PennSilverTaco's HVAC BS MegaThread!

Yep. It's big enough for the task. When it works. We did not build the house and would not have gone that route though. I think it was cheaper on the front end to do it that way.

The house has 12 foot ceilings plus vaulted ceilings in the living rooms. Lots of air space to heat and cool. It's easy to heat but hard to cool once it gets to 100+ degrees outside. Will be glad when we sell this thing.

 

I would not mind having a backup or second source for heat, currently I have a portable Generator and rigged up a switch and plug on the furnace for an emergency.

 

And this is relevant to a truck forum how?

 

Most truck owners live in houses. Although some around here I imagine spend a lot of time under rocks.

 

I'm getting too old to cut wood, but am thinking my next home will have a pellet stove for backup heat. A generator is a must for where I'm thinking we will live.

 

It’s in the home improvement section, isn’t it?

 

Unfortunately power outages around here occur more often than I would like. Last Summer I installed an adapter on the outside of the house that has a simple plug in for the generator and a 6 way receptacle inside making it more convenient.

 

My aunt uncle used to live in the DC metro area (specifically Fairfax County, Virginia); Their house was this beautiful 5-bedroom brick colonial that was over 3,000 square without the finished basement. I believe that in total it was over 4,000; Anyway, even if the basement was unfinished it should have had two units. The house built in 1981 and they bought it from the original owners in 1994.

This big ass custom built 2-story house had only one 5-ton heat pump for the entire house! All of the houses in the neighborhood had at least four bedrooms and were well over 3,000 square feet; Only one house in the whole neighborhood had two separate systems for upstairs and downstairs, and I believe it was done well after the house was built because the owners were fed up with the shitty cooling performance.

These houses were built well enough that the lackluster performance of the heat pumps in the winter wasn’t really noticed; However, in the summer you ended up freezing out the downstairs to keep the upstairs comfortable at night!

The house had double-paned Pella windows and custom millwork, but the builder could not be bothered to give the house a separate system for upstairs?!?!

I hated staying there in the summer!

 

I think the people building our house ran out of money. Some of the areas they spent it one were not smart. Like the custom hickory cabinets they didn't like so they painted black.
There are a few things that just seem odd that we didn't notice until we lived here for a few months. I guess that may have been why they were selling a 4 year old house and moving 2miles away.

 

So the unit doesn’t cool the house unevenly in the summer?

 

My real-life experiences are only based on florida.

I would definitely go with 2 separate systems top vs bottom floor.

(Also recommend thinking seriously about some mini splits possibly in place of or in addition to central... in addition to 3 ton central unit for 1500 sq ft, we have 3 mini splits in the house totalling 2+ additional tons....
https://www.highseer.com/collection...oner-heat-pump-230-vac?variant=27003569963072

Couple of great things are redundancy, ability to cool or heat individual rooms, and alot easier to run single small mini split on generator...

 

No. It has 3 zones that work pretty well. It divides the bottom floor into 2 halves and the upper area is one. It maintains temperatures well in all areas.
We have had issues with the pump and the coils over the last 7 or 8 years. I don't know what size it is, but our HVAC guy said it is huge and has dual stages in the pump and fans and is well rated for the size we are using, although he agrees two pumps would have been better. When it works, it works great.

 

My aunt and uncle used to live in Boca Raton. They bought a new house in either 1992 or 1993 and had it built from the ground up. It was built by Lennar; You could choose from one of three floor plans and the only “upgrades” you could choose were flooring and carpet color.

My aunt and uncle chose a 2-story floodplan that had to be at least 2,500 square feet, with four bedroom. It was cinderblock construction on the first floor and wood on the second floor; That was house only had one central air-conditioner, and it wasn’t a heat pump but just a straight-cool A/C with electric strip heat built into the air handler. The air handler was located in a utility closet on the second floor, so the air was much better distributed than if it had been on the first floor. The indoor coil sprung a leak in the mid-1990s and my uncle had it replaced with a Carrier (I forget what brand the original system was); The original 1992-1993ish A/C was still there and fully operational when my aunt and uncle sold the place maybe five years ago. The strip heat in the air handler failed at some point in the early 2000s, but it was so mild in South Florida that my uncle never bothered to get it fixed and used space heaters to take the edge off when it was chilly.

 

Was doing DoorDash in Conshohocken today and saw this block of newer townhomes; This is proof that when space is limited, you will do damn near anything to make it work. These townhouses did not look particularly large, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had dual-zone A/C...

 

All of the end units had them located on the side (this is not a very good install in my opinion)...

 

Lots of factors for sizing equipment. I wouldn’t skimp on getting someone knowledgeable. I have a 4 ton heat pump for a tad over 4,000 sqft, two floors, in Alabama. But I have a concrete home, back filled block, brick facade. Perfectly sized.

 

Where is the air handler located (first floor or second floor)? It isn’t noticeably warmer upstairs?

 

It’s in a not ideal location right now- unconditioned garage. It’s sealed very well, but soon I will build an insulated room around it to make extra sure no cold air gets pulled in. The heat pump does a great job of keep air moving with returns on each floor. The second floor is solid concrete, so this creates a nice thermal mass for both areas. It’s probably a little warmer upstairs just because of the floor, but not enough to bother worrying about. I keep all of the upstairs vents closed though.

 

What brand? If it’s a Trane Hyperion air handler then you’re golden!

 

You might want to consider the new ductless minisplits. They do a fantastic job, are easy to install and operate much more efficiently than a conventional unit. One on the first level and one on the second level may be sufficient. Worth checking into.