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Yak Shaves Dot Com posted:How temporarily? Assuming I'm only running it enough to keep the house under 90 degrees Depends entirely on airflow, how much charge is left in it - and how fast that is going away, outside air temp, and especially humidity in your house. It's pretty much impossible to say. You're not likely to break it any more by trying. But it may get to the point that there's not enough refrigerant in it to do anything at all. Depending on your leak this might happen whether it's on or not.
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Jul 10, 2023 18:25
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Is it necessarily a leak? And is refilling it + locating a leak a fast job usually? Edit: and thanks, btw. I'm relieved that it's probably not the condenser unit itself Double edit: I guess I thought it could deplete on its own. Yak Shaves Dot Com fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 18:44
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Yak Shaves Dot Com posted:Is it necessarily a leak? And is refilling it + locating a leak a fast job usually? Unless someone deliberately came by and uhhh "drained" some of the refrigerant, its most likely a leak.
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Jul 10, 2023 18:49
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Yak Shaves Dot Com posted:Is it necessarily a leak? And is refilling it + locating a leak a fast job usually? You have a leak, and you need to call someone in. You might be able to find the leak yourself if you go around soaping every joint looking for bubbles, but then you're not going to be able to do much about it anyway, and you won't have the tools or knowledge to add refrigerant back into your system. So you're just better off calling someone so you don't go waste a bunch of your own time.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:09
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If you go shine a flashlight in it you can see the ice block forming. Could technically be a couple of other things but dont tell your landlord it's working because it's on its last gasp.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:10
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testtubebaby posted:R22? Dunno... it was installed probably in 08/09. Let me know if this gibberish means anything to you: Labor isnt free, and the install matters a lot, so get someone you trust to do it. But yeah, get some quotes. HVAC companies love these jobs, so it shouldnt take much to get a few. nitsuga fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 20:37
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testtubebaby posted:R22? Dunno... it was installed probably in 08/09. Let me know if this gibberish means anything to you: Yea, R22. It says it on the "FACTORY CHARGED WITH" line. That means it's definitely time for replacement given the compressor is dead. quote:Received a quote from the company that told me my unit is dead. Checking to see if you all think this is reasonable or if i need to put in some work sourcing lower quotes. Another big question is about the model... googled the number and it's by a company - Climate Master - that is unfamiliar to me. I am quite confused, that model number appears to be a water-source heat pump. I'm guessing you don't have geothermal heating/cooling? If not, they screwed up the quote somehow and you'd need to follow up to ask wtf. I can't say I've heard of that brand before, but it looks like they specialize in geothermal.
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Jul 10, 2023 23:16
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The existing one is a Trane GEV model which is also a water source heat pump. So theyre either on geothermal, or a building condenser water loop. E: to clarify, a geothermal loop is also a condenser water loop. Condenser water can be cooled either by geothermal, or through a cooling tower. Its a condo building, so my guess is cooling tower. Bird in a Blender fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 23:56
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climate masters are fine. or to be specific they're no more or less poo poo than the other people who make water source heat pumps.
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Jul 11, 2023 00:06
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MRC48B posted:climate masters are fine. or to be specific they're no more or less poo poo than the other people who make water source heat pumps. Thanks for this info do you know of any where I can read up more on this? I got a slightly higher quote for a York and even higher quote for a Trane that I was considering based on brand and the previous install, but if this style AC is more or less a level playing field, thats good to know.
