Separate Furnace Zones/What brand?

I am in the process of trying to decide on new furnaces. My timeline has been moved up a bit as 1 unit is now dead and we have no A/C in half the house.

Most of the new furnaces I have been reading about are capable of multiple zones, which would be great as we are 2 people and end up heating and cooling a lot of areas when we aren't in them.

We have a 3500 square ft ranch with 750 ft in the basement finished, the rest is a 6 ft crawl space. All block/brick construction. Basement is currently torn out due to pipes breaking so all vents are easily accessible.

I have been unable to find any HVAC companies that do load tests and all of the literature suggests load tests.

I currently have 2 Comfortmaker units, circa 1997, ultra high efficiency, 95%, 1 125,000 BTU and 1 75,000 BTU, that were rebuilt in 2009, but, due to well water damage are completely rusted.

Having a hard time deciding on brand- any recommendations?

The quotes that I have, so far, from Lennox and Comfortmaker both are smaller units. Lennox being about $1000/unit higher than the Comfortmaker.

How much should the units be? Are the new units that much more efficient that I can downsize the BTUs?

The more I read and the more contractors I have out to quote just add more questions and provide no answers.

I'd like to avoid brands with proprietary parts that are hard to get, but, would like to get something middle to high end and not have to worry about the HVAC in this house again. I would love to zone, but, no one in SE MI seems to want to.

All knowing BBS, please help. Any and all referrals in SE MI are welcome.

Michelle

 

Should I replace the air conditioners at the same time? One guy that came out told me I would pay $1500 more per unit to install A/C units at a later time. Is that correct?

Michelle

 

Michelle,

It sounds like you haven't yet found a competent contractor and need to keep shopping.

A load calculation is the first step in designing a new system. Without that, you can't start talking about options. If the companies who have visited you skip that step, you should move on.

Proprietary parts should not be an issue with any brand besides Lennox, who controls their own distribution network. That basically means that if there's not a Lennox distributor near you, it may take a day or so to get parts. I wouldn't let that dissuade you from the brand, as it's a good product. Aside from that, every contractor can buy repair parts for any other brand, and most furnaces have a 10 year parts warranty.

My advice is to forget about the brand for the most part. The company installing it is far more important than the label on the furnace. My advice on brand is to stick to any of the major labels, i.e. Carrier, Bryant, Rheem, Ruud, Trane, American Standard, etc. They're all good products, but the company installing it is the most important part. They will all perform well if designed, installed, and set up properly.

I'm up against a meeting, but I'll post more later.

 

I also need to replace 2 complete HVAC units in the next 12 months. Limping along, for now. I was screwed by a HVAC company in 1990 when building my house. (Out of business 1.5 yrs later.) Know I need to revise some duct work, among other things.

2,500 ranch, on full 3-side daylight basement with intent to finish most of it, eventually.

I also have another smaller ranch that I will eventually be installing a geo-thermal heat pump at. I'd like to do this at both houses, but tougher geography at the primary residence.

I'll be following this conversation, as I will be much more informed this time around..

 

Michelle,

Can't speak to the competence of contractors in your area, but I would go ahead and replace both if you can afford it. The units are 17 years old which is about all you can realistically expect to get. The refrigerant gas used in '97 has been taken out of general use and is VERY expensive, if you can even find anyone with a stash. Ad to that the increased efficiency of newer models and it is false economy to hold onto the old one.

 

It may be impractical in an older dwelling but don't ignore the ductless mini-split systems. If I had to build a new home they would be on the shortlist of things being implemented in the design. I had to put one in for a special purpose in our existing home and they are awesome.

 

+1 on any inverter based ducted/ductless mini-split type system. Since he's upgrading/replacing an existing unit it makes no sense to go with a ductless system. He could go with a Mitsu VRF system though. Stupidly energy efficient and quiet. Not too sure he'd be able to find an installer for it though....

John

 

I'm in a commercial bulding with an old air conditioner/heater combo unit that vents into the warehouse. Are these split systems quieter and more energy efficient?

 

Yes sir! If you and I were standing right next to the outside unit on my unit we could whisper and still here the conversation. 20 of them would make less noise than one of the builder grade units on the side of my house. Inside unit is quieter than the fan on most PC's.

 

Wow, I will have to look into these things. Any particular brands or gotcha's? We have 6 units that are each around 2500 sq ft, with small office/offices in each unit.

 

Every time I inquired to someone in the business the Mitsubishi was always the first recommendation so that's what I went with for ours. I had investigated the cheapo units on Ebay and the results were less than acceptable for something I was about to drop good money to install.

In this case we could hear the conversation as well.

I just cut the spelling Nazi's off at the jackboots.

 

But your use of apostrophes still sucks.

 

They are ghey anyway.

 

Apostrophes are white. Exclamation points are black.

 

shoot me an email and i'll help ya best i can, i do this for a living. The 125k btu can be a bit prohibitive in some stuff due to overheating. [email protected]

fyi Mitsu ductless is the bomb diggity

 

I just picked up a mini-split system to replace an old one at the house. One point, these are going to be air conditioning or heat b pump only. For those of you in colder climates, the splits would spend a lot of time on emergency strip heat. May or may not be a deal breaker, but something to consider.

 

Unless you use the Mitsubishi hyper heat model with the pan heater.. They're good down to -14 degrees. At zero degrees we've measured over 103 register temp

 

Mine doesn't heat at all. The rack full of servers does that just fine.

 

+1
did this in the game room. Could hang meat in there and it's 25x30'

 

How much of a premium is the hyper heat?