My Heat Pump

Visiting The beach during spring break would be nice, but sumdangdik went there during the hot summer time. The beach is a place where people leave the air conditioning on all the time. Each motel room door has these words printed in large letters, "If you are leaving the room, please leave the air conditioning on!".

Traveling on business expense to The beach could be a fun experience. After a late arrival on a coast-to-coast flight, sumdangdik simply wanted to sleep soon because there would be a business meeting early the next morning. The motel room was nice, for The beach, and the only thing that kept him from sleeping was a tap-tap-tap noise and occasionally a loud bang! These noises were coming from the heat pump. That heat pump was running in it's air-conditioning mode. The Advert for the motel had read, "All New Air Conditioners!".

Sumdangdik turned his heat pump off, and after awhile the tapping and banging stopped happening in his room. He could still hear the neighbors' heat pumps tapping and banging. The room quickly became hot and stuffy so he turned the heat pump a.k.a. air conditioner back on and then drifted off to sleep.

Bang! Went the heat pump. Jump! Out of bed went sumdangdik, ready to fight off the intruder! But there wasn't any intruder, only the heat pump going, bang! Sumdangdik tried again to apply some percussive maintenance to the heat pump, moving it up and down and side to side a little bit. The heat pump fell out of the window. Sumdangdik stuck his head out the window and looked down at the heat pump, which landed in some bushes between the motel and the swimming pool. Well, he said to himself, we had better fix that.

The swimming pool was full of children laughing and playing. They didn't seem to notice as sumdangdik waded into the bushes looking for the heat pump to his room. There were two or three heat pumps down there, so he looked up at his room, which was on the second floor, to make sure that he got the right heat pump. Another heat pump which had fallen from the third floor, had a little dent in one corner. A friendly fellow, who had dark circles under his eyes, helped sumdangdik to carry the heat pump back upstairs to the second floor.

Since sumdangdik is supposed to be able to repair anything, he was self-challenged to figure out, what could be wrong with a brand new heat pump? He walked away from his room, down the hall to a vending machine. He bought a soft drink from the vending machine that was sitting next to some large, empty (chlorofluorocarbon) refrigerant tanks. Seeing this, he realized that the heat pumps had been shipped to The beach empty, sat in the humid air, and then were filled with refrigerant.

He made a theory that the heat pump had some water inside the piping and since it runs all the time, this water had frozen to become ice and the plug of ice inside the plumbing was preventing the heat pump from working properly. Though it seems counter intuitive (that is, stupid), sumdangdik decided to run the heat pump in heat mode for awhile. In science fiction parlance that means, "Reverse polarity of the neutron flow." In the hot summer that means the room becomes unbearably hot. The motel room got hotter and hotter, until finally after twenty minutes of heating and banging, the heat pump made a whooshing sound instead of a tap or a bang, then it settled down to making happy machine noises such as burble and fizz. Inside of the piping, the ice had melted and was moving toward the receiver-dryer assembly. The RCDR (receiver-dryer) assembly could then capture and hold the water. No more ice, hence no more banging.

He turned the heat pump heat mode off for ten minutes, then turned it back on, to the air conditioning mode. Cold air flowed out silently, and sumdangdik soon lay down on the bed and began sleeping once again.

Bang! This time it was a knock on the door. Outside was the friendly fellow again, who had dark circles under his eyes, and he was carrying a heat pump which had a little dent in one corner because it had fallen from the third floor. His small children spoke up saying, "How come your air conditioner isn't making any noise? That's not fair! We want it! We want your air conditioner!" Those children had been playing in the pool. They were wearing swimsuits.

Sumdangdik explained about the moisture from humidity, the possibility that ice had formed inside the system, and how to reverse polarity of the refrigerant flow using heat mode. The friendly fellow remarked that he would try it, and towed his children away from sumdangdik's door.

Other neighbors had opened their doors a little and had been listening in, and one or the other spouse in each room nearby decided to try heat mode for awhile. Sumdangdik soon heard the neighbors arguing about why the heat was on? Don't you know how hot it is in here? I have already been swimming all day! And the other spouse would reply that it worked for him (sumdangdik) and this idea certainly was worth a try. Sumdangdik could hear the neighbors talking about the situation. He could understand that those people on vacation were more than disappointed with the fact that the air conditioner didn't seem to work.

The same argument was repeated several times in the rooms all around, until finally an hour later all of the neighbors had tried this technique and it had worked! Including the dented heat pump on the third floor, it still worked too. No harm, no foul. Most everyone got aquainted as neighbors because of needing to have the door open while the heater was running in heat mode, everyone could hear about everybody else's vacation gripes and those children visited absolutely every open room in the motel. Eventually all of the heaters were running in air conditioning mode and all the doors were closed again. By this time it was about one-thirty in the morning, and sumdangdik finally got to sleep around two.
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