Any piece of equipment installed in a home or business has the possibility of failing or running into some kind of problem.

The Scenario

About 2 years ago, one of our Daikin installing contractors sold and installed a Daikin 12,000 BTU heat pump system in a children’s creativity greenhouse. This is a facility designed as a children’s day camp, specializing in arts and crafts. Funny enough, my own children attended this camp and loved it! The owner was looking for a way to provide air conditioning in the summer time because many parents where complaining that the heat was too  much for their children and the window air conditioner was not keeping up as well as being very loud and inefficient. On top of that, the owner would remove it and reinstall it every time she took the children on a field trip to the park because she felt it was a major security risk. She also thought that her heating bills were very high as the space was only heated with electric baseboard heaters.

Happy customer

From the day the Daikin heat pump was installed, the owner raved about how comfortable the space was even on the hottest days of the summer, she was elated at how the unit really dehumidified the space as well. She was astonished at how her heating bills had dropped since she was using the Daikin heat pump almost exclusively to heat and rarely turned the baseboard heaters on anymore.

The Problem

The installing contractor got a call almost exactly one year from the date of installation to say that for some reason her Daikin heat pump air conditioner just didn’t seem to be cooling or heating the way it used to. On hot days that summer the unit was struggling to keep up and the kids were getting hot again and she also noted that the heat was not as hot as it had been the previous fall. As part of the customer service we offer at Comfort Connections, I attended the service call with the refrigeration technician from the installing company. When we arrived at the site, the technician started to get his refrigeration gauges out and was heading to the outdoor unit to connect the gauges to the outdoor condensing section. Usually this is an appropriate course of action with most pieces of equipment, but not with a Daikin heat pump. We like to use these opportunities to do training with technicians in the field because it is the best way for them to learn. I asked the technician to wait with the gauges and follow me inside to the indoor evaporator piece. What I showed him astonished him and the owner. I took the wireless remote that comes with each Daikin system and pointed it at the indoor head and at the same time pushed and held the cancel button on the remote. After 5 seconds, an error code appeared on the remote where the temperature setting normally appears. Once I had the first error code displayed, I pushed the cancel button repeatedly listening for one long beep. The one long beep indicates the exact problem with a Daikin heat pump. I know the technician was skeptical, I could see it in his facial expression, but a Daikin heat pump is a very simple system to diagnose when you have problem. The 4^th error code that appeared on the remote came up with a long beep. I asked the technician to look into the service manual and find the specific error code we had found to read what it said. With still some skepticism, he read that we were getting an overheat situation on the indoor head. We put a step ladder up and opened the front cover to the indoor unit and found that the permanent nylon filters in behind the cover where absolutely covered with dirt. As soon as the filters were removed we could hear the units fan ramp up and could immediately feel the difference in the heat output from the unit. As it turned out, the kids had been working with clay for some time and the sanding had created a lot of dust that all got sucked into the indoor unit.

Really happy customer and a very happy technician

We took the time to show the owner how to remove and clean the filters so in the future, she could do the job herself and avoid paying service fees for filter cleanings and I have armed the service tech with an easy way to detect exactly what the problem is very quickly on a Daikin heat pump. He can’t wait to put this skill into effect on the next call. Not unlike the Maytag guy, I think it will be a while before it’s necessary to service another Daikin heat pump based on the overall reliability of the product.

If you are interested to get more tips about heating and cooling systems, visit our Article directory page for more.

So long until next week!

Tom Keough

Vice President

Comfort Connections