Welcome to our Tips section. We appreciate your interest and hope that you find our advice helpful. We listed some of the most common "ouch" service calls that we make. If you have any questions, please do not hesistate to ask!

I cleaned my air filter and now the air conditioner does not work

You must make sure that you reinstalled the blower access door properly. All newer furnaces have what is called a "safety interlock switch" which prevents dangerous fumes from being sucked into the home. Make sure that the bottom lip of the door catches the bottom of the furnace, and that the top lip catches the top of the blower opening. Now firmly push the door down to insure that the safety switch makes good contact.

My heat pump builds up a coating of ice on it, should I call a repairman?

Not if your house is staying warm. Heat pumps produce warmth by extracting the heat content from the outside air and blowing it into your home. Although you may think it is cold outside, there is still heat in the outdoor air. During normal operation, your heat pump is busy extracting that heat and during very cold weather causes a coating of frost to form on the outdoor coil. To prevent blockage of the coil, your heat pump has an automatic defrost control that periodically melts this ice coating. This may even allow water to drip off the roof if your unit is roof mounted. This is quite normal.

I just started up my furnace, it runs but no heat comes out

Did you remove the slide damper above the furnace and install the slide damper below the cooler? Although many homes in Tucson have automatic dampers to allow seasonal change over between heating and cooling, most don't. Right above the furnace on the sheet metal riser, there may be a slot where a damper (which looks a lot like a cookie baking sheet) is in place to prevent the cooler air from rusting out the furnace. Also under the cooler (or on the sheet metal elbow if you have a side draft cooler) there may be a similar damper to prevent hot air from rising through the cooler to the outside. Simply remove the damper above the furnace and install a damper under the cooler to get your furnace to blow warm air and to keep it from heating Tucson.

The metal box above my furnace has ice on the line coming out of it and there is even ice on the line leading to the outdoor unit, plus the house is starting to warm up, what is going on?

Your evaporative coil in the box above the furnace is blocked with ice. This occurs when a malfunction in your air conditioner causes your compressor to actually freeze the indoor coil. There are several major reasons for this problem in order of frequency:

1. air flow restriction caused by a plugged air filter
2. low refrigerant charge
3. air flow restriction caused by a dirty indoor coil
4. no air through the coil due to a failed blower motor, motor run capacitor, or blower control
5. air intake blocked by furniture etc.
6. restricted metering device on the coil refrigerant inlet
7. plugged refrigerant filter/drier

In all cases, the ice blockage must be melted off to diagnose the problem and/or resume normal operation. An ice pick, torch, etc. must never be used to clear the ice from the coil. The quickest and more effective way to defrost the coil is to turn the system switch on the thermostat to the "off" position and to turn the fan to the "on" position for about 3 to 4 hours. Most of the time, the number one reason is the cause (dirty air filter) and a service technician isn't needed at all if the homeowner can replace or clean the air filter and defrost the unit as outlined above.