Any air conditioning experts out there?

[anonymouse1]

So we bought our house--yay! Now we want to install central AC....(cue Darth Vader theme)

We're leaning away from the high velocity installation--aside from everything else, (a) the ducts look way too fragile to be as durable as standard metal/phenolic (KoolDuct) ducts.

I understand the need for the Manual J/Manual D calculations--pretty common-sense stuff.

So the big question is which hardware do we want, and why? We're in Washington, DC, and the one contractor we talked with is saying, for our 3 floors + basement, we should install a 3 ton Carrier Infinity, and a 2 ton Carrier Infinity. From my quick Google-fu, that looks pretty top of the line.

Comments? Suggestions?

Thanks!

[MGS_forgot_password]

If you only knew the power... of a three-ton Carrier Infinity.

[Joseph C.]

Have you considered a split ductless system? I installed one last year. Quiet and very comfortable with complete control of room to room cooling,

[anonymouse1]

We've pretty much ruled out the split ductless--don't want a blower in each room.

Joseph C. wrote:
Have you considered a split ductless system? I installed one last year. Quiet and very comfortable with complete control of room to room cooling,

[M>B>]

This explains split ductless pretty well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2ipNar6koM

[Todd's keyboard]

General advice I'll pass along is: Don't skimp on the capacity.

You will want the system to be able to handle the hottest day of the year without breaking down. That means to have a system powerful enough to not be stressed to the point of failure when running constantly at maximum output.

You don't want to have it repaired in the summer when you need it most (and the repair technicians are busiest).

Todd's frosty keyboard

[Speedy]

But don't go overboard on capacity or your home will cool too rapidly and that means not enough time to remove the humidity which would mean you would need to run a dehumidifier full time. Happened to my folks.

[Grateful11]

Speedy wrote:
But don't go overboard on capacity or your home will cool too rapidly and that means not enough time to remove the humidity which would mean you would need to run a dehumidifier full time. Happened to my folks.

Absolutely, my late Dad use to figure the load on nearly every home he did an install in because you can get too big.

[dochocson]

We just got ours replaced, had 3 estimates on the work. As I understand it, the proper way to size the unit is via a Manual J calculation. Turns out that in addition to our old unit being 16 years old, it was also undersized for the house to begin with.

We went with a York unit and got lucky when the supplier sent out the top end model in the LX line by mistake. Our installer got the supplier to eat the cost for the mistake.