Heya Frye.....

My electric house heater decided to stop blowing warm air. Fan works, just poor heat. I was wondering what your schedule was over the next few days to be a bouncing board for questions and ideas.

not a problem . . . .

a few questions so i know what we're talking about:

-do you have a heat pump, or just an electric 'furnace'?
-do you have an electric meter that measures amp draw and voltage?
-could you give me the model/serial #'s of the equipment?
-i'm guessing you don't have any problems playing with live current to get some readings?

just let me know when you've got time to mess with it. we'll get on the phone and i'll walk you through a few things and we'll see if we can troubleshoot it. i know much more about gas heating systems, but i've worked on enough all electric systems that i'm sure we can figure it out.

frye

Its a Payne electric furnace A/C combination unit. Intake is through the bottom, outake vents up to.

I have had the panels off before. A few Summers ago the AC froze up. Turns out, that even though we were changing the filters, the previous occupants of this home did not. So the evaporator was just filled with dust and hair. Before we bought it, the house was a rental unit... and it shows

The heating element is on top of the unit. So when the heat is active, it pulls air through the inactive evaporator.

My plan is to remove the panel on the top of the unit to access the heating area. Then inspect the heating element(s). The multimeter would be to check continuity of the individual elements.

Is this where you would start?

Theduardo, frye is the expert but I have some limited experience that may be of use. If your fan is running it sounds like you have trouble on the low voltage (24V) side. Have you checked the thermostat?

If you have a model # I can get one of our environmental controls techs to offer some input. Maybe even a schematic.

Thanks DP!

Payne/Carrier

fa4anf048

Very welcome! I'll see if I can round up some info for you Theduardo.

It has Heater Kit KFAEH0601F20

That's promising.
Theduardo, when a unit that has the elements on the downstream side of the coil is allowed to get in the kind of condition you say yours was in, it's common for the elements to burn up due to lack of proper air flow. It's also common for them to blow inline fuses, or melt the fusible links that go to the element (if there are any), so that's the place you should start first. Hopefully one of the fail-safes caught it before it burned the element in two. You also say you have "poor heat" as opposed to "no heat", that leads me to believe that it may only be one or two of the elements that are not working. Usually they are replaceable individually (cheaper) instead of you having to buy the kit.
Make a video like Randy did so we can watch you check the fuses!

On the subject of diagnosing a problem from afar, my Mom called from Mexico the other day wanting me to diagnose a plumbing problem in the rental house they're staying in while they're there. I told her I couldn't diagnose it over the phone, and that she should buy plane tickets for me, the wife, and kids to come down there so I could take a look at it. She declined, but it was worth a shot!

Theduardo,
I spoke with one of our techs, he said that from what I've described it sounds like the second stage (dahell?) is not pulling in. I'm sure frye will be able to elaborate more. He's going to see if he can locate some sort of schematic as well. More to come.

What's funny, is I've left the video on Youtube, and I'm getting a surprisingly decent amount of views. Even had a comment left the other day. lol

I pulled the heating unit like in the picture above. There are four sets of element coils. one was clearly broken. Another had a build-up of dust on it. Had it been working, the dust would have cooked off.

This explains the partial heat issue.

So I have started to look for a rebuild kit.

fine, then, i didn't want to help you anyway .

you've gotten some good advice and it sounds like you have it licked. good look finding the strip heat kit.

i'm still curious to know if you have a heat pump. in a climate like yours, which i'm guessing is relatively mild, a heat pump would be a much more efficient source of heat and the electric strip heaters would only be back-up heat for the coldest days. heat pumps lose there ability to produce heat the colder it gets. once it gets into the lower 20's, R-22 heat pumps need a little help. R-410a models fare a little better, but not much.

does your outdoor unit run in the heating season?

BTW, carrier, payne and bryant are basically all the same thing and should be interchangable with your payne air handler.

frye



on an all electric system with a heat pump, the strip heaters are the 'second stage'. on systems without heat pumps, the indiviual strip heating coils can be pulled in in stages depending on the demand.

frye

Aside from the box on the plenum that says "Heat Pump Kit" how would you know if your AC was also a heat pump? Is it a code that if you have a heat pump it must be labeled as such?

a heat pump is an air conditioning condenser with a reversing valve. this reverses the flow of refrigerant in the winter, turning the outdoor unit, which normally condenses the refrigerant, into the evaporator. and, vice-versa, what is the evaporator coil in the A/C cycle turns into a condensing coil.

basically, the easiest way to tell a heat pump from a straight A/C unit if you don't know what a reversing valve looks like is to count the number of low voltage control wires being used by the unit. A/C's have two, heat pumps have a minimum of 5.

or, you could just go turn the heat on and see if the outdoor unit fires up .

frye

What does the reversing valve look like and where is it located?

it usually sits above the compressor and has 4 copper lines going into it and two wires going to something that looks like a solenoid valve. it kinda looks like a manifold.

frye

In really cold areas should the reversing valve be indoors or does it not matter?

the reversing valve is always inside the outdoor unit in modern equipment. some older systems had the compressor indoors seperate from the coil, but i can't remember where the reversing valve was in that system.

frye

Thanks Frye. I'm new to Air Conditioning. The last place I lived we didn't need it.