10/10/2026
Run your heat early this month, before you need it. That is the single most useful thing a Grand Strand homeowner can do in October, and it takes ten minutes.
Your heat pump has spent roughly six months cooling. Switching it to heat now, on a mild afternoon, is how you find a worn contactor, a reversing valve that sticks, a failed defrost board or a bank of heat strips that has sat idle since March. None of those announce themselves in August. They announce themselves on the first 28 degree night in January, when every HVAC company on the coast is already booked.
While you are at it, pull the filter and hold it up to a light. If you cannot see through it, replace it. ENERGY STAR puts the efficiency penalty from airflow problems at up to 15 percent before anything breaks, and on a heat pump weak airflow can pull in the electric backup strips, which are the most expensive way your house makes heat.
Eight of the nine steps on the full checklist are an afternoon of your own time. The ninth needs instruments.
If running the heat produces a smell, a noise, or nothing at all, that is the call to make this month rather than in January. A service call runs $55 in Little River and Calabash, $95 elsewhere. Tap Learn more.
Learn more: https://www.comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com/fall-hvac-checklist-heat-pump-north-myrtle-beach/
