A/C gone bad

bradfordwhite · Nov 19, 2021

#54 Bob

"the heat was dry, uncomfrtable."

I've heard other people describe it as so. You're right, it depends on what one is used to.

The house I grew up in was a 1960 built tract ranch house with oil forced air. It has a certain smell when running as there must be particles of oil mist that get into the air and the inside of the pipes. When the furnace was changed to gas around 1976 it smelled different but still that smell....has a quaint memory with it even though I would never live with oil or gas heat again.

I've gone in other houses where the smell was present and it brought back memories.

Depending on which side of the dry-line you live on in TX perhaps you are more used to a humid environment.

In a cold climate like the upper midwest or the north east you have to add humidification to stay healthy because no matter what type heat you have, it gets dangerously dry. That is the suffocation feeling you are most likely referring to. If you were staying temporarily in a hotel, its' doubtful they had humidification in the rooms.

If you run a furnace to 75 degrees there and never add a humidifier, don't have any house plants, add little water vapor from any other source like an aquarium, taking showers, a lot of cooking, and having several people in the home, it would get very dry. We're talking single digits percentage. It would cause the wood trim around the windows to shrink and crack. Other furniture would get damaged as well. And yes it would be difficult to breath, you'd be more susceptible to infections and dry skin.

Where I live now, it's always humid, some time too humid, but I'd rather deal with that.

mattl · Nov 19, 2021

I'm quite happy with my variable speed dual stage 98% efficient gas furnace. Initially I had it set up for CAC ( continuous air circulation...) and it kept the entire house at the same comfortable temp, no hot or cool spots. Plus, I LIKE air movement, a home without feel stagnant to me. I updated my thermostat a few years ago and it offers a circulate mode - every 15-20 minute it turns on the low speed blower for a minute or two and moves the air around. It works almost as well as the CAC, but at a lower electric cost, so I'm ok with that. I also keep the humidity around 50%, so I'm comfortable at a lower temp. The humidifier track the outdoor temp and adjusts accordingly.

We all have our preferences - baseboard heat would rank about the same as oil heat, maybe lower.

chachp · Nov 20, 2021

Noise to sleep..

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">I like it quiet and my husband likes some noise. We tried the thunderstorm sounds on Alexa and it drove me crazy because if I was awake it would play the same ones over and over. We have a ceiling fan but its quiet and to get it to make any noise it has to be on pretty high and I don't like that blowing on me at night. Our HVAC is so quiet you don't hear it running so we bought one of those small Oreck air purifier thingies and that's enough for him. We run it on medium instead of silent. It took me a couple of nights to get used to the sound but now I don't even hear it anymore and we get clean air. LOL. Two birds, one stone.</span>

henene4 · Nov 20, 2021

We've been here before

Heat pumps are not more noisy than a furnace in regards to your actual noise in you home.

Any resistive heat has a COP of 1, even the worst heat pump has a COP of 2.5.

We get you don't like it.

Stop being so aggressive about it.
And don't twist the facts.

mark_wpduet · Nov 20, 2021

Right now it's 30F outside. My all electric heat pump is set at 64F... I know it has to be very inefficient when we have super cold weather because the heat strips kick in a lot.

My friend across town that I used to work with keeps her AC at 78 in the summer. I was at her house visiting one hot day, I was miserable...the maximum I can go on my AC is 73F in the summer during the day - but at night bump it down to 70F

I dread when the day comes having to deal with getting a new system because there's so many factors to deal with.

kenwashesmonday · Nov 20, 2021

Electric resistance heat is prohibitively expensive if you live where it gets cold.

bradfordwhite · Nov 20, 2021

Henrik

He isn't mistaken when stating that a heat pump makes more noise. It's not a lot of noise, but they do make more noise and they also make some other weird clicking noises that it doesn't make when cooling.

I had a house with a heat pump and the heat it made wasn't a warm or hot heat thus it took longer to heat the home.

That system was ripped out and I put in a gas furnace. That was 2002.

henene4 · Nov 20, 2021

Once again, not how that works

If it has the same heat output as the gas furnace, it won't take longer to heat the house.
The air temp dosen't play a role in getting the room to temp quicker.

If it took longer the system was sized smaller.

And again, plain functionally, a heat pump will produce basically the exact same noise in cooling as in heating mode and thus the same as any AC.

There isn't really a thing that could make any appreciable difference in noise.

DADoES · Nov 20, 2021

There's a momentary whooosh noise when defrost begins or ends, or both, but it isn't (normally) heard unless one is outside at the compressor.

warmsecondrinse · Nov 23, 2021

#50

Yeah, I'd never rely on a heat pump alone. Although I think a few members here have been rather surprised at how low temps go before backup heat is needed. Can't remember who, though.

And yes, insulation first and foremost. And I HATE cold floors so my knee-jerk response is always "Insulate the basement!" If I had my way any place I lived would have radiant heat in the floors....... Maybe I'll get that...... One day.......

#59

I've never lived in a place with oil fired warm air. My grandparents had oil fired steam and there was NEVER any smell of oil... EVER... unless the oil filter in the feed line was getting changed. One house I bought in the 90's had oil fired steam and there was a smell. I called the oil company and the CSR proceeded to lecture me about how I "didn't understand" about oil heat and it ALWAYS had a smell. I thanked her for her time and told her I was switching to gas

No problem....

Baseboard: When there's enough of it I like it. It's very even.... no drafts and no cold spots. Unfortunately, most of my experience has been when a 4 foot radiator was taken out and 4 feet of baseboard put in. As you can imagine, that didn't work very well when temps dropped. I've tried to explain to people that it doesn't work that way and they usually tell me that it does (while we're shivering) and that it saves money.

