Why does my heat pump not produce the heat that it use to produce? It seems that the air temperature is cooler then it use to be. There are a few reasons that this might happen.
1) Your indoor coil is getting dirty, it has dust and dirt built up on it and it will not let the heat transfer like it did when it was new. It may simply need to be professionally cleaned. If you could imagine going outside in the cold without gloves. Your hands get cold and the heat transfers quickly because you don't have any gloves. As your indoor coil gets dirty it is allot like putting gloves on your hands to keep the heat in. Now the coil is protected and the heat does not transfer. Not being able to transfer the heat also raises head pressure in the unit. This will cause undo wear on the system and raises the Electric Bill.
2) Low refrigerant levels. Your heat pump system should never lose refrigerant. This is a sealed system. If you are low on refrigerant than you have a leak and in the State of Washington it is required that it gets fixed or reclaimed and shut down. If you simply add the refrigerant the first time it is low, this is ok. Although as a heating contractor who abides by the laws of the State of Washington we can only do this three times and then we have to stop and require that it is leak searched and fixed. This leaking refrigerant is bad for our environment.
3) Very low outdoor temperatures yet not freezing. At about 35* outside. During this temperature you may get the defrost cycle. This is caused by frost building up on the outdoor unit. During defrost the outdoor unit will shut off it's fan. The air conditioner will turn on with no fan sending boiling hot refrigerant out to the outdoor unit to defrost it. When this happens the indoor strip heat comes on so you do not feel the air conditioned air, you feel the heat from the strip heater in the system. If this strip fail or even a portion of it fails you may get cold, or colder air coming from the ducts.
If your system is not producing heat like it use to then give us a call. We would be glad to help.
