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One local heating and cooling specialist said they were 10 times busier Wednesday due to the winter weather.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — People across the First Coast are asking questions about their HVAC systems after walking outside and finding them covered in ice Wednesday.
One local heating and cooling specialist said they’d been inundated with calls due to the winter weather.
“It was literally an ice block,” Kyle McFarlane said about his home’s HVAC unit.
McFarlane’s unit was an icicle Wednesday. He was dealing with the same issue Carrie Farmer received calls about all day. Farmer is with Farmer’s Heating and Cooling Solutions in Jacksonville and said the day was 10 times busier than normal and 90 percent of the calls she received were related to frozen units.
“It’s been pretty crazy,” Farmer said. “We’ve had calls coming in and out all day long, texts and emails, and it’s just been one phone call after another today. It’s probably been 10 times busier than normal.”
JEA recommends calling a licensed professional because what to do about a frozen unit depends on what type of system you have.
“I was just stunned, honestly,” McFarlane said about his unit. “I was just like, ‘Wow this really sucks.’ That’s after pouring a lot of water on it.”
Farmer said she would not recommend pouring water on a unit.
“Definitely check to see if the fan motor is spinning,” Farmer said. “When it’s in defrost mode, the fan won’t be spinning so you’ll know that it’s probably gonna be working eventually. Just go and make sure the heat is on and don’t turn it off. A lot of people are calling saying that they’ve turned off the heat until someone could get out there to them and that will just cause the freeze to even be more ice on it.”
Farmer said to check to make sure a breaker wasn’t tripped, but if the temperature inside your home is dropping, she said a professional needs to be called because there’s probably a bigger problem with the unit.
McFarlane’s unit was still covered in ice late Wednesday. Without heat, one of his biggest concerns was keeping his tiny puppy, Pickle, warm.
Farmer added it’s important to stay up to date with an HVAC unit’s maintenance.
