DOE Regulations - Air Conditioning

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

W

whirlcool

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 29, 2005
Messages
9,618
Location
Just North Of Houston, Texas
I heard on the radio today that the US Department of Energy is at it again. These are the same people who brought you washing machines that only fill half way, and dishwashers that use hardly any water.They are pleased with the outcome of how they were able to get Americans to do their laundry the way the government wants them to do it, not how the end used wants it done.

So now they are going to screw with air conditioning systems in the south and southwest. Maybe your a/c will only run 15 min out of every hour? Maybe not let you cool more than a 10F difference between indoors/outdoors? Those are only my sarcastic guesses, but anything is possible.

They seem to forget that a lot of cities in the south didn't really grow until air conditioning came on the scene. Looks like the days of the window A/C unit are numbered while split systems are exempt from these new regulations. Could this be some version of corporate welfare for the makers of split systems?

http://www.accessheating.com/blog/2015-regional-energy-efficiency-standards-hvac/
 
Seems far too excessive.

Instead of wasting energy by turning system on for 15 minutes of every hour, why not just ban the A/C outright if you're that hell bent on "saving the planet?"

I do, however, appreciate your energy standards of efficiency for A/C units. Australian systems are stuck at a SEER equivalent of between 8-10 (I speak primarily of larger ducted systems here, not those annoying "ductless minis-splits").
A system that would essentially be a bolt-on-replacement of our 1980's unit (8-SEER) uses just 3% less power to produce about 1/2-ton of cooling less. So, if if it were sized the same as the present system, it could very well be less efficient. The system I speak of is a Daikin (Commercial) Ducted System - which DOES meet present energy-efficiency standard for Australia.
http://commercial.daikin.com.au/sit...CANAC0712-Rooftop-Packaged-Units-Brochure.pdf
 
New DOE Energy Usage Standards For Central A/Cs Etc

They look great to me and long overdue, I see nothing in these standards that are going to reduce peoples comfort and their ability to keep their homes as cool or warm as they desire, in fact with more efficient equipment greater comfort will be easier to achieve for millions of customers and even more people can afford to live in the Southwest.

 

Hi-Efficiency A/C systems generally not only perform their job better but also last MUCH longer. When I bought my home in 1975 I installed a Whirlpool power saver central A/C system with a 9.6 EER this A/C [ now used with a newer gas furnace with a ECM fan motor ] is still running strong and delivering an SEER of around 13 and you can barely hear it running 10 feet away from the condensing unit.

 

Give me a HE A/C anytime, this type of standard helps millions of people live better and reduces the income gap between rich and poor. Builders can no longer stick middle and lower income people with cheap inefficient systems that they have to spend more money to run while only rich folks can afford to buy the good equipment.

 

John L.
 
Might be a good idea to read consumer reviews

of the new fangled HVAC. Like washing machines, they've been loaded up with cheap electronics in an attempt to woooo and wow the intellectual neanderthanls among us.

Go on, read up on them. Controller boards shitting the bed after 1-2 years and the massive costs necessary to replace them.

2 stage gas valves getting stuck on 1st stage when it's 10 below outside.

ECM motors that yes, do run efficiently but lack the necessary durability. And are very costly to replace.

Then research the microchannel condensing units. Want a good laugh? Research how many units end up getting replaced because the cheap aluminum condenser coils spring leaks and are nearly impossible to fix.

Like the laundry side of things, the all knowing gooobermint has seen fit to micromanage us to the nth degree. Little regard is given to the expense to the owner. Tell a senior citizen on a fixed income that no, we can't simply fix your leak in your AC, you need a whole new unit. Will that be cash, check, or credit please?

Of course none of this really surprises me. After all, twice this country voted for a leader that made no bones about his energy agenda. Going green has and will cost you. Plenty.

Glad my dad still has his old, outdated r-22 supplied RUUD heat pump. Been running just fine in the hot south Florida sunshine. All copper. No controller boards or other electronic junk. It just works. Well other than the Mexican sourced fan motors that have an 18-24 month lifespan anyway.

