We’ve already written posts this fall to remind homeowners of the vital importance of scheduling regular maintenance. We can’t emphasize this point enough: with a professional inspection and tune-up, your heater will head into the New Jersey winter with less chance of a malfunction and a higher chance of saving energy.
If you use a heat pump for home comfort, you might wonder if this applies to you. After all, you scheduled maintenance for it in spring. Does it really need a second maintenance call?
The simple answer is, Yes, it absolutely does!
Why Heat Pumps Require Maintenance Twice a Year
Heat pumps are not like furnaces or air conditioners, which only handle one type of comfort. A heat pump is both a heater and an air conditioner. What’s important to know about the operation of a heat pump is that it isn’t two different systems that are housed in one cabinet. It is a single system, and it uses the same components in both cooling and heating mode.
This means that all the stress a heat pump accumulates over a summer of hard work keeping a home cool will simply transfer over to it when it switches into heating mode. Take, for example, the compressor: this is the heart of the heat pump, the part responsible for placing refrigerant under pressure so it circulates around the indoor and outdoor coil to shift heat from one place to another. The direction of the refrigerant changes when the heat pump goes into heating mode, but the compressor is doing the same task. Alleviating wear and tear on the compressor after a hot summer is vital.
Now consider the coils: it only takes one season of cooling for the coils on either the indoor or outdoor unit to collect dust. This will restrict the absorption and release of heat, cutting into the heat pump’s energy efficiency. Coil cleaning is an important part of regular maintenance, and the heat pump needs to have it done before both summer and winter.
Contact Air Creations, Inc. today in Westfield, NJ to sign up for our Comfort Plan. We’ll see your heat pump stays in top shape all year long.
