Since heat pumps work by extracting heat from the outdoors to bring it inside, the outdoor coil will almost surely freeze up. To mitigate the freezing, heat pumps enter a defrost cycle in which they run in cooling mode to send hot, high-pressure refrigerant back through the outdoor coil and melt the ice. While the […]

‘Tis heating season once again. It’s getting colder outside, and the heat pumps are starting to frost up outdoors. The defrost cycle helps get rid of the frost, and there are a few different ways we can do that; the methods themselves may differ between systems (time & temperature vs. demand defrost), as may the […]

When we think of air leakage, a few common scenarios probably come to mind: disconnected ducts at connections, poorly sealed connections, and air leakage around vents are ones we’ve mentioned quite a bit in tech tips and videos over the years. However, there are a few that we haven’t really talked about, particularly for fan […]

In today’s podcast, Bryan and Jesse talk about how technicians can have conversations about finances and money in the HVAC business. The first step for any successful business is to provide customers/clients with a product or service of value. However, there must be a balance between providing something of value to customers and providing excellent […]

Bryan talks with Jesse and Nathan about setting up dehumidification for residential equipment in general. They also discuss some of the required and recommended settings on an Ecobee thermostat. On typical single-stage residential equipment, dehumidification works based on CFM per ton. We control humidity by dropping the CFM across the indoor coil and extending runtime. […]

Ductless expert Jesse Claerbout talks about his best maintenance practices for ductless air conditioners and heat pumps. This episode is part 2 of the two-part series. (Listen to Part 1 HERE.) Ductless outdoor units tend to have clean condensing coils. The only real issues are grass clippings (and cottonwood, in some locations). which typically don't […]