How We Approach Heat Pump Repair
Switching between heating and cooling depends on the reversing valve, and it's the part that fails most often on a heat pump precisely because a conventional air conditioner doesn't have one. When it sticks, you can end up with warm air in summer or a blast of cold air on a heating call. Rather than jumping straight to a refrigerant top-off, we confirm valve position and pressure readings together so the fix actually matches the problem.
Cold-weather operation brings its own challenge: the outdoor coil frosts over as it draws heat from the air, so every heat pump relies on a defrost cycle that a furnace or standard AC never needs. When the defrost board or its sensors misfire, ice can build up faster than the system can clear it, or the unit may defrost too often and lose heating capacity in the process. Our diagnostic checklist always covers the defrost board, sensors, and reversing valve solenoid on every heat pump call.
We don't stop at heat-pump-specific parts, either. Compressors, capacitors, and the rest of the electrical system are inspected too, since a fading capacitor or a struggling compressor drags down performance in both heating and cooling mode.