have I damaged my heat pump?

[Rockstead]

So I've been waiting for the pool guys to close the pool and I've kept the pool running 24 hours a day, and for the past few days temperatures have dipped below freezing.

This wouldn't be an issue since the pool has been running but I just noticed the valves for the heat pump are reversed and the heat pump is actually being bypassed, I must have left it that way on a recent vacuuming.

Is it likely that I caused internal damage to any of the components of the heat pump that contained water that froze?

The pool company said I should just open the valve so that anything frozen can unfreeze so that it can be properly closed for the winter when they get there.

What do you think?

 

[X-PertPool]

I depends how cold it gets for how long. If it's just dipping below freezing at night then I'm sure you are fine. Think about it this way; when it gets barely below freezing overnight puddles might ice over a thin sheet but not freeze solid. Don't forget to that during the day when it is above freezing especially if the sun hits the heatpump it will absorb that heat. So when it does actually get below freezing at night the heat that the heatpump absorbed during the day has to dissipate and by the time that rolls around it's getting close the sunrise again to warm things up.

 

[Rockstead]

I hope so, I definitely saw hard ice on the street wherever water had been.

This was the temperature for the last few days, so hopefully, based on what you are saying, I should be okay.

High 30, low 29
High 32, low 23
High 39, low 28
High 41, low 37

 

[jblizzle]

Did you open the valves back up to get water moving through the heater? If so, and nothing is dripping, then you should be fine.

 

[Rockstead]

So I reversed the valves, my pipe that says cold is open and the one that says hot is open and a third one between them is closed.

My heat pump gives an error code of FS, I looked it up and it means this:

Unit currently in defrosting cycle (the fan works but the compressor is stopped). This is normal operation when outside temperatures are cold.

The problem is, now that the heat pump valves are open, everything works for maybe 15 minutes and then the pump turns off with low flow.

It's dark outside but I don't see or hear anything dripping.

Also I'm not seeing air in the pump but the psi drops below zero with the heater open now.

 

[Rockstead]

Well I got through it, I rest the breaker and that got rid of the error message, then it was just a flow problem with the valves to the heater on.

The pump would turn itself off after approximately 15 without proper flow and I would just keep turning it back on, back washing didn't make a difference.

Finally after about 4 hours of doing this, whatever was causing the flow issue stopped occurring and all appears to be well. I'm guessing something internal to the heat pump was frozen and it took that long to unfreeze.