Diagnosed right. Fixed once. Warm again.
Book a repair visit today
Reply within one hour, often right away.
Heat pumps pick their moment – the first -2° morning of July, the week the in-laws arrive, the day the southerly hits. Suddenly it’s blowing cold on heat mode, dripping water down the wall, flashing a code at you, or doing nothing at all. That’s the moment this page exists for: a local repair team that answers, turns up, and gets the room warm again.
We diagnose and repair every make and model sold in New Zealand – Daikin, Carrier, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Fujitsu and the older brands too – no matter who installed it. Our technicians are qualified in air conditioning and our electricians are registered, as the dedicated heat pump arm of trusted local trade team Budget Electrical, so both halves of the machine get checked properly in one visit.
Heat pump repairs · Palmerston NorthThe expensive way to repair a heat pump is to guess – swap a part, cross your fingers, invoice, repeat. We diagnose first: refrigerant pressures on the gauges, electrical tests at the board, the fault code decoded, the actual cause found. Then you get a plain-English explanation and a price before any repair work starts.
No guesswork. No parts roulette. No paying twice for the same fault.
Not heating like it used to, or blowing cold air on heat mode? First, the reassurance: a heat pump briefly blowing cool air while ice melts off the outdoor unit is a normal defrost cycle on frosty Manawatū mornings. But a unit that never gets warm, runs constantly without reaching temperature, or heats one day and not the next has a real fault – commonly low refrigerant from a slow leak, a failing sensor or reversing valve, or airflow so choked by dirt the unit can’t move heat at all.
Water dripping from the indoor unit is the fault that panics people most and is usually the cheapest to fix: a blocked condensate drain backing up over the tray, occasionally a sagging drain hose or a coil icing over. Ice on the outdoor unit that never clears is different – that points to a refrigerant or defrost fault, and running the unit like that grinds away at the compressor, the one part you really don’t want to lose.
Flashing lights and error codes are the unit telling you exactly what’s wrong – in a language nobody gave you the dictionary for. We decode fault codes for all the major brands, Fujitsu and Daikin blink patterns included. New rattles, grinding or gurgling, and units that start and stop in short bursts, are worth catching early: they’re usually a failing fan motor, loose mount or refrigerant issue that’s cheap now and expensive later.
And a straight-up truth from the workshop: a decent share of “broken” heat pumps aren’t broken – they’re filthy. Filters, coil and fan barrel so clogged the unit can’t breathe, mimicking every symptom above. When that’s the diagnosis you don’t pay for a repair; we put it right with a deep-clean heat pump service on the spot and your “fault” is gone.
Before you book anyone, try this: fresh batteries in the remote (if the indoor unit doesn’t beep when you press a button, that’s often the whole fault); check the mode – the sun symbol is heating, the snowflake is cooling, and they get mixed up more than anyone admits; pull the filters and check they’re not blocked solid; and if a light is flashing, note the pattern, then turn the unit off at the isolator or breaker for five minutes and restart. If it’s fixed, that call was free. If it’s not, you’ve just given us a head start on the diagnosis.
When it’s a real fault, one visit covers both sides of the machine. Our technicians test the refrigerant circuit with gauges and our registered electricians test the electrical side at the board – no “that’s the sparkie’s problem” handover, because we’re both. You get the actual cause, a plain-English explanation, and a fixed price before any repair work starts. Repairs use genuine parts for the brand.
If your unit is still inside its manufacturer warranty – up to 10 years on some Carrier units, 5 years on Daikin and most others – we tell you before you spend a dollar, and point the claim in the right direction. A dated service history strengthens any warranty claim, which is one more reason the annual service is cheap insurance.
The rule of thumb we use: a heat pump under ten years old with a minor fault – sensor, capacitor, drain, fan motor – is almost always worth repairing. An older unit needing a major part is where the maths turns. Compressors are the expensive one, and units from the early 2010s often run refrigerants that are now costly and hard to source, so a big repair can sink half the cost of a new machine into a unit already near the end of its road.
