Why is my heat pump covered in ice? Here is the honest version: what you can safely check yourself in the next five minutes, what a technician usually finds when it is not that, and exactly what it costs to find out.
By Space Heroes Heating & Cooling, Huntsville, AL. Updated September 27, 2026.
If this means no heat in the house: A home with no heat is treated as urgent and prioritized, often same-day. The emergency button on the booking page gets a callback within 60 seconds.
If one of these fixes it, you owe us nothing and we are glad. If not, the next part is what the visit is for.
Iced up. An outdoor coil that turns into a block of ice is a defrost that never came: the defrost thermostat has lost contact with its tube, the defrost relay has failed, or the board that times the cycle has. A coil also frosts because it is running too cold, and that is a low charge or a dirty outdoor coil that cannot take heat out of the air fast enough.
No heat. A heat pump that cools fine and will not heat has a reversing valve that did not shift, or shifted halfway: the manual's heating chart puts the valve jammed in mid-position at the head of insufficient heating. The valve shifts on pressure, and a system that is undercharged or has lost its charge does not make the pressure to shift it; the same branch of the chart names the charge.
These are the causes in the manufacturers' troubleshooting charts and the trade handbooks our technicians train on, in plain words. The visit proves which one it is with a meter before anything is replaced.
The outdoor fan motor and its capacitor are on the same branch: a fan that stalls in winter frosts the coil, and in summer it cooks the compressor.
The strip heat is what covers a valve that will not shift, so a house that has been warm on the strips has been paying for a heat pump that was not running as one.
$59 on weekdays, $159 evenings and weekends. Published and final, pre-tax, and the price is the price whether we find a loose wire or a bad motor.
Book the $59 visit online Or call (256) 695-1000Real arrival windows, including evenings and weekends. Paying is what confirms the slot; the office calls to confirm the window.