How's the change working out boys?
 
I have learned over the years that people just want something cheap that will do the job. They don't want no fancy/schmansy name on their equipment, they want it to work at the cheapest cost possible. They will always look for cheap. And with cheap you don't always get reliability. Hell, with some of the better names you still don't get reliability.
 
The changes are basically just bringing the minimum from 13 SEER to 14 SEER. Not really a bad thing, and the actual units are nearly identical if not identical already.

I went on a tear to make this house as tight as possible at one point, added insulation, ran around the attic sealing as many holes as I could, tightening doors etc. none of it really made a difference in the bottom line. I've come to realize that there just wasn't a whole lot to improve on this 1990 house without tearing it down and building from scratch with "green" in mind and even then probably wouldn't be a huge improvement. The only thing that really needs to be done is to replace all the leaky exterior doors, which would probably effect comfort more then the utility bill.

Our highest costs are in the winter with gas/electric bills upwards of $300+, hot summers can be close to that as well. This one has been so cold our bill is the lowest I've ever seen it in July, and it's not like the A/C hasn't been on either it just hasn't run hardly at all!
 
It is time to turn off your air conditioners and get out there. All this nonsense about global warming stems from people who live in artificial and climate controlled environments all their lives and who are unable to cope with nature as a result. As soon as the mercury hits the high seventies, low eighties, people moan and groan about how hot it is. Loose some pounds and turn off the air con. It is okay to glisten on a hot summer's day. Live a little.
 
In this subdivision(1992-94) they used Trane for the outdoor part of the a/c units and a no name "AeroStar" furnace and air handler. Most people thought and were told that the heating & a/c units were by Trane. No they weren't, just the outside units. You only discovered this if you went up into the attic and looked for yourself.

We finally replaced it all in 2011 with a complete American Standard unit. Our biggest electric bill has been $102. since then whereas we used to pay about $180 in the summertime. And it can hold the house at a constant 76F no matter what the temp is outside. Our last unit could only hold 80F during the afternoons in constant run mode and the temp inside wouldn't drop until the sun went down.

There is a company in Houston here that is offering a "Lifetime Air Conditioning System". They advertise that before they install a new unit at your house they take a standard unit and modify and upgrade it to a new "reliability standard" and then install it at your home. If it ever breaks while you are the owner of the house they will come out and fix it for free! Even 20 years down the road! I wonder what they do to the a/c units to make them this reliable? Or are they counting on the fact that most people no longer live in the same home for 20 years? [this post was last edited: 7/25/2015-15:10]
 
Seems to me the issue of reliability is different from efficiency. There's no reason you can't have both. It's likely that the manufacturers would have cut corners even in the absence of efficiency standards.

Higher standards will be boon to renters, as John L says. I used to be a renter and was stuck with a pretty substandard Janitrol unit of about 10 SEER on the AC and a gas furnace with an inefficient standing pilot that heated the place in the summer and cost a fortune in the coldest months. There was no hope that the landlord would ever upgrade. I could afford it but some of my neighbors were clearly shocked by their bills and people rarely stayed more than two years.
 
Are a/c units subject to the same chicanery that dishwasher, washers and toilets are? I.e.:

 

-Lo-Flo toilet doesn't do the job so you just flush twice.

-DW doesn't wash on regular cycle so you use pot-scrubber or wash twice.

-Clothes not clean and/or still full of soap? Just run them through again.

 

I wonder if it's possible to wind up with a super-duper high efficiency '8,000' btu a/c unit that's actually 5 or 6,000 btu and/or doesn't dehumidify as well as the older, lower efficiency ones.  Then in the real world the compressor would just be going 24/7...

 

Jim 

 

 

 

 
 
That's basically the summary of all higher efficiency systems. They put smaller compressors in and increase the condenser/evaporator size and effectively get the same overall capacity as before. The downsides to this are decreased dehumidification, and they're more susceptible to performance decreases with dirty coils in extreme weather then older systems.

