Charging 1 port heat pumps in the winter

[Sergroum]

Greetings.

I wonder if anyone has encountered this problem before. I have a side discharge ductless heat pump here. There is only one service port at the Condenser and it's on the suction line. The head is in a Solarium and it's +7 there right now. I cannot turn the unit into a cooling mode, because the control does not go below +9 and I cannot charge the unit in heating mode, because the suction becomes the liquid line and it's not sucking in the refrigerant. Has anyone encountered a problem like that? I was thinking on triggering a defrost mode, but it's all dc voltage soldered into the control board, so that will not work properly.

[scarey8]

Push the refrigerant in with a recovery machine, if you are worried about contaminates that might be left over in the machine, use a flush kit prior and nitrogen.  rig everything up with the isolation valves and evacuate, use the recovery machine to transfer from bottle to system. 

[Sergroum]

Hrmm. Makes sense. yeah.

Thank you.

[scarey8]

Even easier would be to call for heat, energize or de-energize the reversing valve ( how ever your system is setup).  might lock out, just might work and save you a bunch of work if you are just looking to drop the low side pressure.   good luck out there

[Sergroum]

That was the first thing I tried. The connections to the valve are all soldered into the control board, so it's not just a matter of pulling a wire. I could've cut it, I suppose and then morrett it, but meh. In the end, I just ended up heating the hell out of that room with a portable heater, enough for cooling to kick in. Just dropped off a heater, set it to run, and came back 4 hours later, once the other calls were taken care of.