August and June are when it breaks
Heat here switches on in September and cooling starts in July. A heat pump that's been sitting idle gets asked to work hard the first cold or warm stretch, and a weak part that got by all season finally gives out.
Heat Pump Repair in Castle Rock, CO
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Takes about a minute. No obligation.
Step 1 of 3: Equipment
Worth knowing before the call
A heat pump failing right at the start of a season is usually one worn part, not a sign the whole system is done. Getting it looked at early, before the first real cold snap or heat wave, means it's fixed before you need it most.
- 9 months
- September through May, your system heats
- 1 months
- July through July, it cools
- 17°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 81°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
Jan
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Aug
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NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Castle Rock gets hail, wind and winter storms most years, same as the rest of the county.
None of that is what's wrong with your heat pump. It's almost always a worn part giving out, not the weather.
Electricity here runs 14.92 cents a kilowatt-hour, so a heat pump limping along is costing you more than it should
Half the homes in Douglas County were built in 2002 or later. If yours is one of them, your heat pump is probably within its working life, not past it. A unit that age breaking down is usually one failed part such as a capacitor, a contactor, or a low charge from a slow leak. None of those mean the system is finished. Worn parts get replaced and the rest of the unit keeps running.
Get the part found and replaced
Whatever's wrong with your heat pump, it's not Castle Rock. It's one worn part, the kind every heat pump wears out eventually. Finding which one and replacing it is a straightforward job for someone who does this.
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Get the part found before you decide anything
A heat pump in a house built in 2002 or later has had one owner's worth of running time on it, maybe less. That favors repair over replacement. Call someone out to find the failed part before you decide the unit is done.
The reversing valve is usually to blame for no heat
A heat pump makes heat by running its cycle backward, and the reversing valve is what flips it. When that valve sticks, the unit keeps blowing cold air no matter what the thermostat says. It's one of the more common reasons a heat pump works fine all summer and then fails the moment it's asked to heat.
A dirty coil makes other parts fail early
The outdoor coil has to breathe for the system to work. When it's caked with dirt or packed with ice that never melts off, the compressor works harder to move refrigerant through it and runs hotter than it should. That strain is what wears out the compressor long before it should quit.
A heat pump that's low on charge will still run if you let it. The compressor keeps trying to move refrigerant through a system that's lost pressure, and it runs hotter than it was built to run. A reversing valve that's starting to stick behaves the same way. It keeps cycling, keeps working, right up until it can't. Running a unit through that doesn't buy you time. It wears down the part that's already failing, and sometimes takes the compressor with it. Shutting it off and getting the failing part found is what keeps a small repair a small repair.
A diagnostic visit starts outside at the unit itself. The tech checks the refrigerant charge. They test the contactor and the capacitor and watch how the compressor responds when the system calls for heat. If the reversing valve looks suspect, they'll check it mid-cycle, since a valve that sticks only shows itself when it's asked to switch. A capacitor gets tested under load. One that reads weak there is often the part that quit, even if it looks fine sitting still. Most of this is done with gauges and a multimeter, not guesswork. A part that looks fine can still be the one about to fail, so a good tech rules out as much as they confirm.