In reality though, 13 SEER systems dehumidify about as well as the older 10 SEER systems did, and the issue of being more susceptible to reduced capacity due to dirty coils/extreme weather isn't that common. The higher efficiency systems 16 SEER and up are more prone to problems like that, which is why they have workarounds to the dehumidification problem like variable speed blowers that can be slowed down from the thermostat if RH gets too high and much more complex systems that actually control every operating aspect including the blower speed at all times (kinda like a car HVAC system) or even the newer inverter drive compressors that are constantly variable in capacity.

I know I'm not talking about window units but the same applies pretty much, those things are inherently not very efficient though so I'm not sure how they'll ever get them up to "super efficient" status. The only model I can think of that might already comply is the Friedrich Kuhl series and I know those are huge and cost an arm and a leg.
 
Southwest-out tht way you can use an evaporative cooler--"swamp cooler","desert cooler"The unit looks like an AC but you fill a tank in it with water-a fan blows across the water in the tank-giving cooling.when I was a child-one of our houses had one.Dad would fill it with water in the spring and drain it-if necessary in the fall for winter.
A fellow here at work has a newer HVAC system that used a ECM motor for its main blower motor.Motor failed and would cost him something like over $500 to replace.So he added a contactor and used a standard fan motor-about 1/3 the cost.The orig motor only lasted a few years-enough that it was out of warrantee.High efficiency can be bult into machines--you don't need the "gee wiz" electronics and boards to do it.Oh yes an autopsy of the failed blower motor showed the electronics inside sealed in epoxy-could not be reapaired!!!If it wasn't the board possibly could have been fixed.We can repair boards here at work!Bet the motor otherwise would be fine.
 
I'm wondering how and when manufacturers started to care about making and marketing some High Efficiency air conditioners and heat pumps. Was that related to the first energy crisis? Or maybe a bit before? Two days ago, I just got a small capacity 1975 window air conditioner that displays it on it's front panel. I have one from 1974 that also has "HE" in it's model number (and a better EER too) but no mention of it on the front panel. I have seen Friedrich ads from the early 1970s which also claimed better efficiency.

Here are pictures from my new 1975 air conditioner.

philr-2015072600184201282_1.jpg

philr-2015072600184201282_2.jpg

philr-2015072600184201282_3.jpg

philr-2015072600184201282_4.jpg
 
I was being tongue-in-cheek. 120 degrees is pretty warm by any standard and can be life-threatening for some.

Maybe there is some thyroid thing going on that so many people are quite happy to sit in the cold, but as soon as the mercury goes above 73 they head straight for the air con.

I used to live in the tropics and never once did I feel the need to turn on my air conditioning and have always thought ceiling fans more than adequate, even for sleeping in very high humidity. Five months of constant hot weather and high humidity, with little variation, will actually cause most peoples' bodies to adapt to those conditions. It can't be healthy to persistently shift from hot to cold and vice versa. I reckon that is what amplifies the hot sensation and feeling of discomfort. From personal perception, most air conditioned spaces always seem to be far too cold. If the temperature outside and in the shade is above 90, inside spaces shouldn't be any colder than 77 degrees, but often they are cooled right down to between 73 and 68 degrees (and sometimes even colder), which actually shocks the body, especially when one is constantly on the move between the in and outside.
 
Gusherb has it correct

I get more complaints about systems higher than 13 SEER than anything else. If dehumidification is an issue the 16 SEER and up systems are often "tweeked" by lowering fan speed or used with a thermostat that can do so automatically by adjusting fan speed and/or delivering a temperature 1or2 degrees lower than set temp. At this point you are giving up some if not all of the extra efficiency that you paid for. I see no evidence that higher efficiency equates to longer life as combo52 states. The Whirlpool/Kenmore A/C units from the 70's into the early 80's were unbelievably reliable units. I still service a number of them today. The top models had a electronic "system monitor " board that where almost always removed early on but otherwise very few problems. Most units today come with a 10 year warranty. Repairs parts are very expensive on the complex systems like ECM motors and they are definitely failing earlier than the basic motors. What will (and already is ) happening is that the first big repair after the warranty is a good selling point for companies to convince customers to just put the big repair cost toward a new system and then you will have a 10 year warranty again. Thus the industry is headed toward a 10 year life span as opposed to the 20 that was.
 
