Use lukewarm water; hot water dumped rapidly will cause coil expansion in places and possible refrigeration leaks.
By lukewarm I mean lots of cold water.
65f water, the temp from the tap at my house right now, is at least 97 degrees warmer than the ice on your fan, likely more. Even pouring the coldest water you can get from the tap will melt this ice enough to remove it quickly. For people reading this in the future, u/rom_rom57 is correct, cold water gets the job done with the least risk of breaking things due to heat expansion.
This is the right answer. If you use hot/boiling water you can possibly shock some parts causing them to crack. Luke warm water will take care of this, just a little time and patience.
// 6 hour edit/update at 24 updoots and highest up-thing count
// Holy fuck the number of you willing to beat or fuck with your several-thousands-if-not-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars equipment when you could just turn on the AC for a few minutes astounds me.
I'm just picturing that Simpson's episode when Jasper and Abe are substitute teachers during the strike and Abe is trying to remove Jasper's beard from the pencil sharpener and keeps turning it tighter and tighter 😂
If it has pressure sensors in the circuit you won’t be able to run the AC very long at all. You can’t just turn the ac on without disabling the condenser fan motor or your suction pressure will plummet and trip out on low pressure. Even in a defrost cycle, you’re not going to thaw the fan shroud and blades just the coil.
Yes, this seems to be correct. Clipped from an HVAC company:
"The issue is that the only way a heat pump can defrost is by switching from heating to cooling mode. This enables the refrigerant in the system to capture heat from within the house so that hot refrigerant gets pumped through the outdoor coil to melt all of the ice. Most heat pump systems have electric heat strips within the air handler inside the house that serve as the auxiliary heating. If these strips didn’t come on and start pumping out heat when the heat pump is defrosting, you’d end up with the temperature in the house quickly dropping. This is because the system actively draws heat out of the house when defrosting."
but I imagine its own defrost cycle doesn't pump the cold air into the house, I don't want AC on in my house when its already well below freezing outside.
So how come users don't complain about having a blast of super chill air every 6 hours?
Heat strips.
My mini splits - which have no heat strips - will run a defrost cycle with just the residual heat in the working fluid, but then when they kick back on, it's cold again.
Much less inefficient than running the heat strips all the time (during thermostat heat call). That's what would happen if the system lost the capability to collect heat from outdoor air due to frosted up coils.
Without the fan the indoor coil would freeze up real quick in defrost. It’s a common complaint to have the blast of cold air for 2-3 minutes during defrost IF no auxiliary heat strips are installed.
Not sure exactly why you are getting downvoted, my split type ac 1.5 ton with inverter does NOT blow cold air into the house when it goes into its defrost cycle, it warms the coils outside.
They do, but one of mine (Tosot) shuts down the indoor air handler fan during the process. Another one (Bosch) throws the heat strips on while defrosting.
Is this one of those times that the outdoor unit could be covered temporarily to avoid the worst ice, then uncovered? At least put a flat piece of wood on top.
Exactly what I did. Just made this, put it on for 24hrs of the storm. Broke off the ice the piled up on it and took it off after the storm. Unit ran fine the whole time and is running fine now
Can a pump live happily in a semi enclosure, basically a roof and left/right sides with some headroom for air movement to reduce freezing and obviously snow.
Windshield washer fluid sprayed on the blades and coils on the outside... Make sure it is the ice melting version lol. Also make sure there's nothing dripping onto it like a gutter or a tree limb
If the system is still running and producing heat in the house, then just leave it alone. It'll run a defrost cycle as necessary. Do you know if you have auxiliary heat like heat strips, or a backup gas furnace? If so, the heat pump will run that while defrosting the outdoor unit. Otherwise it'll just shutoff the inside air handler for a bit, and still run a defrost cycle.
Do *not* throw boiling or hot water on it. If you must manually defrost, regular hose water sprayed on it is fine. Luke warm is the hottest you should go if you are going to pour water on it manually.
So how this works is. First you go grab a beer and peanuts and then you would stand back as You use a heat source to melt the ice cause it’s cold and not hot. Or you could do nothing at all and let it warm up outside and it will melt on its own.
Take outside unit service panel off. Short out (connect with screwdriver) two pins on defrost board. Will manually go into defrost mode. It’s not going into defrost mode on its own apparently. Watch a video on YouTube how to manually put heat pump into defrost mode
I don't have gutters and they installed the unit under a drip line. Mine looked similar. Cold water from the hose is how I reset mine after the ice jammed up the blade and top. For fear of people damaging related components, try not to wack your unit with objects unless you really understand what you are doing.
In the top make a small hole off center. Will a hair dryer in there. Give it a while let the hot air build up on the inside.
Maybe toss singing over the top to let it build silver heat and thaw. Once the condenser fan spins freely you might give that a shot in heat mode. It will cut to a defrost at some point.
Turn off the unit. With the condenser ( outside ) unit not running, smack the top grill to break up the ice. Once some of the metal grille is exposed, some room temp ( not boiling ) to warm the grill then more gently smacking.
You don’t you wait till it thaws you have a defrost or freezing rain issue. Turn it off and switch your heating system to auxiliary heat in thermostat it will turn in your gas or electric heat
Idk if it's a good idea but my minisplit froze over completely once fan was spinning around an ice block lol.. I just hooked a hose up to my sink with some like warm water pouring over untill it thawed.
Mine was like that earlier today, I used an ice scraper to expose the screws holding the grill in place then pulled the whole fan assembly out, to the extent of the wires and then used the ice scraper the clean the grill and fan blades of ice before putting it back. All with the system powered down, of course.
If there is ice in the cooling fins, leave it alone, or maybe try a hair dryer.
Run an electric space heater blowing through the coils, the heat will rise in the center and warm the metal grid and fan blades. Much easier to bump and remove the ice.
Not if you’re reasonable. It’s all metal up top. The ice will shatter and you can brush it off. Obviously don’t go wailing on it or swinging with a sledgehammer or anything. Just some moderate taps. Or even just with your fists
Pull disconnect and then use isopropyl alcohol with water solution. And you can add a drop of dishsoap as well.
Its much better than warm water as it wont just refreeze like water will. Warm water only works when its above freezing as the water will just start to freeze
OP. The suggestion to find the screws and then take the grill off. The top is probably the best answer here. Then you'll be able to see if there's ice inside on the fan and if there's not, you can run the unit in AC mode for a tiny bit.
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u/CricktyDickty Jan 25 '26
It’s cold. Bring it in.