PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

Does it by chance say anything in the Owners Manual about how it operates? It does seem odd that it would keep starting over from the beginning each time.

 

Owner’s manual will be the first place I look...

 

@El Duderino
@Plain Jane Taco
@Running Man
@shakerhood

Looks like I might have a date with an attractive older woman!

 

Good for you. I hope you got your cougar hunting permit

 

This is one of three central A/C units at my aunt and uncle’s house in Virginia. This Goodman is a straight-cool unit, used to cool the 2nd floor, and paired with a gas furnace located in the attic.

The house was built in 2015-2016, just like my parents’ house, which also has Goodman units pretty much identical to this one...




Note how corrosion and oxidization has started to set in already...



My aunt and uncle’s house is practically on the beach, and salty sea air tends to enjoy a tasty air-conditioner!

 

Carrier builds a much higher-quality product, and it shows...

Look how much better the Carrier looks! This unit heats and cools the first floor...



By the way, this is what one would commonly call a “Gas-Pack”.

My aunt and uncle’s house does not have a basement, so the builder went with a packaged unit on the first floor to maximize space. This particular unit is a straight-cool A/C with a gas furnace.

These units are also available as a heat pump/gas furnace combo (which I will be talking my relatives into buying when this one dies), straight-cool A/C only with no heat (but the option to add electric auxiliary heat), and a heat pump with no gas heat (but the option to add electric aux heat). Packaged units are quite common in this part of Virginia due to basements being uncommon. This is the only home owned by one of my family members to have a packaged unit.

 

The house also has a tankless water heater!

 

That is great to hear!!!

 

There is a detached garage with a 400-square foot carriage house above it as well, and the apartment has its own separate A/C and heat. The builder did not run the gas line to the carriage house to save money. As such, the carriage house has a heat pump, also a Goodshit. The heat pump is installed under the stairs, so it has been spared exposure to the salty sea air somewhat...

 

@shakerhood

It's a good thing that you are not getting a Goodshit...er, I mean Goodman...

Goodman has gotten better, but they still cannot touch Carrier/Bryant, Trane/American Standard, Lennox, or even York in terms of quality. Newer units use a Copeland-Scroll compressor, and the warranty on Goodman products is pretty damn good, but they are still flimsy and use cheap parts. They also sell to anyone willing to pay, whereas even sister company Amana will only sell to licensed technicians and approved contractors. Installed by a qualified technician, Goodman products are reliable and will last a reasonably long time, but I would never install them in my house if given a choice (when the ones that came with my parents' house die, I will make sure mom and dad get Carrier or Trane products)!

 

Yeah i think my furnace guy wants to put a Rheem model in the house. I was hoping to have it done before the end of this year but not sure if I will have my hallway fixed before then.

 

Part of the estimated included a new cement pad for the AC Unit to sit on too.

 

Oldest central air-conditioner I've personally seen in operation was a 1964 Trane (in 2011 or 2012) and the oldest heater I've seen is a 1957 Thatcher oil boiler at my Grandma's house in New Jersey. My therapist has a house down the shore (New Jersey) that was built in 1927. It had the original boiler (I believe gas) when he renovated the place maybe a decade ago. He installed central air and pretty much gutted the house, so he figured he'd replace the 85-year old boiler as well, even though it was still working!

 

Have them install risers too, to keep it out of the snow and dirt. These are generally only used with heat pumps, but a lot of contractors around here use them on straight-cool units too. I think you should install a heat pump along with your propane heat, because electric heat is cheaper to run than propane when it's above freezing in some cases. Yes, the unit in this sample photo is a Goodshit...

 

@shakerhood

This also appears to be a Goodman or possibly an Amana, but risers are risers...

 

I started looking into Heat pumps but the price seemed like it would be on the high side. I probably spend about $1000 per year on propane and that is with this old inefficient unit, I imagine that the new unit will use less.

 

Also, here is a video I made of the 2001 Trane XE1000 Weathertron heat pump at my aunt and uncle's old house in Northern Virginia almost eight years ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GevMP9aUY-4

The Trane XE-series in both straight-cool and heat pump from is actually a great unit, from the original XE800 and XE900 units of the late eighties, to the 1999-2002ish XE1200s (the number represents the Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating, or SEER; XE800=8 SEER, XE1000=10 SEER, etc). The problem with the XE1000 at my aunt and uncle's house is that even though it was a 5-ton (60,000 BTU) unit, the biggest size you can get in a residential unit, the builder really screwed up and went with a single unit when they should have gone with two units. The house was built in 1981, at a time when only the biggest houses had two separate units. The oldest house I've ever seen with dual central air was built in 1968, and it had had both of the original 1968 York/Borg-Warner units until a few years ago (One of them died in like 2015?). I have no idea why my aunt and uncle's house, which is in a much more expensive area than the house with the York units and built to a much higher standard, only had one.

The house was built in 1981, but my aunt and uncle bought it from the original owners in 1994 and there was little they could do to install a second unit without extensive "destructive construction" and probably well over ten grand in parts and labor when all was said and done.

The XE1000 was manufactured in late 2001, which means it was more than likely installed in early 2002. At the time of the video, my aunt said they'd only replaced the outdoor unit once, so unless the previous owners replaced the original unit prior to 1994 it is safe to assume that the original heat pump was still in operation until at least late 2001!

My aunt and uncle bought the house in November 1994 and moved out in early 2016, and they were unlucky enough to have to replace the heat pump twice in twenty years. My aunt and uncle do not remember what killed the original unit (I'm guessing a compressor failure or a severe leak), but the XE1000 developed a leak in either 2013 or 2014. It was still operational, but the unit used the old R-22 Freon and it was recommended that it be replaced with an R410a unit. My aunt and uncle were selling the house soon anyway, but I had told them for years never to install a Goodman or Nordyne no matter how temptingly cheap these units may be, so they installed the cheapest Carrier (which I also have footage of somewhere on YouTube).

 

I still recommend the heat pump/propane setup. You think it seems expensive now, but propane is considerably more expensive than natural gas!

 

I find this quite hard to believe.

 

Okay, so my aunt and uncle's old house had an absolutely shitty central heating and cooling system. It worked in the sense that it kept the house cool and humidity-free during the brutal Virginia summers, but the house was well over 3,000 square feet not including the finished basement. My aunt and uncle were also stingy with their energy usage and typically kept the thermostat set to around 74-75 degrees in the summer. The house was two stories, and the second floor tended to be 5-10 degrees warmer than the first floor. This is not just my aunt and uncle's old house, but generally any 2-story house well above 2,000 square feet with only one central air-conditioner; In order to keep the upstairs comfortable in the summer, you ended up unnecessarily freezing out the downstairs. This was highly inefficient because in the case of my family, my parents and I like it cold while we sleep. Cold air falls, and to the keep the upstairs comfortable at night, we always ended up freezing out the downstairs while we were sleeping upstairs! With the dual-zone in our current house, we keep the downstairs thermostat at 72-74 in the summer and turn the upstairs down to 68.