Heat Pump Repair in Hattiesburg, MS
Homes here need heat from November through March and cooling from May through October. If your system quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Forrest County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Your heat pump runs almost year round here
In Hattiesburg your heat pump works 11 months a year, heat from November through March and cooling from May through October. That leaves almost no time for the system to sit idle and recover, which means more hours on the compressor and more cycles through the reversing valve.
Summer afternoons averaging 91°F push the outdoor unit hard all day. Winter nights averaging 40°F mean the heat pump is switching into defrost regularly to clear ice off the outdoor coil. If that defrost cycle stops working right, you will notice the outdoor unit icing over and the air coming from your vents turning cold. With 115 damaging wind events recorded in this area over the past ten years, outdoor units also take a beating from debris and storm damage, and Mississippi households saw real outages last year, nearly a third going 24 hours or more without power. A heat pump that loses power mid-cycle can come back running rough or not at all.
- 5 months
- November through March, your system heats
- 6 months
- May through October, it cools
- 40°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 91°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Mississippi requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The State Board of Contractors is the one that licenses HVAC contractors in Mississippi. That license is tested and recorded by the state, and it covers the contractor, not each separate job. So the same license that lets a contractor take on a furnace installation also covers this heat pump repair.
A heat pump repair means opening the refrigerant side of the system. Federal law requires anyone who does that to hold EPA Section 608 certification, in Mississippi and in every other state. That certification is not the same thing as the state license. It is a separate check on whether the technician can handle refrigerant safely, and it sits alongside the state's license rather than replacing it.
Source: Mississippi State Board of Contractors
- Why is my heat pump blowing cold air?
- In heating mode, air from a heat pump comes out warm, not hot the way a furnace's does, so it can feel cool by comparison even when it's working right. That's normal on a mild day. But if the air actually feels cold instead of warm, something is wrong. The system may have switched to backup heat only, the outdoor unit could be frozen over, or the refrigerant charge could be low. A contractor can check the refrigerant level and the defrost cycle to find out which.
- Why is there ice on my heat pump?
- A thin layer of frost on the outdoor unit during winter is normal. Heat pumps pull heat from cold outside air, and the coil runs cold enough to frost up, so the system runs a defrost cycle every so often to melt it off. Ice that stays or keeps building means the defrost cycle isn't working, the coil is dirty, or a fan or sensor has failed. Left alone, that ice blocks airflow and can stop the unit from heating your home at all. With winter nights here averaging 40°F, this is worth calling about before the next cold stretch.
- Why is my heat pump running but not cooling?
- The fan running while the air stays warm usually means the refrigerant cycle has stopped working even though the blower has not. A dirty outdoor coil, a failed compressor, or a refrigerant leak can all cause this, and the fix depends on which one it is. On a 91°F afternoon, a system stuck like this cannot keep up, so it is worth having someone check the compressor and refrigerant charge.