PennSilverTaco's HVAC BS MegaThread!

99% of the time, there is no refrigerant in them. One time, I was given a 4-ton central A/C unit that I did not know had freon in it; I snipped the line in preparation to yank the compressor and coil out of it, and it found out the hard way...

 

I got my hands on a 2011 Day & Night 2.5-ton air-conditioner and an oil furnace from a guy who converted his house to an electric heat pump. The A/C unit still worked, but it was pretty beat from over a decade of us. Just to give you an idea of how much profit there is in scrapping HVAC equipment, I paid $55 for the A/C and the furnace; I haven't gone back for the furnace yet, and I've already turned a profit! I also got some other scrap, and my girlfriend was given a whole bag of DVDs for free!

I picked up the air-conditioner yesterday, and tore it down this morning...

 

Day & Night is one of numerous brand names slapped on identical equipment manufactured by a company called International Comfort Products (ICP), which is in turn is owned by United Technologies, which also owns Carrier, Bryant, and Payne. Aside from the fact it is much smaller due to being a 2.5-ton (30,000 BTU), this unit is externally identical to the 4-ton 2007 ICP that I scrapped last month. If you debadge two ICP units of the same nominal tonnage, they are virtually indistinguishable from each other...

 

R410a did not become mandatory until 2009 or 2010, so the 4-ton unit that I scrapped was R-22, due to it being a cheaper unit from 2007. This unit is either 2011 or 2012, so it's R410a. The "30" in the model number identifies this unit as a 2.5-ton...

 

Carrier first started using R410a in 1996 under the name "Puron", and other brands started using it in the early 2000s. For example, my friend's parents' 2003 Lennox has R410a. However, they have a high-end Dave Lennox Signature Series...

Until R410a was mandated by the government in 2009-2010, only more expensive units had it. My parents' townhouse was built in 2007 and both Carrier units had R-22. Construction started on our old neighborhood in 2004, and ended in 2010. There are almost 400 houses in that neighborhood, and I'd say probably a dozen of them had R410a systems.

If you pop the hood on some vehicles manufactured from about 1993 to 1995, you will see a warning label saying not to use R-12. It was the same with central A/C units and heat pumps when the transition was made to R410, so techs wouldn't use the wrong refrigerant and oil, and irreparably damage the units. Now that R410a is rule rather than the exception, warning labels like this are virtually nonexistent...

 

The venerable Copeland-Scroll compressor, which can be found in pretty much every brand except Trane/American Standard...

 

This unit worked fine when it was removed, but like I said, it was pretty beat. These damaged condenser fins were not immediately obvious until I'd completely stripped the unit; I suspect that the previous owner's Doberman lifted his leg on the condenser a few times...

 

After tearing it down...

 

That black padded thing is a compressor sound blanket, normally found on more expensive units, and as the name implies it reduces the decibel level of the compressor. The 4-ton Heil that I scrapped last month also had a sound blanket...

 

HVAC equipment is far more profitable when torn down and sorted!

 

I kept the Day & Night emblem as a souvenir...

 

This was just a window A/C cabinet that I got from the same guy, and not the whole A/C unit, but I thought that this emblem was pretty cool...

 

This is the oil furnace that I still have to dismantle and get out of the guy's basement...

 

Compressor blanket, also known as mouse blanket. They love it for nesting, especially in your condensor unit. Just paid $1K for a fix of sensor replacements...wires eaten through. Unit foamed shut now (just the mouse sized entrance holes)

 

I wonder if my friend's parents' 2010 Bryant heat pump has any mice living in the blanket...?

 

It's more like the blanket is Home Depot...a source of bulding/nesting materials in my experience. Don't know why they screw with the wiring like meth tenants.

 

That's the best analogy I've heard in a very long time! @Gwyns04 's 2.5-ton Gibson central A/C does not have a sound blanket, but a mouse got into the service access panel and pulled a "meth tenant" that resulted in it being electrocuted to death. Gwyn went to turn on the A/C on an unseasonably warm spring day, and it didn't turn on. The tech came out and found a barbecued mouse carcass. Fortunately, minimal electrical work was required to get the unit up and running again, and that is the only service call the damn thing has required in nearly twenty years of service!

 

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This Payne heat pump is located at the Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, PA where @Stitchgirl90 and I went to the Lehigh Valley Auto Show. I saw a Trane heat pump/gas furnace packaged unit at a commercial building in Freeport, Maine years ago. However, while ductless mini-splits are getting more and more common all over the country, conventional split system heat pumps like this Payne seem to be virtually nonexistent in New England. They are also not very common in California, but in the Pacific Northwest they are fair common; @El Duderino's house in Oregon came with a heat pump and gas furnace, but when the heat pump shit the bed, he opted to go with a gas furnace and just a regular A/C because he rarely used the heat pump for heat and a straight-cool A/C was cheaper.

In Pennsylvania, standalone split-system heat pumps like this one have been incredibly common in PA since the 1970s. They are installed when no public natural gas is available, and the builder doesn't feel like going with oil or propane heat. My grandma lived within walking distance of this building from 2006 to 2019, and there used to be a 1990s Carrier TECH2000 heat pump here. That apparently failed, because this Payne has been here at least since COVID started.

Anyway, I took these pictures to show what happens to heat pumps when it's wet and/or humid outside (it was pouring rain), even if it is above freezing; I took these two pics at 11:51am and 11:52am, respectively...

 

I took both of these pictures almost 20 minutes later, at 12:19pm. As you can see, it is a bit frostier than before. One of the drawbacks of an air-source heat pump is that it has to defrost ever so often, and this requires switching back into A/C mode. The backup heat, usually electric but sometimes gas or oil, kicks in at this point to keep the unit from effectively air-conditioning the house when it's cold outside. Higher-end units have on-demand defrost that only activates when the unit needs it. Cheaper units, like this Payne, have interval defrost that can be set for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and 90 minutes...

Demand defrost is obviously better and more efficient, because it only defrosts when needed, whereas interval defrost activates at preset times whether the unit needs to defrost or not.