Sometimes the equipment is not to blame, but rather the diligence of the installer. That was the lesson for John P., an Upstate homeowner whose year-old air conditioner, installed by another company, froze up in the middle of a 95-degree heat wave. A year-old system should not freeze, and the natural assumption is a factory defect or a refrigerant problem. The technician from Carolina Heating Service who traced the cause found something else. His story is a useful one about why a diagnosis has to look at the whole system rather than the part that failed.
The problem
John’s year-old system stopped cooling during a heat wave, and when he looked at the indoor unit he found ice on the coil. He called Carolina Heating Service, and technician Blake arrived within two hours to start troubleshooting, which in the Upstate’s first heat wave of the year is what same-day repair service means.
What Blake found
Blake took his time and explained each step as he worked, beginning where a frozen coil usually leads, with airflow and refrigerant, and following the readings. The refrigerant charge was not the problem; the airflow was, and its cause was electrical, since several wires had not been secured to the control board at installation, so the blower fan had been running at half speed since the day the system went in. A coil starved of airflow drops below freezing and ices over, which is what John saw, and a system moving half the air it should had been running up to 19 hours a day to keep the house cool, which is what his power bill had been showing. Blake also found inspection ports in the wrong place and, outdoors, a bundle of wires that had been taped together rather than connected properly. That taped bundle was the main problem, since the exposed connections were failing in the heat.
The repair
Blake rewired the connections properly, secured the wires to the control board, and corrected the outdoor bundle, and the blower came up to full speed. The coil thawed, the system cooled the house in a fraction of the time it had been taking, and the daily runtime fell to what a year-old system should need. John described the visit as thorough and Blake as patient in explaining what he found, and the repair carried Carolina Heating Service’s one-year workmanship warranty with callbacks free within 30 days. The visit was recorded on video, so John could see the connections before and after.
Why a frozen coil is not always a refrigerant problem
A frozen indoor coil in summer has two common causes, a low refrigerant charge and restricted airflow, and they produce the same ice. Airflow restriction is usually a dirty filter or a blocked duct, but it can also be a blower running slow for an electrical reason, which is why a technician who assumes refrigerant and adds it to a system with an airflow problem has fixed nothing and possibly overcharged the system. Blake’s diagnosis followed the readings rather than the assumption, which is what a diagnostic visit is for, and our post on why a diagnostic visit comes before an accurate quote makes the same point about plumbing.
What this means if a new system is misbehaving
John’s story carries two lessons for Upstate homeowners. A system that is new and still runs long hours, freezes, or produces a power bill higher than expected deserves a diagnosis of the installation rather than the equipment, because the equipment is rarely the problem in year one. And a diagnosis is only as good as the technician’s willingness to follow the readings past the first likely cause, which is why every technician at Carolina Heating Service completes a multi-month training program at hire and why every visit ends with the readings on a system report card. Members of the Carolina Comfort Club receive priority service when a heat wave fills the schedule, which is when a frozen coil tends to appear.
If your system is running longer than it should
Carolina Heating Service has served Greenville and the Upstate since 1981 with heating and cooling technicians and electricians under one roof, which for a problem like John’s means one visit rather than two. If your air conditioner has frozen up, runs for long stretches of the day, or was installed recently and has never quite worked as promised, schedule online or through the 24/7 website chat, and same-day repair service is available by phone. The technician will follow the readings to the cause and present the price before the work.