Waay off-topic - any HVAC contractors here?

[ShadowsPapa]

More info:
Spoke with one company last week, recommended 3 ton.
His calculations came out to 2.8
The original heat pump notes from the company that installed it almost 15 years ago noted "2.5 tons".
So last week's bid was 2.8, the original years ago was 2.5 and what was installed then was a 3.
They don't come in half-ton increments. whole numbers only.

The guy today, company B, said 2 tons and that 3 was really overkill.
I asked about geothermal and he didn't even hesitate saying "8 to 9 weeks, $30,000-$35,000 and your house is too small, you won't realize enough savings to be worth it".
(they do geothermal installs)
No hesitation, if your house isn't over something like 1500-2000 sq/ft, they do not recommend them.

I forgot to ask the first person but 30K + is out of the question. Even if we COULD get the tax break, it's limited to 2K. They say "30%" but that's a load of BS because there's fine print "up to $2,000" There's no heat pump out there that's going to cost you $6,000. Makes it look like a big deal until you go to the IRS site and read the details and look at the forms.

So now I'm trying to figure out if the second guy was right and the others were just over-selling, or of the other two are right and this guy is just trying to get under their numbers.

Too small - it will run in the higher stages most of the time and then not keep up on really cold or really hot days.
3 ton would throttle back and coast, saving money and easily keeping up. On hot humid days, you want it running long and slooow anyway to keep the humidity out. We can hit 100% humidity from time to time, not unusual. If the thing has to run high speed, it won't get the moisture out. In the winter it would mean the aux strips would fire more often.
So I'm leaning toward the first guy (and the original install) being correct.
Still doing research. There's a lot to it.

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[Lunentucker]

We have the chewy humid air here in the summer too, and most contractors will recommend undersizing by a half ton when the calcs are close.
The geothermal downstairs can actually perform at two levels of cooling and heating, which is pretty awesome on the days when you don't need full capacity.

Of course, square footage is just part of it. Sunlight exposure, insulation, and the orientation of your vents all play into it. My father in law setup his home with AC vents in the ceilings and heat (natural gas furnace) in the floors. That's ideal, but most single story homes are going to be floor vents throughout.

Ceiling fans help and we run them almost year round.

 

[PW45]

if you haven't had any issues on your heating/cooling cycles with the one installed, match that same size.

You'd know if it was over/under sized by now.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Talked with reps from 3 businesses. The first one was the most impressive. He talked about all of the things they just automatically did or replaced, no question. He walked around looking at windows, orientation, adding things up, looked over the house inside and out and recommended a size that was really close to the size recommended 15 years ago.

The next guy insisted 3 ton was too big and he'd never put anything over 2 in our house. That was going only by the county sq footage listed online. He didn't look at windows, the fact the basement is a walkout and fully finished, none of that.
I asked him if they replaced things like lineset and the disconnects and so on - his response was "we can if you want us to". I thought - you are supposed to tell me that, I shouldn't have to ask.

The third guy had done no homework at all. He had to ask about the house, the square footage, windows, doors, if we heated or cooled the basement. He asked what size our current system was and said ok, that's what we'll do then". He never asked how well it worked, if it cycled, if it ran all the time, if it kept up, nothing. Worse, he wanted to price us the same type system we have with the same SEER ratings and everything even though modern inverter systems are easily 2 to 4 higher in those ratings. I had to say "please quote us one of the better inverter systems, too".
I did ask him if he could see the current Amana noise box in our sunroom being replaced with a minisplit. Oh, yeah, we have done several of those. Same complaint, people say those systems are way too loud and they want something quiet. He gave me ideas...

I presented his ideas on how a minisplit could possibly be installed in our sunroom to the first guy and he came back out and said yeah, that would work as long as you didn't care about seeing that lineset go through the wall and across up to the inside unit. I said - I can paint or grain that vinyl lineset enclosure - so yeah, do it.

The last two made the decision pretty easy.
The first company is going to install a minisplit in the sunroom to get rid of that crazy loud Amana in the wall unit like hotels use, and a top of the line heat pump.

All three said the house was way too small to get any real benefit from a geothermal, and the more research I did, the more I had to agree. If we had a house that was bigger than a crackerbox, it would make sense. But there's no way to recover the extra cost with a house this small.
But we'll be going from a 2 stage heat pump at 17 SEER to a inverter type with up to 22 SEER (HSPF or whatever is similarly a lot higher) Plus the new one will heat to minus 5 degrees without heat strips kicking in, that's about 20 degrees better than our current system.

I am running the electric for the minisplit for the sunroom - and cleaning up messes others have made over the years when doing things here. I can pull back the wire that supplies the current Amana in-the-wall heater/AC unit and put a junction box over the ceiling downstairs, then extend that wire outside to feed the minisplit outer unit. The Amana is 30 amp, the new unit for the sunroom specifies a max of 20 amp breaker. So swap out breakers, extend the 10 gauge wire out and we're good to go.
They also said they needed to reduce the size of the breakers feeding our current heat pump, they are well over what the new requires.

Good timing. they are set to arrive and do the work Wednesday morning. Our current system went blank Saturday afternoon - weird, it's just plain dead at the stat. The stat is powered by the heat pump but now has a blank screen.
I had to sort of laugh when it quit working........... really? We were just wondering when the next thing was going to happen.

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