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My air conditioner doesn’t warm. What can happen?
In previous entries we talked about the possible causes why an air conditioner isn’t cooling or isn’t working. Now we are going to see why our air conditioner doesn’t warm.
My air conditioner lacks of gas
In order to detect if an air conditioning unit lacks of gas in its heat pump we are going to see the external unit (in the external heat exchanger) if it freezes itself or it frosts. In general, we can observe it after a few minutes, once the air conditioner started and it shows the unit has a lack of gas though it still has some left inside the refrigerating circuit, there exist some exceptions:
- The external fan doesn’t work: If the external fan doesn’t work this will make your unit freezes itself even if it has enough gas.
- The external fan works but there isn’t a good air output: It’s possible that the fan may work but it may not evacuate all the cold (remember that in heat pump function the internal unit sometimes works as condenser and the external one as evaporator, that’s why it “freezes” itself), check out the location of these compounds and also that there is a good air output.
- The machine is in defrost mode: The air conditioner units have a function to avoid or reduce the freezing of the external unit when this works as heat pump, the defrost mode. This function is very simple, when working as heat pump, the unit detects that the external heat exchanger freezes, the electronic board makes a temporary cycle inversion sending hot gas to the external heat exchanger in order to unfreeze and to eliminate the amount of ice generated. After a few minutes, the unit will run again normally. If this defrost function isn’t completed because we turn off the machine with the remote, in its next start, frozen or not the external unit, the machine will run the function until it ends. A way to avoid the repetition of the defrosting is to plug off the machine for a minutes so as to erase the memory of the electronical board.
Another way to find out if our unit lacks of gas, is by touching the copper pipes connections of the external unit. These, in heat pump function, have to be very hot, the lack of gas will produce these pipes to heat themselves very little or nothing, depending on how much gas lacks.
The internal unit has the filters dirty
If you don’t know how to clean filters, we teach you how to do it, given that a dirty filters will make your air conditioner not to warm properly, also, in cold mode, a dirty filters won’t avoid the machine to throw hot air, but will make the air output in the internal unit’s drive to be low and therefore the machine won’t be able to heat the room completely. This will become in a raise of the gas pressure in the external unit and a possible triggering of the high-pressure pressostat, stopping the machine completely and increasing the electric consumption of the machine when it works.
If your air conditioner is one of those you can’t reach to filters, check that enough air goes through the drive ploughing and that this air be a hot one. If that’s the case, your problem may be possibly just that you have a dirty filters and not a gas lacking.
Dirty heat exchanger or fan
As it happened with a dirty filters, if the heat exchanger (now in the internal unit) or the fan are full of dirt, the unit won’t work properly. The symptoms are the same as if we had dirty filters, the air conditioner unit will throw hot air but this air will be very soft and with a low force.
Dirty cold exchanger
It is possible that we may have a dirty cold exchanger (in heat pump function will be the one of the external unit). If that’s the case, the symptoms will be that at first our unit will start running properly but slowly it will throw less and less heat. This can happen because if not all the cold is released, the external unit will begin to freeze, causing a similar symptom as the lacking of gas and lowering the pressure and the consumption slowly.
External fan doesn’t work
In this case, the symptoms are the same as the ones we had when the cold exchanger was dirty, but this one more marked and faster.
The compressor doesn’t work
If the compressor doesn’t work the machine won’t reach to throw hot air at any time. This breakdown may be caused due to an error in the very compressor, the starting condenser or in the electronical board. In this case, a better option is to call the SAT to determine precisely the origin of the fault.