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Did You Actually Test Every Heat Strip – Short #311

By Bryan Orr

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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.

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#electric heat #heat strip #heat strips #heating #hvac #maintenance

Author:

Bryan Orr

Company: Kalos Services

Position: Co-Founder and President

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Our latest Podcast

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.

In this live stream, co-branded with Kalos, Bryan Orr sits down with Kalos refrigeration team members Christian Maitland and Alex Orr to talk about the realities of working on market refrigeration systems. The conversation starts with the rapid arrival of new equipment in grocery stores, especially transcritical CO2 racks, and why even well-trained techs are running into problems nobody has seen before. Because these are engineered, built-up systems rather than mass-produced units, the first real stress test often happens in the field, during installation and startup.

The group digs into where those problems actually come from. Some are classic installation errors, like skipping nitrogen purges while brazing, leaving burrs in pipe, or forgetting that ACR copper plugs sit on the inside of the pipe. Others trace back to the manufacturer: sensors landed on the wrong terminals, swapped sensors that left a condenser fan unable to run, controllers that overheat and reset, and programming that was tested in a different climate than the one the equipment ends up in. With multiple manufacturers supplying the rack, controller, and condenser, nobody owns the interface between the pieces, so startup techs end up tuning parameters store by store.

Bryan, Christian, and Alex also walk through the root cause process they rely on, which is essentially the scientific method: observe the complaint, form a hypothesis, test it, and then keep digging until you know why it happened and can confirm the fix on the next job. They discuss store dew point and airflow as the most common causes of iced-up and sweating cases, a humbling misdiagnosis involving a transducer and a redundant controller, and the pain of 19-week lead times and wrong parts arriving seven times in a row.

The episode closes with practical advice for techs. Walk into every store and use your senses, check behind your install team, pull your vacuums, and document conversations with customers when expectations don’t match the equipment specs. Christian encourages techs to share what they learn with peers, Alex reminds listeners that solving ridiculous problems is the job and a chance to be the hero, and Chad’s late addition is a reminder that equipment should be designed for worst-case conditions rather than a design day.

Topics Covered

Transcritical CO2 coming to the U.S. market, and why it behaves differently above roughly 86°F
Challenges of high ambient temperature and humidity in Florida, including limits of adiabatic cooling
Controllers that overheat and reset, and how quickly a CO2 system can lose its charge when that happens
Safety and mindset for techs moving from traditional DX to high-pressure CO2 systems
Why built-up systems get their first real field test at installation and startup
Clean piping practices: nitrogen purging, burrs, carbon buildup, and tiny orifices in ejectors and microchannel coils
The pipe plug in the EPR story and other lessons from early grocery work
Manufacturer errors caught at startup, including miswired harnesses and swapped sensors
Interconnected controls from different manufacturers and the need for site-specific programming
Setting customer expectations on case placement, shelving, and spec limits, and documenting those conversations
Store dew point, dehumidifiers, and ceiling fans disrupting open-case air curtains
Using building science tools like smoke pens and vane anemometers on refrigeration cases
The root cause process: observe, hypothesize, test, find the real cause, and verify the fix
A transducer misdiagnosis and why to rule out everything before ordering long-lead-time parts
Parts lead times, wrong parts, and the hidden labor cost of learning new equipment alongside manufacturers
Commissioning during live-store case swaps, and the gap in manufacturer training for new equipment
What techs look for on a first walkthrough, plus startup checks like line sizing, case assembly, and pulling vacuums
Gaps in tools, such as digital gauges built for transcritical systems
Closing takeaways: share knowledge with peers, own the problem, and design equipment for worst-case conditions