Heat Pumps and Electric Heating - steam from outside unit

the fan from the outside unit isnt running, and there is a huge amount of steam coming from it. I checked it out, and there is a line inside of the unit that is covered with frost. The heat seems to still work. Any ideas, it's gonna get cold in a few hours, and I dont want to burn anything up

I just turned it on to duplicate the problem, and when I turned it back off (thermostat) the emergency heat came on. It stayed on for a few minutes and then turned off. I checked through the forums and I guess it will be ok to run the emergency heat for tonight?

So I ran the emergency heat for about 20 minutes. House warmed up fine. I turn the emergency heat off and turn the regular heat back on. I go outside and now the fan is on and that line that I had mentioned before (covered with frost) now has a little bit of frost on it, but the frost melted a few seconds later.

sounds like a normal defrost cycle, does it heat ok?

Ah its that time of the year again. My heatpump is on fire help. I have found out it saves a lot of time when we put in a heat pump to kind of go over it with the new owner.try to tell them what to look out for like this.
Id call them back and ask them to go over it with you so you know what is going on.Also in that defrost mode the heat strips should have come on to say kill the cold from the inside coil as when it is in that mode its like a AC putting out cold air to the home


ED ;)

Its an old unit, but I've never noticed this before. So your saying it's normal?
And yeah, it is heating fine. Its been 24 hrs, and the problem has not replicated itself