I arrived at my vacation home to find my downstairs heat is not working.
My outside compressor was frozen solid. I mean it was a solid chunk of ice.
Overnight temps were in the teens and while my upstairs zone worked the downstairs did not and the temps inside were below 50 degrees. We could see our breath when we were eating breakfast.
Its like pulling teeth to get a HVAC guy out here and I am wary of being "upsold" when this is probably nothing more than a slow freon leak and the unit needs to be filled.
Can you buy the freon and charge a system yourself? Sort of like your car.
I hooked a garden hose up to my washing machine hat water spigot and melted all the ice away, even the fan was encased in ice. I waited a couple of hours and turned on the heat, and it fired right up and worked, it even made heat.
I am 90% sure the unit is low on freon and that is what is causing it to ice up.
Pretty crazy huh?