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Jul 11, 2023 18:36
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You can't. You are buying ONE unit, installed by whomever gets assigned the job that week. air conditioning equipment, with few exceptions, is very commodity. A 3 ton heat pump is a 3 ton heat pump. the long term quality is going to depend on how hungover the assembly line worker was when they put it together a year before, and how hung over your installer is the day they show up at your doorstep. the only way to compare between manufacturers would be to get post installation performance and reliability for thousands of the same unit over the service lifespan (15 years) installed in similar circumstances, according the manufacturers design (lol). nobody has that data. folks treat this stuff like buying a car. it's not. there isn't enough competition or profit margin to foster real innovation, and the machine showing up on the truck is only half the battle. what you need to look at is the contractor doing the job. do they have a good rep for quality work, and good warranty support. people, not machines matter here.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:24
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MRC48B posted:there isn't enough competition or profit margin to foster real innovation I absolutely agree with everything you have said, and even this.......with a caveat. Anything like a multi stage unit or HVLP is lolol of "innovation" (read: incompatible parts) and there are absolutely better ones to buy than others. And that's what the best service people in your area know and maybe even stock parts for. Regular units are real close to commodity.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:46
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Looks like I popped in at the right time on this topic: I am in Northern NJ, I have a 2 zone HVAC goodman system that is 16 years old for a 3500sf house. 1st floor unit has iced up and wasn't pushing much cooling. Had two techs come out and run a dye test to isolate a leak. Both came up empty. My options are currently 1) roll the dice on a r22 freon refill at $175 / lb. Could be anywhere from 2lbs to 8lbs it seems which in the end will be money down the drain simply to get me through summer. Option 2) obviously is a new system which I am currently leaning towards. I have my local HVAC company coming out for a quote and to price out options. Few questions I have are: What sort of ballpark should I expect price wise? Does it makes sense to get a system with a heat pump? Would said heat pump save me on gas in the winter? I see some decent federal and state incentives for heat pump and high efficiency systems. Not sure what that will end up looking like but I assume the HVAC co will include that in their options. drhankmccoyphd fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 15:06
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Lennox innovated in the profit department by having their thermostats communicate with the HVAC equipment on four wires, effectively leaving most homeowners the option of rewiring everything to replace the thermostat, or going through a Lennox vendor to buy a $600 thermostat when, for instance, the screen stops working on the old one. OK, maybe that doesn't move the needle that much on profits, but it sure was drat annoying to learn a couple weeks ago when I pulled the old tstat down and wondered what the gently caress the "i+" and "i-" connections corresponded to on the new one.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:32
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Communicating thermostats would be great if they all used a common protocol rather than their own slightly tweaked flavor of BACnet.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:06
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Uggh, I guess I'm lucky to have only had the first Lennox iComfort crap out in 2019 (first installed in 2014) however I'm coming up on 5 years again. 
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Jul 12, 2023 17:41
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Yeah, the communicating bit seemed real nice. If I could have driven somewhere and picked one up I would have paid a little extra for it, but it was either Amazon with longer shipping than I would like or an urgent call to a contractor to get it swapped out. Sadly it was going to get hot and my wife works nights, so I ended up spending my weekend time instead of money. This was an iComfort from 2015, so it lasted a while. Our basement is unfinished, so it took me longer to drive to Lowes and get the one 50' spool of 18/7 wire available anywhere near me than it did to fish it down from the thermostat to the basement. Biggest time investment was sifting through the manuals for the furnace and AC to figure out how to rewire those. We lost having the outdoor temperature displayed on the thermostat, but that's pretty much always on my phone screen and pretty easy to figure out by just...going outside. It did make me laugh how much of the thermostat install instructions are "DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO EXISTING COLORS, JUST LABEL EACH WIRE AS YOU TAKE IT OFF THE OLD ONE AND PUT IT ONTO THE SAME PLACE ON THE NEW ONE"
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Jul 12, 2023 19:13
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drhankmccoyphd posted:Looks like I popped in at the right time on this topic: If the unit is that old and you have a leak, then I agree you should replace it. Heat pumps are nice, but they will be more expensive than a regular old AC unit. I won't quote prices because that can be very dependent on where you live, but a heat pump is going to be more than $10k, a regular AC unit might be above that too, all depends on how fancy you get. You can get single stage, multi-stage, or variable speed, and the price goes up accordingly. Heat pumps let you use less gas because it will use the condensing unit to provide heat in the shoulder months. So that means likely only using gas for 3 months or so a year, and using electricity for the other times. From what I've seen, most residential heat pumps won't operate (or are just really inefficient) below 35 degrees F, so that's when you need auxiliary heat like natural gas or electric resistance heat. Any decent HVAC installer will tell you about all the different rebate/incentive options when giving you a quote.
