Maintenance

Keeping it running well

A season-by-season schedule for keeping a heat pump efficient, plus the warning signs that mean it's time to call a technician rather than wait.

Keeping it running well

A heat pump runs year-round, so it accumulates roughly twice the hours of a furnace. Maintenance matters more, and most of it is filter discipline.

Monthly

Look at the filter

Replace it when light no longer passes through. A clogged filter is the single most common cause of a "broken" system.

Seasonally

Clear the outdoor unit

Two feet of clearance on all sides. Rinse leaves and grass clippings off the coil; keep snow and ice clear of the base in winter.

Twice a year

Professional service

Once before heating season, once before cooling. Refrigerant charge, coil cleaning, electrical connections, condensate drain.

Call someone

Ice that never melts, or air that never gets warm

Brief frost and a defrost cycle with steam are normal. Persistent ice, a unit that runs constantly, or breakers tripping are not.

The defrost cycle isn't a malfunction

In cold, humid weather it's normal for the outdoor coil to frost over and for the system to briefly reverse and melt it off, sometimes producing a puff of steam that looks alarming but isn't. What isn't normal: ice that never fully melts between cycles, a unit that runs constantly without keeping up, or a breaker that trips. Any of those is worth a service call, and worth mentioning whether the system was sized correctly in the first place, since oversizing and undersizing both show up as maintenance complaints later.