That’s why every big-repair quote from us comes as two numbers: the repair, and a new unit installed from $1,750 including GST with a fresh 5 – 10 year warranty, 12 months interest free on Q Card or Gem Visa. Newer units also sip noticeably less power than a fifteen-year-old machine, so replacement sometimes pays for part of itself every winter after.
Whichever way the numbers point, the decision is yours – we just make sure it’s an informed one. And once your unit is running right, an annual service is what keeps it off this page: most of the faults we repair in July were preventable in April.
A misdiagnosed heat pump gets expensive fast. Parts swapped on a hunch, callout after callout, and the original fault still there under the new invoice. Here’s how we make sure that never happens to yours.
Every heat pump fault lives on one side of a line: the refrigerant circuit or the electrics. Most repairers can only test one side. Our AC-qualified technicians and registered electricians cover both in the same visit – so the diagnosis is the actual cause, not half of it.
You get the diagnosis, the explanation in plain English, and a fixed price – before any repair starts. If the smart fix is a $0 filter clean or a warranty claim, that’s exactly what we’ll tell you. No surprise invoices, no invented urgency.
When a repair doesn’t stack up against a new unit installed from $1,750 with a fresh 5 – 10 year warranty, we say so and show you both numbers. We’d rather lose a repair job than charge you to keep a dying unit on life support.
The usual suspects, in order: filters and coil so dirty the unit can’t move air (the most common by far), low refrigerant from a slow leak, a failing sensor or reversing valve, or a unit that was undersized for the room from day one. A unit that runs constantly but never gets the room warm on a frosty morning has a real fault worth diagnosing – running it like that costs you power for heat you’re not getting.
If it’s brief and occasional on cold mornings, that’s the defrost cycle – the unit reverses for a few minutes to melt ice off the outdoor coil, and it’s completely normal. If it blows cold constantly, never warms up, or defrosts every few minutes, that’s a fault: commonly low refrigerant, a stuck reversing valve or a sensor issue. Note when it happens and how long it lasts – that detail speeds up our diagnosis.
Nine times out of ten it’s a blocked condensate drain: the unit pulls litres of moisture out of your air every day, and when the drain clogs with dust and slime the tray overflows down your wall. Less often it’s a sagging drain hose or a frozen coil thawing. It looks alarming but it’s usually one of the cheaper repairs – just don’t leave it, because water and plasterboard are a bad long-term couple.
Note the code, or count the flash pattern and which lights are blinking. Then turn the unit off at the isolator or breaker, wait five minutes, and restart – that clears a surprising number of one-off faults. If the code comes back, don’t keep force-restarting it; the unit is protecting itself. Give us the brand and the code or flash pattern when you book and we’ll usually know what we’re walking into – Fujitsu, Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic and Carrier codes included.
After diagnosis you get a fixed price for the repair before any work begins – so the decision is always yours, made with the real number in front of you. Simple faults like blocked drains or failed capacitors sit at the affordable end; refrigerant leaks and fan motors cost more; and if the fault turns out to be a dirty unit rather than a broken one, you pay for a service, not a repair.
If your unit is within its manufacturer warranty – up to 10 years on some Carrier units, 5 years on Daikin and most other brands – the faulty part may cost you nothing, and we’ll tell you that before you spend a dollar. Have your purchase or installation date handy when you call. One catch worth knowing: manufacturers can decline claims on units with no maintenance history, which is why a documented annual service protects more than performance.
Under ten years old with a minor fault – repair it. Over ten to twelve years and facing a major part like a compressor – the maths usually favours a new unit installed from $1,750 including GST with a fresh 5 – 10 year warranty and lower running costs. We quote both options on every big repair so you’re choosing with real numbers, not a hunch.
Right across the region: Palmerston North, Feilding, Ashhurst, Levin, Marton, Bulls, Foxton, Shannon, Woodville, Pahiatua and the surrounding Manawatū, Horowhenua, Rangitīkei and Tararua districts. If you searched “heat pump repairs near me” from any of those towns – that’s us. Same team, same pricing, Monday to Friday 7:30am – 4:30pm.