Right you are Olav. Today many people hit the AC switch even when the air is perfectly comfortable. Years ago when the late Alistair Cook did that great series "America" on PBS he commented on San Francisco and said "where anything over 70 degrees is considered a heatwave." The mammoth department store in SF where I worked which had already been there for almost 100 years had no air conditioning and I don't recall customers complaining. I guess things change.

twintubdexter-2015072613252002062_1.jpg
 
A/C Warranties

We found that when we were looking for a new system, only the top shelf brands had a 10 year warranty. Lots of the others had 5 year or even 2 year warranties. We have noticed that this newer system does not dehumidify as good as our 1994 Trane unit did. That unit held summertime humidity down to around 40% where our 2011 American Standard(Seer 16) unit will only get it down to about 48-52%. The A/C contractor told us that modern units just work this way and if I want to see 40% again, buy a dehumidifier. He also noted that as long as you are below 60% humidity, you are OK.
 
In 2014, I replaced a 20 year old 10 SEER Carrier unit with a 13 SEER Bryant unit. The old unit was about to die and I wanted the efficiency credit. The new system has a variable speed blower. I can't really tell if there's a difference in dehumidification or a savings in operational cost,

The contractors at the time we're suggesting numerous options. One contractor suggested the heat pump so that I would use the boiler less. The house has hot water boiler heat and forced a/c. The ductwork for the air conditioning that was installed in 1993, isn't laid out appropriately to provide heat. It wasn't designed to supply heat it was designed to supply air conditioning. I went against that option partly because I really enjoy hot water boiler heat. Another contractor suggested the 13 SEER unit. I asked about going with the higher efficiency unit and he commented that it wasn't worth the expense of the unit for the potential minor savings. We will say if the electronic controlled variable speed blower shits the bed and causes me to pass out when I have it repaired. I am not a fan of overly complicated machinery. It tends to be nice when it works and then costing an arm and a leg to fix it when it does not. I can't really tell that it does much except that it does start slow and ramp up to full speed within about 30 seconds and reduce speed in the final 30 seconds of operation.

I do think all this energy efficiency is a crock of shit. As long as there are people standing with the front door wide open with the air conditioning running, where is the efficiency saved?
 
I am all for higher efficiency AC and heaters.  The units use less electricity or natural gas so you pay less every month.  The downside is that cheaper units with lesser warranties cause problems because they are cheaper to begin with.

 

I think it is far better to have a system that uses less electric and has a dehumidify routine than to have the older over sized units that gobble electricity, especially for those of us that have high electric rates and even pay more when we use over 500 kWhs a month.

 

If I read the original post correctly this regulation applies to new units that are sold, and has nothing to do with turning off the system every 15 minutes...although your electric company may very well want to do this...but that is another topic.  Now there is one thing and that is that even if you get an outside unit that is rated at 14 or more...if you don't replace the inside cooling coil you will not get this efficiency you will have an unmatched system and perhaps more humidity inside as a result.    So when ever you replace your outside unit with a higher efficiency one you need to have a matched system...an inside condensing coil that matches your outside compressor.  Also your new system should be using a TXV so that the refrigerant  flow can be controlled based on the temperature of your inside coil.  I think this helps with  humidity control. 
 
I don't think that making 14 SEER the starting point is necessarily a bad thing. I was in the business back in the very early 90's when 10 SEER was made the standard and 12 was ultra high efficiency. But where does it stop ? I would argue that there is little return on the additional cost once you get to 16+ because much of the time the system runs longer at a slower fan cfm or people are simply keeping the house colder in search of the comfort (humidity) that they had in the past. No real energy savings in the end just like no water savings when you flush the toilette twice or run the dishwasher on a 2 hour cycle. I see many 10 year warranties on lower price equipment. Goodman offers it as well as others. There is a point of diminishing return on efficiency. It still takes energy to move heat. Coils are about maxed out in size. There are some condensing units that are so big that you almost need a lader to go down inside if you need to get to the compressor.
 
