A/C advice needed

If you plan on spending another decade in your house, get a good unit like a Trane.

Just curious, who do you get your power from? If it is co-op they might be able to come out and give you some good advice on energy savings for your unit. I know the co-ops in Virginia do this, but you might be ready to get this thing installed ASAP.

Just be sure to get it sized properly. If you have an HVAC on site already, I would also suggest checking your ductwork for leaks and installing an attic fan.

 

Our York has been very suspect since we had it put in four years ago. The entire unit had to be replaced at one point.

We found out the hard way this summer that when it gets extremely hot (we were over 100 degrees for several days in a row), the unit will shut itself down so it doesn't overheat. That's right. There's no internal fan and the blower fan is not designed to remove heat from the unit.

Our A/C tech, who came out and looked at it, was pissed. Since it had never been so hot here for so long, they had never had to service that problem. You basically just have to hose it down. I'm seriously thinking about putting an umbrella over my unit when it gets extremely hot to avoid that happening again.

However, we got a 10-year warranty, so we haven't been out any serious cash. When it works, it works well.

I have a feeling that the pitfalls we've had could happen with any brand.

 

I thought so too.

But among my qualified advice giving neighbor, and everyone I got a quote from - they all said an attic fan can actually work against a properly built modern roof. I was begging them all to sell me one (with an install) and they all said I shouldn't.

The three biggest things for us were:

1) We had to get a small pad built for the new unit to sit on. The old one was slowly eroding away, and sitting at any angle other than perfectly level makes your unit run inefficiently.

2) Getting a damper put in so we can shut down our downstairs vents. We have a two story house, plus a basement. When the house was built, they put the unit in the basement, so it's a struggle to pressurize the upstairs and get it cold. A damper downstairs let us mostly shut off the downstairs vents and now our upstairs has never been colder this consistently.

3) Changing one of our returns. The builder put a supply next to the old unit with a feeder pipe so small, it didn't even register on two estimators' air flow calculators. The basement has the coldest air in the house, so to not be sucking it into the supply was pretty awful. The air flow on this supply was so bad that - even though it was six inches from the unit - there wasn't enough pressure to get that little bit of suck that helps hold an air filter in place.

 

Did you mention that on the heat thread on sports and news? I remember reading that somewhere else, and had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder. Where I live, 93 is par for the course in the summer. We've had a few days of highs in the upper 80s and it's considered a break in the heat.
So, yeah, having to hose off the A/C unit when it climbs into the 90s is going to be a pain in the ass.

 

I can see the logic if you have a smaller attic and only one vent out, but my attic runs the length of the house and is about 1,000 sf with three gables on it. During the blistering heat two summers ago, it was getting 130-140 degrees up there, so anything I could do to keep that "hot hat" cooler was worth it. My upstairs unit was having trouble keeping up on the hottest days. Now the units do fine.

Now if the fan was pulling air from my house, then I can see what you are saying. But my attic was already cut for electric, so this was not a difficult install for me.

 

Yes, but Justin makes a valid point, also. You need to be sure attic fans are sized properly.

 

I have a Goodman, and other than a repair caused by a lightning strike it has done well. My A/C tech said it is what he uses, so that made me feel good about it.

 

At our previous house, we had a Carrier CAC unit that lasted 24 years and when we moved out it was still in fine working order. We had it inspected/cleaned/etc annually.

In our current home we have two zone cooling with two Trane units. Neither has had any problem of any kind in 5 Washington DC summers. We also have them inspected/cleaned/etc annually.

 

It's been fine through another heat surge over the last couple of days. While it sucked/sucks when it went down, we did have nearly a week straight of 100-degree temps, culminating with a 105 to finish it off. That's unusual here.

My unit sits in the sun for part of the day too which doesn't help.

Doesn't mean the construction of it isn't fucked though.