Recently, dealings with my frozen heat pump at my house had been unpleasant. I had neglected to hire a the local HVAC contractor because I knew that meant the devotion of an entire afternoon of babysitting this professional. Additionally, I truly desired to avoid a costly repair job. I went online, researched, and joyfully discovered that simple strategies are within reach. They would work to safely unfreeze my heat pump. I found that I needed a couple tools and a little time. The temperature outside had dropped to 39F; this decline created frost which then caused my heat pump to be covered with ice. I have since realized that there is a need to install this timed, temperature-based defrost system which can automatically defrost my heat pump at set intervals. Unfortunately, because I don’t currently have this feature, I was stuck with an iced over heat pump. One easy solution, I discovered, is to run the fan. The circulating air will oftentimes thaw the heat pump in just an hour or two. Another option, I’d read, is to relocate a control unit from the outdoor portion of the unit. This can potentially trigger a heat pump to defrost on a more frequent basis and then operate long enough to eliminate built-up ice. It’s important not to locate the control unit to the incorrect end of the coil, in doing so, this will then stop all defrosting and truly make the issue much worse. I am fortunate in that our unit hosts a manual defrost feature. Whenever the outside conditions are cool enough to lead to freezing, I need to remember to run our defrost. I made a mistake by using the setting of “power-save” located on the heat pump to save money on our electricity. This tended to result in a short defrost cycle allowing the unit to create the unwanted ice.