I live in an area that will quite happily get to the magic "120ºF" once or twice a summer. That is the only time our current A/C unit will struggle to keep even 80ºF setpoint. The rest of the time, the system cycles quite happily, so its mostly oversized for what it does.

Still, the humidity is kept at about 40%, even on balmy nights where the temperature outdoors is equal or slightly cooler than inside.

As for my tolerance to heat, no, I don't like it one bit. Yes, it feels hot, but it doesn't bug me when I'm outside. Its just when all your furniture and everything is roasting hot and sticky that things start to bug me. Or the fact that even at 68ºF, I have a perspiration issue already - and it won't take much to create unpleasant odors. Add a hot 104+ day in, without A/C, and even a 10ft pole would be too liberal!

And cars? No way you can get one of those to cool off reasonably on a hot day. Those seats (whether leather or cloth-covered) stay hot no matter what (and they humidify the interior so much it isn't funny).

It would be nice, however, if A/C units were nice and quiet again. Like the systems Combo is mentioning (I'm amazed a 40 y/o system can deliver 13-SEER. I can imagine it would have cost squat to run when new with 70s electric prices).
Our system is quiet, although given its mounting place, it transmit very deep bass-frequencies into the house. The fan noise outside is all you hear - which is two large fan motors moving a ton of air.
 
indeed

yep,thermostatic expansion valve-a thermostat bulb/capillary tube on the evap coil controls the position of the valve.I'm thinking about adding one to my system as I have a suitable one on a spare A-coil.
 
Ok, so what I get from the comments is that the higher efficiency units technically cool as well as the older ones, but don't dehumidify as well. That might be fine in the dryer areas of the country but it won't work in humid areas. Most people will just set the thermostat lower and/or run a dehumidifier in effort to get comfortable. 

 

So then, a 16 SEER unit will consume less electricity than a 13 SEER unit + a dehumidifier? Why do I somehow doubt that?

 

Jim
 
We keep our SEER 16 unit set at 76F and it has no problem keeping the house cool. The Trane unit we used to have used R-22 Freon, the new system uses R-420. I don't know if it's the efficiency of the new unit or what but the air that comes out the vents is very COLD! I think it's something like 45F air. When the system was installed on a 90F day after having 3 days of no a/c at all it cooled the house down to 72F in 90 minutes.

We've tried to lower the temp to get lower humidity and all we get is a colder house, the humidity stays the same. The new unit does not run nearly as often as our old unit did but it's the same size unit (3.5 tons). Our old unit ran 12-15 hours per day in the summer and this one runs 6-8 hours per day. At first I thought maybe the unit was oversized and couldn't deal with the humidity because of lack of airflow, but the house doesn't feel humid or clammy and we haven't seen any mold or mildew anywhere. In the meantime in the summer we are saving about $80-90 per month on our electric bills.
 
Just looked up the warranty on the American Standard 4 ton unit that is 8 years old. The compressor has a 5 year warranty on it. Started having problems 2 weeks ago. The system was just not cooling but blowing air out at 75 degrees. Everything was running correctly. My repair guy added 2 1/2 lbs. of Freon and everything was fine. Left wed and came home sunday and its doing it again. They are coming out again today. I guess I have a leak somewhere. We have gone through a lot of vibrations here since they are working on a new road across the street. I don't know if this has anything to do with it but I don't think these were made to be bouncing around for weeks on end. Have a 5 ton unit right next to it with no problems though. Will wait to see what he finds today.

Jon
 

Similar threads

A
HVAC Brands of the Past. Where are they now?
2 3
Replies
71
Views
949
tolivac
T
W
Heating/Air Conditioning Rip Offs
Replies
29
Views
218
norgeway
N
O
Air Conditioning..to have or not to have?
2
Replies
52
Views
262
oldhouseman
O

Latest posts

Back
Top