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Tickets On Sale For The 8th Annual HVACR Training Symposium!
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Don’t miss HVACR’s main event—AHR Expo Chicago!
Explore the latest product innovations, industry trends, and best practices shaping the year ahead. Connect with leading manufacturers and discover solutions designed to solve workplace challenges and support your professional growth. Registration is free and includes access to everything HVACR—products, professionals, perspectives, and more.
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BRYAN ORR
Co-Founder and President at Kalos Services, Bryan has been involved in HVAC training for over 13 years. Bryan started HVAC School to be free training HVAC/R across many mediums, For Techs, By Techs.
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HVAC School – For Techs, By Techs
Real training for HVAC ( Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) Technicians. Including recorded tech training, interviews, diagnostics and general conversations about the trade.
Did You Actually Test Every Heat Strip – Short #311
In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about electric heat and whether your service or maintenance procedure actually allows you to test every heat strip. In our climate, we use electric heat as auxiliary heat (as opposed to a furnace in a dual-fuel setup). There is also some information about maintenance procedures, blower interlocks and relays, and math to determine amperage.
If you put the thermostat in heat and the blower runs, you only prove that the heat pump is heating; it doesn’t tell you which electrical circuit is heating, or whether the auxiliary heat is producing heat at all. You can’t assume that the last tech left you the correct kit with everything wired up and that it has been wired properly with the correct wire size.
Electric heaters in heat pumps usually turn on with a W call from the thermostat or the defrost board. Sometimes, there is a high-voltage interlock with a relay that runs the blower with the electric heat but not the other way around. Older heat strips may also have heat sequencers, which follow a specific sequence and stage on or off over time.
We test heat strips by forcing a call for heat, waiting as long as needed, measuring the amperage to make sure it matches the heat kit, making sure the blower comes on, and verifying that the call for heat ends as it’s supposed to. Temperature rise may also be a useful measurement. If a similar procedure is part of your fall maintenance, let the customer know that there may be an odor, and you may clean dirty heat strips with compressed air or an electrical contact cleaner.
The key takeaway is to make sure the amperage is correct and that the circuit’s wiring and relays can safely carry the current. Don’t assume that everything is correct when you work on a unit for the first time.
This episode contains embedded sponsor messages from Refrigeration Technologies, Carrier, Copeland, and Santa Fe Dehumidifiers.
Resources
- An Electric Heat Mistake (Tech Tip)
- Electric Heat & Blower Interlock (Tech Tip)
- Electric Heat Troubleshooting, Service, and Math Class (Video)
- Basics of Testing Electric Heat Kits w/ Bert (Video)
- Inside a Sequencer (Video)
- Sequencer Facts – They Aren’t All the Same (Video)
- Relays, Sequencers, Transformers, and Bad Metaphors (Podcast)
- HVAC School calculators
- Submit a podcast question
- Learn about the GRIT Foundation
Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 8th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium.
10/27/2026
10/08/2026
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