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Jul 12, 2023 20:02
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Just got my quote and seems about what I was expecting. Price in paratheses for a single unit. We currently have a 2.5 ton system for our first floor. Second floor is 3 ton which is old but still functioning. Should I do the 2nd option for the better warranty? Are these quotes more or less sane? quote:1. Best: AMANA 19 SEER 36,000 BTUs Variable Speed Blower & Two Stage Compressor (Most Efficient & Best Dehumidification and Indoor Air Quality)
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Jul 13, 2023 15:53
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I just moved into a house and I noticed that the heat pump for our upstairs is only a 2 ton unit. It's ~1250 square feet, and half of that space has a vaulted ceiling that peaks at about 12'. The summers here are pretty mild, so I'm not worried about it keeping up, but in the winter, I imagine it will have to fall back to electric heat strips more frequently because it's undersized. Does that sound accurate? I'm not sure why they put in such a small unit. It's only 2 years old.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:30
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The square footage/cubic footage is only part of the criteria for sizing. If it's well insulated and has good air sealing and windows that may very well be what it should have in your climate.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:43
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Beverly Cleavage posted:Background: If you already have radiant heat then replacing the boiler is pretty straightforward of an ask. Just depends on if you want to change fuel sources, like to fuel oil for some reason or something like a pellet boiler system or keep the gas setup. For heat pumps in VT I would see if you can get quotes on the Mitsubishi Hyper Heats or the Daikin Aurora models, they can run efficiently at pretty low temps in case you have a boiler issue and need heat. (I have an Daikin Aurora and it finally gave up at around -14F, the Hyper Heats can go a few degrees beyond that). Depending on your utility company you may have some additional rebates. Also check out Efficiency Vermont if you haven't already they have most of the current rebates and utility programs all in one place for the state.
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Jul 17, 2023 03:45
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Is there such a thing in the USA as a variable speed heat pump for central heating/cooling that doesn't use some $600 bullshit proprietary thermostat?
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Jul 17, 2023 15:02
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I don't know of one-- and I'm not sure how it would work without some sort of communication between the stat and HP. Carrier will sell you a $1000 automation access module to go with the $700 stat, that exposes all of the controls over a supported rs-232 interface (instead of hijacking the reverse-engineered native rs-485 one). But you're still limited to the algorithm in the stat to manage the variability.
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Jul 17, 2023 18:15
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H110Hawk posted:Is there such a thing in the USA as a variable speed heat pump for central heating/cooling that doesn't use some $600 bullshit proprietary thermostat? In theory, yes. I have an Amana (Goodman) system like this that uses a regular ecobee thermostat, but the outside and air handler units both communicate to decide on workloads. In practice, this poo poo sucking system is barely over two motherfucking years old and for the second god-damned time I am sitting in a 90+ degree house with no cooling, with another "failure we've never seen before". But when it does work it uses less electricity than the probably-reliable 20 year old system it replaced! gently caress me. 
IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 19:35
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Lazer Vampire Jr. posted:If you already have radiant heat then replacing the boiler is pretty straightforward of an ask. Just depends on if you want to change fuel sources, like to fuel oil for some reason or something like a pellet boiler system or keep the gas setup. I was already sort of side eyeing the mitsu's, they seem to be decently prevalent in the area. Talking with first contractor on thurs to get an estimate. Probably will put off the boiler for a bit since we're jumping into the kitchen this winter. Boiler is in comparatively good shape, and if we have supplemental HPs, our usage of it should lower a bit more. Appreciate the feedback!
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Jul 17, 2023 20:05
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IOwnCalculus posted:In theory, yes. I have an Amana (Goodman) system like this that uses a regular ecobee thermostat, but the outside and air handler units both communicate to decide on workloads. huh-- do you use an app or something to also let the system know what the setpoint is, or does it just use timers like a 2-stage would with a single-stage thermostat? If you never used setbacks, then eventually I guess it would dial-in, but if you do then I don't see how it knows that the longer runtime is expected because now you're heating/cooling to a new setpoint rather than maintaining. Tried to find docs on it cause it seems interesting.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:34
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H110Hawk posted:Is there such a thing in the USA as a variable speed heat pump for central heating/cooling that doesn't use some $600 bullshit proprietary thermostat? Yes. the bosch IDS series can be wired as a "standard" heat pump condenser with R, Y, O/B 24vac signal wiring. the units modulate themselves based on suction temp and pressure.
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Jul 17, 2023 23:54
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MRC48B posted:Yes. the bosch IDS series can be wired as a "standard" heat pump condenser with R, Y, O/B 24vac signal wiring. the units modulate themselves based on suction temp and pressure. Pressure in the ductwork or atmospheric? Do they suck? How well do they handle demand curving - like cooling at a slow and steady rate forever vs MAXXX then creeping down to min then "oh god we're behind better catch up!" ? Qwijib0 posted:I don't know of one-- and I'm not sure how it would work without some sort of communication between the stat and HP. Carrier will sell you a $1000 automation access module to go with the $700 stat, that exposes all of the controls over a supported rs-232 interface (instead of hijacking the reverse-engineered native rs-485 one). A boy can dream right? Will that automation access module also die every 5 years like the $700 stat?
