Fall is heating maintenance season across the country, but it’s especially important in a place such as Vermont where the winters can be extreme. Call up your local dependable HVAC contractor and arrange for a maintenance visit from a technician so that your heater is in the best shape for the coming cold weather.
But what about your heat pump? If you had maintenance for it in spring to get it ready for the summer, is it necessary to have it maintained again in fall?
Simple answer: Yes, you must maintain your heat pump each fall
Even though a heat pump is a single system, and it works through the same process whether it’s in heating mode or air conditioning mode, it must have maintenance done twice a year. The reason for this is that heat pumps do double the amount of work that air conditioners and furnace or other type of heaters do. You can expect to have a heat pump working on average 10 months out of the year. This puts tremendous strain on the heat pump with very little down time.
Consider how often you used your heat pump this last summer. It was probably running most days, and that’s plenty of time to place stress and strain on its components, or for a problem like leaking refrigerant to start. When the heat pump changes over into heating mode, it will use those exact same components. The only change is the direction the refrigerant moves. The compressor, the coils, the reversing valve, the fans, etc., all work in the same fashion when the heat pump starts its work for the winter. Every system needs maintenance after it’s had a full season of operation, and a heat pump is no different.
Red Rock Mechanical LLC provides maintenance service for heating in Burlington, VT and the surrounding areas.
