WESLEY CHAPEL · NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER Cold air from the heat pump on a Wesley Chapel morning A heat pump that cooled the house yesterday afternoon can push cold air out of the vents at breakfast. November in Wesley Chapel still spends most of its hours on cooling. At the Tampa station, the 1991 to 2020 normal for November is a high of 78.9 F and a low of 60.7 F, with 178 cooling degree days and 34 heating degree days. December is the first month in that record where heating demand edges past cooling demand: 105 heating degree days against 102 cooling degree days, a high of 73.9 F and a low of 55.9 F. Those figures are Florida Climate Center normals for Tampa International. A house can call for heat at 7 a.m. and for cooling after lunch. The usual name for that morning is a heat pump not heating. The thermostat says heat. The fan may be moving air. The outdoor unit may sit quiet, or it may run while the rooms stay at the morning temperature. A quiet outdoor unit and a running outdoor unit are two different faults. The thermostat before the panels Set the mode to Heat, not Emergency Heat. Emergency heat skips the outdoor unit and runs the electric strips in the air handler alone. If those strips are open, the indoor fan moves room air and the house never warms. Raise the set point a few degrees above the room. Leave the fan on Auto. Wait 10 minutes. The Aux light on a 60-degree morning often means the strip lockout is set too high, so the strips take the call and the heat pump does not. A sensor that still reads the coil as if it were in cooling mode does the same thing. Look at the thermostat before anyone opens a panel. Fan running, air still cool If the outdoor fan runs and the supply air is still cool after those 10 minutes, test the reversing valve. That valve swaps the system from cooling to heating. One that stayed in cool mode through the summer stays there until someone checks it in both modes the same day. A few minutes of cool air, or a puff of steam at the outdoor unit, can be a defrost cycle after a cold night. Cool air that is still coming out when the 10 minutes are up is a repair. Leaves on the top grille cut the airflow a heat call needs. Clear the grille and run the test again. Write the supply temperature in heat, whether the outdoor fan ran, and whether the strips pulled in. Those three lines tell the next visit what already happened. When your heat pump is not heating, that note is what the repair is based on. I Care Air Care, owned by Tim Hawk, works from 27022 Foamflower Blvd in Wesley Chapel under Florida license CAC1816515. The shop phone is (813) 395-2324. Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.