Years ago I lived in an apartment that had 2'x2'x4" semi-recessed radiators. Shortly before I moved in they were ripped out and replaced by 2 feet of baseboard within the enclosure. I was kind of friendly with one of the maintenance guys and asked him about it. Some company had convinced the co-op board that this would save money. he told me that the building & grounds head honcho tried to explain the board that the sales line was physically impossible, but he was ignored. I was told that with baseboard they had to keep the water about 20F hotter than they did with the radiators. And my place was still cold when it went below 25F.

circlew · Nov 23, 2021

Having lived many years in a house with hot water (hydronic) baseboard heat, I can say it works very well. The first boiler was oil-fired, and then an electric boiler was installed in 1974. The heat was even, with no drafts. The heating system had to be removed due to the major renovation, as did the "Space-Pak" air conditioning system. I had a ducted forced air hvac system installed, that is supposed to have a heat pump, though that part was never installed due to various factors. It has electric resistance elements, but I don't use it as I'm only living in part of the house right now. I looked into geothermal, but got estimates of over $30,000., so that was out. If I had it to do over, I think I'd put in a new hydronic system, using an air to water heat pump, that could also supply an air handler for cooling. They have cold-climate models that can heat even well below zero. Guess that's not likely to happen unless a money tree comes up in my yard.

jamiel · Nov 24, 2021

Exactly right about hydronic...I had a tract ranch house in suburban Chicago which was built with gas forced hot air, and the first owner in roughly 1962 ripped it out and put in gas baseboard hydronic...chef's kiss. Was a wonderful system. The utility closet was in the bathroom (louvered doors got rid of all bathroom odors--woot) and except for the woosh at the ignition of the burner on the boiler the circulating pump was so low-toned that you were entirely unaware the heat was on...it was entirely inaudible. Big contrast from the wooshing of the forced air furnaces in the middle of the house.

Air-conditioning was provided by a 220v window unit in the living room--as long as you ran that during the summer as a central a/c unit (i.e. cycling continuously) the house was plenty cool (with perhaps a box fan at the end of the hall pulling the cool air into the ends of the bedrooms).

petek · Nov 24, 2021

Our 1958 built house is still using its original gas boiler with baseboard radiators. I really like it over forced air because the heat is even and it's fairly quiet although not as quiet as before I had the pump replaced two years ago. I keep meaning to go down there and jiggle around with it because the noise itself isn't the pump, it's harmonics on the water pipes. There's not a lot of maintenance other than adding some water very occasionally and then maybe having to bleed some air out of couple of the radiators every year or two.. I just did one in the small upstairs bathroom yesterday. Takes only a couple of minutes. We keep the house at about 72-73 all winter and I've compared our gas bill with a few of my neighbors who have gas forced air, and surprisingly our gas bill is less than theirs, our house is slightly bigger too with a heated two car garage.
The only thing I don't like about hydronic heating is not having central air and relying on the mini split. My new mini split from last year is also a heat pump though I've only tried it to see if it works and it does. It's sort of like an emergency backup I guess in case something went wrong with the boiler we'd have a little bit of heat.

henene4 · Nov 24, 2021

Hydro radiant heat

While it has been less of a possibility up until now, at least over here, the most recent generation of heat pump systems can reach high enough temperatures to run even pretty old radiator systems.

It's not as efficient as underfloor heating (which is still the best thing IMO) in combination with an x-to-water heat pump, but still more efficient than straight up electric heat and potential zero emissions.

Heck, our oil boiler system back home barely reaches 120F with a combination of under floor heating and radiators.
That system uses an adaptive heating curve calculation based on a set room temp and an outside temp sensor.

One thing that apparently is kind of different from the US to us over here is that at least for detached or semi detached homes, usually, heating and hot water are handled by a single system.

Usually you have a hot water tank and your heating circuit both connected to the same heat source through a set of 3 way valves or similar.

So your burner (or heat exchanger) is used for heating water and your heating circuit.
I guess that's mainly because forced air systems are basically unheard of for heating over here in such installations.
Basically everything is water based and either radiators or in more recent installations underfloor or similar.

In such installations, switching over to an heat pump dosen't change your heating much.
Biggest problem is that some kind of radiators need to high system temps to make heat pumps useable.
Even if your radiators tolerate the lower temps, the higher the temps needed the lower the efficiency gets.

In a perfect world, your heat pump can satisfy heating demand with a 110F system temp and with under floor heating, that is basically always a given.
And since we don't need 140F water out of the tap for our appliances, 130F tank temps are still good enough.

I guess in the US it really depends on what you already have.

If you have forced air, a heat pump just is the way to go.

If you have radiators, it depends on your radiators.
Most cost effective yet environmentally conscious option would probably be an x-to-water heat pump and replacing your radiators with more up to date low temp ones.
Not sure if baseboard radiatiors can be had for lower operating temps though.

If you have electric baseboards fitted fitting anything else would be a lot of renovating work.
If you however have some kind of AC fitted aswell I don't see a reason to supplement the "wasteful" resistive system with a split heat pump.

DADoES · Dec 30, 2021

HVAC contractor called. Equipment arrived, installation next week.

appnut · Dec 30, 2021

YAY!!

bradfordwhite · Dec 31, 2021

Are we going to get pictures?

DADoES · Jan 4, 2022

Done in 4 hrs, 9a to 1p.

1 - 5 = old.

6 - 14 = new. 11 & 12 east --> west view from stairs side. 13 west --> east view from other side (must climb over).

They forgot to bring the 4" filter module that wasn't on the quote but I requested and he agreed to include. To be added in a few days.

That's all I have. No pics of the heat strips before installation.

Best I could get out of the local contractors, who insist that the replacement match the original 5 tons, which may be reasonable on point of the ductwork being designed for it, is a 2-stage which will run at 70% capacity (3.5 tons) on low.