Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - outside unit freezes up

We have just purchased our home and are spending our first winter in Kansas. Our Payne heat pump is freezing up outside. It has only happened when the temperature outside drops into the thirties. It still runs and stays warm in the house. It does not do it when in auxillary mode. What is it that I don't know? Am I doing something wrong?

When Heat Pumps run in heating mode, the outside unit (condenser) will freeze when the outside coil gets cold enough, and it will then go into a defrost mode to clear that up. You probably have heating strips in your air handler that come on when the unit is in defrost mode to heat the air. If it keeps you warm, it sounds like it's running ok.

What do you mean by auxillary mode?

I spent a winter in Lawrence, KS so I'd be interested in hearing how warm that heat pump keeps you.

When you go to auxillary heat the out door unit wont run. You will have all electric strip heaters on.in the unit.The outdoor unit will ice up now and then.If it gets to much ice on it it will go into a defrost cycle. When it does this you could see like smoke comeing from it.BUT its not----- only steam;) ED

There may be a problem with the defrost control. Different manufacturers have different ways of defrosting. Some are strictly by time. 30-60-90 minutes. Some are by a combination of time and temperature, and some are on demand. Depending on which kind you have, it could be a sensor or a defrost control. It could also be a system charge problem. It isn't something you want to try to fix yourself.

Let us know what the result is or if you have any other questions.

Ken

it is running correctly, they often frost up when ambient temp is low. when it becomes a comfort issue is when it becomes a problem.

hvac made a good point. I assumed you actually had a problem, but if you are not familiar with the operation of a heat pump, you may just think something is wrong because of seeing the frost. Frost is normal, an iceberg is not. If it goes away anytime throughout the day, there is no problem. Sorry if my earlier answer made you think you had a service problem.

Ken

Thank you all for the help. I have had a heat pump unit before, but lived on the east coast. We had the same temperatures there, but I never saw the whole outside unit completely covered in "snow"-ice. I will have someone local make sure it is running properly, as I don't want to find out the hard way that it is not. The only other time I saw this is when it was about 90 degrees outside and the freon needed to be charged on the AC unit. Again, thanks everyone!!:) , :) , :)

If this is the unit that you had freon put in did they find the leak and fix it??????????? Make sure they do.;) ED

No, It is not the same one. I am going to have them check the system, though. It just doesn't seem like the whole unit should be freezing up like it is. It looked like it was made of snow/ice. Other times it defrosts like it should. Thanks again!:)

Well its like we have all said here.Its all in the temp and humidity outside for it to go into defrost. Also what kind of defrost set up you have there. When you go to auxillary heat the outside unit wont run at that time its like you have just an electric furnace and all of the strip heaters will come on when the tstat calls for heat.


;) ED