It Started With a Warm Fridge
At 7:42 on a January Tuesday in 2025, our office manager knocked on my door with two problems. The breakroom fridge was warm. The freezer? "Like a popsicle." Also, the Gree heat pump in the south wing was blowing air that felt neither cool nor warm. I typed a question into my phone while I walked to the breakroom: why the fridge is not cold but the freezer is?
Before that day, I would have guessed two completely different repairs. By Friday, I realized they were almost the same problem.
Why the Fridge Is Not Cold but the Freezer Is
I run operations purchasing for a 140-person company. I manage about 75 service orders a year—roughly $210,000 across 16 vendors. I report to both operations and finance, so I feel every unnecessary purchase twice. I am not an HVAC engineer. I am the person who signs the work orders and then learns from the people who fix things.
Here is what the appliance tech told me about the fridge. The refrigerator section doesn't make its own cold air. It gets cold air from the freezer through a vent behind the back panel. If that vent starts to ice over—from a bad defrost heater, a failed defrost timer, or a clogged drain—the freezer stays plenty cold while the fridge slowly gets warm.
The freezer was 9°F. The refrigerator was 61°F. That is not a refrigerant leak. That's an airflow problem.
From the outside, a warm fridge and a fine freezer look mysterious. The reality is usually a small part nobody notices until it stops working. I don't have hard data on failure rates, but after years in this role, I'd guess that blocked airflow causes at least half of those calls.
The Gree Heat Pump That Wasn't Heating
Meanwhile, the south wing. The building has a Gree air conditioner and heater system—a ductless Gree Flexx heat pump installed in 2022. The model is rated for low-ambient heating down to -25°C. At 38°F, it should not have been struggling. But the indoor heads were barely producing lukewarm air.
The first thing I did was find the Gree HVAC remote in a supply closet. I switched it to Heat. The fan moved more air, but after twenty minutes, the space was still cold. I texted our HVAC contractor. They couldn't come until Friday. It was Tuesday. The overnight forecast said 31°F.
The Kerosene Heater Stopgap
Here's where I need to be honest. I have mixed feelings about the kerosene heater we used as a stopgap. On one hand, it kept the back office and the workshop tolerable for two days. On the other hand, a kerosene heater indoors is a serious responsibility. I put it on a fireproof mat in the open workshop area, with a CO detector less than three feet away. I checked it every hour. I looked like a worried parent. Fine by me.
Airflow. That Was the Whole Thing.
Friday morning, the HVAC tech arrived. He didn't start with the remote. He started with the outdoor unit. He touched the copper lines, leaned down, and looked at the coil. "See this?" he said. "Packed." He grabbed a Milwaukee blower from his van, gave the coil a few passes, and sent a cloud of gray fuzz into the parking lot.
Then he checked the Gree HVAC remote, confirmed the mode was on Heat, and told me to wait ten minutes.
Ten minutes later, the indoor head was blowing steady warm air. Not furnace-blast hot. Heat-pump warm. Comfortable. I nearly hugged him.
His invoice was $185 for the service call plus $75 for a coil wash attachment. I thought it was money well spent. But it also annoyed me. The unit had a maintenance contract. How did the coil get that dirty? "Because the last tech did a visual check and didn't pull the cover," he said. "Not all service is created equal."
That was a red flag to me. The lesson: a maintenance contract is only as good as the person who performs it.
The 2025 Version of HVAC Buying
The bigger picture, from my side of the purchase orders: what was best practice in 2020 may not apply in 2025. The U.S. Department of Energy's SEER2 test procedure changed how efficiency is measured, and Gree publishes AHRI-listed performance data for its heat pumps, including low-ambient ratings. That data is useful. But none of it matters if the outdoor coil is packed with cottonwood fluff.
People assume a heat pump failure means the heat pump is bad. What they don't see is the years of dirt, wrong settings, and skipped maintenance that actually caused the issue. Inverter heat pumps are a different animal than old rooftop units. They are efficient. They are also more sensitive to airflow and clean coils.
What I Learned
The fridge and the heat pump weren't so different after all. The freezer was cold because the freezer was working. The fridge was warm because the hidden vent behind the back panel wasn't delivering cold air to the fridge section. The Gree unit's compressor was running, but the outdoor coil couldn't breathe. Both were airflow problems.
So glad I didn't order a new system. I was one click away from asking a contractor for a quote on replacing the whole Gree setup. That would have been absurd for a $260 repair.
A maintenance contract is still a no-brainer if the tech actually knows heat pumps.
Bottom line: before you order a new appliance or a new HVAC unit, ask what is blocking the system from doing its job. It's usually not the brand. It's airflow, maintenance, or a setting. And if your building has Gree equipment, keep the Gree HVAC remote accessible, check the mode, and make sure someone actually cleans the outdoor coil at least once a year.
Cold and heat both have to travel. When they don't, the fun begins.
