for an hour or so before I turned the first stage heat off, thinking of it being defrosting. I checked and rechecked every so often to see if indeed the fan was not turning the whole time during that hour.

That's why I am concerned about it working properly now with HIDDEN damages. And when there is nothing obvious wrong with the unit, a tech can rarely detect any defects.....unless along with other little symptoms all together.
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dadoes
10 years ago
The fan motor should have overload protection that would come into play in a freeze-up situation.

My sister and bro-in-law had this happen during a recent wet/freeze weather situation ... along with an all-day power failure. Water drips off their roof where the condenser is installed, which isn't so much a problem except during a rainy freeze. That doesn't ordinarily happen but as we all know the current winter season is a little outside the ordinary.

Anyway, there was a power failure in the morning several weeks ago that lasted into the early evening and temps were at freezing through the day. The condenser fan had frozen-up (literally) during the outage so was jammed when power restored. She noticed the house wasn't getting warmed-up, investigated, noted the problem and broke the iced fan loose. I haven't heard that any subsequent problem has arisen.
SaltiDawg
10 years ago
dadoes,

Thanks. Added that to my experience "data bank."
fa_f3_20
10 years ago
The system is probably not damaged... modern systems are pretty good at protecting themselves. But there's still the question of why the system iced up in the first place. If it used timed defrost, it may just need the setting changed. If it's a demand-defrost system, something is not right.