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Jul 18, 2023 00:24
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dont know. Not rich enough to buy one yet. the old condenser still runs and I gotta do floors first.
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Jul 18, 2023 00:43
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H110Hawk posted:Pressure in the ductwork or atmospheric? I'd assume refrigerant pressures on the high and low side. Those will vary depending on both outside and inside temp.
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Jul 18, 2023 03:12
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Qwijib0 posted:huh-- do you use an app or something to also let the system know what the setpoint is, or does it just use timers like a 2-stage would with a single-stage thermostat? If you never used setbacks, then eventually I guess it would dial-in, but if you do then I don't see how it knows that the longer runtime is expected because now you're heating/cooling to a new setpoint rather than maintaining. My system is an AZVC20 condenser unit, and a MBVC20 air handler. It's worth noting that earlier versions of this same line did require a communicating thermostat as well. When the compressor died last year, it also inexplicably took the control board in the air handler with it, and being 2022 there was no inventory available of the right control board. My contractor loaned me an earlier revision and the associated communicating thermostat for a few months until they got their hands on the proper replacement parts. They also officially diagnosed it as a dead compressor this morning. At this point it's a matter of dealing with the Goodman warranty team and hopefully they'll approve it in time to get a new condensing unit installed tomorrow morning. The system worked perfectly right up until 7:15 Saturday night, at which point it finished a cycle and never restarted.
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Jul 18, 2023 03:22
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Rescue Toaster posted:Hey does anybody know a tool for laying out duct transitions? I need to go from 4" round duct to a rectangular 8.125" x 3.5" shape, over a length of around 5-8 inches. I can cut it or even CNC it out of a couple materials, but I can't find anything online to help me design it. Use Ron's rollation technique: https://youtu.be/9wR4mj3M3q0
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Jul 18, 2023 04:11
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IOwnCalculus posted:When the compressor died last year, it also inexplicably took the control board in the air handler with it The compressor likely shorted to ground big time. When they do that solidly (sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's ALL THE AMPS CAN PASS NOW) there's all kinds of collateral damage.
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Jul 18, 2023 14:29
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I need some AC help. I'm in an apartment and I have one of these 'in-wall' units (not sure the proper term here) -- the kind you often see in hotel rooms, mounted below or above the window (but not in the window). Without going into a ton of detail, it started performing very poorly - basically not generating any real cooling at all. I had a technician come in and look at it and he indicated that he cleaned a clogged outside filter and that it now works. Well, he was sort of right. Turning it on, it would rapidly drop from ambient to the set point (it has a built in temperature display), we're talking like several degrees in a matter of a 2 or 3 minutes. Of course, then it would shut off with the net effect being that it wasn't actually cooling the room. I did a bit of my own digging around and noticed this: https://ibb.co/g7vZ6zv What I suspected to be the temperature sensor was dangling right up against the cooling grid (that hanging black wire)! So of course it was cooling down and turning off prematurely. I rigged up a little styrofoam stand-off and suddenly it worked much better. But this of course begs the question: just where is this thing supposed to go? I can't find any obvious mounting points, clips, etc around the frame.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:02
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You should put the model number into google and find parts diagrams. One of them is sure to show you the correct location and/or bracket it should be attached to. It's possible it's suppose to be in the air stream. It's also possible it's supposed to be stuffed into the evaporator and the reason it's short cycling is because you are low on refrigerant and the evap is getting cold enough to freeze.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:10
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Barring that, it goes in the intake so it knows the temperature of the room.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:11
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Motronic posted:You should put the model number into google and find parts diagrams. One of them is sure to show you the correct location and/or bracket it should be attached to. This has been surprisingly challenging - I'm pretty sure its this: https://www.ptacs.com/naw-nae/ but there's scarce little available on it. Not sure what you mean by stuffed into the evaporator.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:18
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H110Hawk posted:Barring that, it goes in the intake so it knows the temperature of the room. Right, but, presumably it's not supposed to just dangle there?
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Jul 18, 2023 23:21
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Cyril Sneer posted:I need some AC help. I'm in an apartment Out of curiosity, is there a reason this is your job instead of your landlord's?
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