PennSilverTaco's HVAC BS MegaThread!

Sorta correct. Stores excess refrigerant in heating mode and ensures a vapor is compressed. Modern units have mostly done away with them for the most part though. I didn't look in my new HP for one, but i'm pretty sure it doesn't have one. Gigantic evap coils have reduced the necessity for them anymore generally.

 

What's the worst HVAC brand in your opinion?

 

Oof lol.

This really is a personal opinion question lol. I will say I see far more issues with crappy installs and lack of maintenance vs. crappy brands, but.....

I'd say Lennox. It passes itself off a premier product with half ass engineering. I spent almost a decade working for a Lennox dealer so I may be jaded though. I've seen some stuff lol.

 

Lennox Merit Series not so bad, but the Dave Lennox units are overpriced and overcomplicated junk in my opinion; I agree with on HVAC equipment only being as good as the person who installs it...

 

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A woman in Warrington contacted me via Facebook a few weeks ago to give me a gas grill and a fire pit to scrap. She contacted me today and said she had an old central air-conditioner to give me. Turns out it was the original Tappan unit, installed when the house was built in 1978!

 

I tore down the Tappan yesterday...

 

It might shock some people to know that this is not the dirtiest central A/C that I've ever seen!

 

As far as I can tell, this is the original fan motor...

 

When I first looked at the compressor, I thought it didn't look right. One of my buddies deciphered the serial number on the compressor, and it is from 1986; I assumed the A/C was from 1978, since that's when the house was built, but the serial number says 1977 so it likely sat in a warehouse for a few months to a year. The compressor that I pulled out of this unit is a Copeland recip, and I am 99% sure that these did not come from the factory with Copeland compressors. I'm also rather shocked that they put a new compressor in a unit that was nearly a decade old at the time instead of replacing it...

 

The current owner has lived in the house for 16 years as of this post, and she used to have a dog who would jump up on top of the unit to see over the fence in the backyard. As you can see, the weight of the dog has significantly damaged the condenser coil. This thing was still working, but the performance was probably greatly reduced by the damage that the dog caused. The owner also reported that in the last few years, the difference in temperature between the first and second floors became very uneven. Normally, I'd say blame this on the lack of a separate system for the second floor, but it's a small townhouse with no basement, so it is incredibly likely that performance was suffering as a result of the damage you see below...

 

A lot of companies used this "tabletop" design from the 1950s through the early 1980s, but Lennox and now Tappan are the only ones I've seen where the condenser is directly at the top and the fan is on the bottom...

 

Today, all air-conditioners and heat pumps use the same basic square design, but as stated above they came in all shapes and sizes prior to the mid-1980s. The underside of the Tappan's spent 46 years pointing downward, so it was largely mint...

 

The Amana window unit that I scored for free blows cold and is very quiet, but it's a wee bit rusty and full of mold; I have decided to scrap it...

 

That little of insulation on the inside of the top cover is where air is directed; I had no idea how moldy it was when I first tested it...

 

Like I said, this thing works great, but...GROSS! Would you really want this cooling your house, free or not?