PennSilverTaco's HVAC BS MegaThread!

This house has a finished basement, so it has three thermostats, including one in the basement...

 

Carrier gas furnace...

 

Carrier A/C...

 

Toll Brothers has almost exclusively used Carrier HVAC equipment for probably the last three decades; I know this because my old house (built in 2007) was Toll Brothers and had Carrier, and every new Toll Brothers that neighborhood that I've driven through since 2011 (the year I got my license) has had Carrier.

I also went to an open house with my parents that happened to be a Toll Brothers house built in 1993; I know it was built in 1993 because it had the original Carrier air-conditioners which had data sheets with 1993 build dates. Toll Brothers claimed to use Trane in some communities, and an old neighbor in the neighborhood where I used to live claimed to have Lennox equipment in their prior Toll Brothers house, but he knew next to nothing about HVAC and I have no way of knowing how true this is...

Anyway, the A/C unit in this house was located just outside a window in the 1st floor master bedroom; United Technologies manufactures HVAC equipment under several different names including Carrier, Bryant, Payne, and ICP (International Comfort Products). ICP sells identical products under some of these names; Comfortmaker, Day & Night, Heil, and Tempstar to name a few.

Base model Carrier A/C units and heat pumps are gray in color, where Bryant condensers are beige/tan, and Payne condensers are more of a greenish hue; ICP condensers look similar to Carrier.

I don't know if had something to do with the fact that I was taking the picture through a window, and/or the way the sun was hitting it, but this unit appears to be Bryant Beige or even Payne Green rather than Carrier Gray. It was brutally hot and my days of taking pictures of every air-conditioner that I see are over...

 

Another fairly strong hint that this unit is not a Carrier would be the black fan grille; I forget what color a Payne fan grille is, but Bryant fan grilles are definitely black. High-end Carrier Infinity products are moderately more expensive than Bryant's top-tier Evolution lineup, but there is really no difference in both price and features for base Bryant and Carrier products, so I hardly consider this to be a case of false advertising. My best friend's parents had their heat pump replaced in June 2010. They specifically ordered a Bryant Evolution, but a Bryant variable-speed air handler could not be sourced. It was unseasonably hot, so the installer substituted a Carrier Infinity air handler at no extra cost. A Carrier Infinity air handler works flawlessly with Bryant Evolution products, and more than 13 years later the system is still going strong. This particular unit definitely appears to be a Bryant though...

 

Carrier 2.5-ton A/C at the Casey; I know it's 2.5-ton because I read the data sheet, and I feel like this unit is undersized for this house. It was definitely working properly and keeping the house plenty cool, but the house next door had a 5-ton A/C; I don't remember if this one had a finished basement or not, but this one has a 2.5-ton, and another of the models had a 4-ton despite NOT HAVING A BASEMENT and being only one story!

 

This is kinda HVAC, ever seen one of these Charlie?

 

A lot of factors go into determining the size of a central HVAC system, with the region in which it is installed probably being the most important. In places like Arizona, Florida, and Texas the weather calls for more cooling capacity than Pennsylvania or New Jersey; Pennsylvania winters require more robust heating capacity than Florida and much of the South.

The further North you go, the more powerful the heating system you will need.

Another important factor is the size of the house and how many levels it is; I personally believe that any house over 2,000 square feet in this area should have a zoned system or two separate systems to more evenly heat and cool the house.

Other factors that go into sizing an HVAC system include exterior wall framing, insulation, number of windows, sun exposure, and apparently the color of the roof shingles. These houses look extraordinarily similar, but the house with the 2.5-ton unit is likely smaller than the one with the 4-ton unit despite it not having a basement, and certainly smaller than the one with the 5-ton unit!

 

Attic fan! My late grandma's old house in Connecticut, which was built in about 1968 and did not have central A/C, had one of these!

 

Yeah, this is an old Sears "whole house fan", does a damn good job though

 

I was initially confused as to why the Maple Glen had a 2.5-ton A/C while the Casey had a 5-ton, which is literally double the size. The houses look similar in size when viewed from the street, but the Casey is probably 900 square feet larger than the Maple Glen. This is the 5-ton Carrier at the Maple Glen...

 

Carrier gas furnace at the Casey model...

 

Carrier 4-ton A/C at the Gwynedd model, photographed from the 2nd floor of the Casey...

 

Upstairs thermostat at the Casey model...