Floor Furnaces and Heat Pumps
Older houses without basements in the Atlanta area had floor furnaces. A friend lived in an old garden apartment complex called Crescent Court in the 1970s on Scott Boulevard that still had them. I remember the little folding fences that were set on them to prevent people from accidentally stepping on the hot grate. Every year there were stories of children who seared the soles of their feet by stepping on them. They did not provide very even heat since they were usually located in a central hallway. I guess it would be possible to have more even heat distribution by using a fan or two. Outside-facing rooms were chilly, but it was the South's way of scorning winter cold and all things that came from the Nawth. We rented a house in Decatur from April til September, 1955, while our house was being built and I remember hearing my parents talk about getting out of there before the heat had to be turned on. They worried needlessly; heat was not needed in September in Decatur, unlike Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota which were their points of reference.
As to heat pumps, I had a through the wall Coldspot of around 20,000 BTU capacity downstairs under one of the big windows in my townhouse in Greenbelt and in reverse cycle, it kept the whole place warm in all but the coldest weather when I would have to use the baseboard heat in my bedroom, the toespace heater in the kitchen and always in the bathroom in the morning. Once I turned the heat pump on in the fall, it stayed on and kept the house at a steady 72 degrees. It had back up strip heat for temps below freezing and a great defrost cycle that produced clouds of steam when it terminated with a WHOOSH of the reversing valve and fan operation resumed. I used a Filtrator dryer in the winter to add heat to the house, but once all of the structure and the furnishings were at a stable temperature there was great thermal inertia and it was always snug. Before, when there was just the baseboard electric heat, it was not so comfortable.
.the 2012 payne looks to have pretty decent parts including a "Gentek"(assembled in mexico)blower motor.There are cheap Chinese capacitors on the PC board I'll swap out for good ones.The mr slim indoor unit needed extensive cleaning-had to be completely disassembled-but now only need to evacuate pipes and indoor unit before releasing charge from outdoor unit if no leaks found.
