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Ripoff posted:Getting access to the drat HVAC unit to connect it is the big problem, as they literally have it behind a locked door. That's what I'm saying. Find one who will "misplace his keys" in exchange for a 24pk of his choice.
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Dec 7, 2016 02:55
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Lock picking is a good life skill to learn! Bet you can buy a cheap set and have that door open in less than 10 minutes.
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Dec 7, 2016 03:15
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If a pick is even required. I doubt we're talking about a high security setup here. If no deadbolt a butter knife may suffice.
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Dec 7, 2016 04:16
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Does EcoBee actually require the fifth wire to work? Nest recommends it but generally works fine on a standard 3/4 wire system. It connects a small amount of power through that's not enough to trigger the system in most cases but is enough to charge.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:23
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wolrah posted:Does EcoBee actually require the fifth wire to work? Nest recommends it but generally works fine on a standard 3/4 wire system. It connects a small amount of power through that's not enough to trigger the system in most cases but is enough to charge. Yes, it does.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:36
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devicenull posted:Yes, it does. Well then, good and moderately annoying to know. I was considering switching over to one because I hear they're easier to integrate with homebrew scripts and such, but I only have four wires.
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Dec 8, 2016 06:41
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wolrah posted:Well then, good and moderately annoying to know. I was considering switching over to one because I hear they're easier to integrate with homebrew scripts and such, but I only have four wires. They come with a thing you can use: https://www.ecobee.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ecobee3_InstallationGuide.pdf (page 11). You install it in the furnace, and it magically turns 4 wires into 5! I used it despite running new cable for our thermostat, because I saw some reports that the relays in the ecobee can heat it up so it stops registering temperature properly. The PEK moves those relays into the furnace.
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Dec 9, 2016 00:38
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That's a decent solution.
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Dec 9, 2016 05:20
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It's time for ideas. Now let's start with the fact that I'm doing this wrong. I have my gas pack heater in a normally unconditioned space in my barn, but I heat the office attached to that barn all the time. I am not moving it, I am not building a proper enclosure for it (at least not right now). It is not supposed to be in unconditioned space. Here it is:  Even the condensate line is wrong. Don't judge me. And what happen below 25 or so is that it will start up the draft fan as normal and then fault out. Repeat 3 times, etc. I think the vac sensor is too cold or has some other cold-related obstruction to allow it to start up properly. My normal "fix" is to jam a 150W halogen painter's light in there for 10 or 15 minutes and then it starts up again. This is because I insulated the hell out of the office so the heater doesn't need to run much to keep my off hours 52F temp. This has been going on for 2 years and happens occasionally enough that I didn't care until now. So yes, I get the real fix here. That's not happening now. We're talking about a patch up for this winter. I have 120v inside this thing (you can see the yellow romex) and I'm thinking of something like several feet of heat tape that I will fasten around the area and hope it works. Alternate versions of this bad idea are "heat tape thermistors" (that turn on at 33 and turn off at 45 or so......the standard farmer kludge for incandescent bulbs to heat well pump sheds, etc) with an incandescent bulb in there. I'm shopping for ideas. I'm confident someone here knows about something other than lightbulbs and heat tape that may solve the problem for now, and I appreciate the input.
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Dec 19, 2016 01:44
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Motronic posted:And what happen below 25 or so is that it will start up the draft fan as normal and then fault out. Repeat 3 times, etc. I think the vac sensor is too cold or has some other cold-related obstruction to allow it to start up properly. You probably have water/ice in the pressure switches, or more probably the one on the left of the picture, that goes all the way to the bottom of the heat exchanger on the lower right. Because your condensate drain line appears to go to about that level, water probably backs up a little into the pressure switch line when you cycle off, then freezes. Switch fails to make on startup, and it locks out. So yeah. Some dude on the INTERNET says your light bulb solution would probably work. I personally would drop that condensate line lower. And make sure the switches and vac lines are dried out.
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Dec 19, 2016 02:12
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MRC48B posted:So yeah. Some dude on the INTERNET says your light bulb solution would probably work. That makes a lot of sense and dropping the condensate line is a simple matter of blowing another hole through nasty old aluminum siding that I plan to replace next year anyway. Thanks for the sanity check.
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Dec 19, 2016 15:35
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So, NJ has some incentives for energy efficiency (50% rebate up to some amount, 0% interest loans). I was initially going to use these just to get our attic insulation upgraded... but then I took a look at our air conditioning. The label on our condenser looks something like this:  So, manufactured in 89, uses R22. I'm somewhat amazed it still works. Any guesses on the SEER rating, or is it too old to be rated like that? Am I correct in assuming we're living on borrowed time with this? Is the fact that all my ductwork is in the slab going to be a problem? devicenull fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 00:55
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That would come in around an 8 SEER. I wouldn't suggest you should count on that lasting much longer but it happens. I'm out of residential stuff these days but I saw an 1984 system in 2016. Alot depends on the install location and maintenance. Did you have it serviced and the pressures checked? Are there obvious signs of deterioration?
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Jan 6, 2017 01:10
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glynnenstein posted:That would come in around an 8 SEER. We've only lived here ~1 year at this point. We had someone come look at the furnace, but not the AC. The initial install seems to have been shoddy: * The condenser is installed way too close to the house (I couldn't get a clean picture of the label, there's an inch or two between the condenser and the house). * They didn't cut the lines to the right length, so they're just kinda looped in the attic. * The condensate pump is plugged in by poking a hole in the drywall and running the cord through. * The coil appears to be completely inaccessible, and probably hasn't been cleaned since the furnace was replaced (in 2004)... and hopefully it was cleaned then. I cut some of the ducting to get to it, it had a nice thick mat of dust on the side I could see. * Duck tape is used on various ducts. * I believe the outer frame here is mostly cosmetic, but it's pretty rusty:  It managed to work all summer though, and seemed to cool the house pretty well! Based on what we've found, the previous owners did the minimum necessary maintenance. I'd be fairly surprised if they had done anything to it.
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Jan 6, 2017 01:59
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The lifespan of an A/C unit can be kinda random at times, but if you're closing in on 30 years I'd say it's time to consider replacing it. Average lifespan is about 20 years, unless its a Trane X-series. Those will outlast us all. I mean, if it works, great! But you'll see some pretty significant improvements with a new unit. Just the energy savings alone will be a pretty decent increase. That and everything won't be covered with 20 years of dust and dirt. Just make sure you have a reputable company come out and do a quality install, and you'll be good for another 20 years or so. Install is pretty much what determines the majority of a unit's lifespan. Make sure they run new linesets, space it out properly, and actually seal all the connecting ductwork properly and you'll be fine. Also, I can't tell if its the light from the picture or now, but that condenser coil looks like it's impacted with dirt. That'll be causing some issues for you too. Also, what with that time box thing hanging off the side?
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Jan 6, 2017 04:07
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ExplodingSims posted:Just the energy savings alone will be a pretty decent increase. Can be. Under good install conditions that are similar to the "Bench test" setup that SEER is evaluated at. Don't get me wrong. Almost anything made today will be more efficient. But don't take the savings estimate on the label as money in the bank.
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Jan 6, 2017 04:25
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Seems pretty reasonable to plan a replacement; you'll probably see a number of improvements. You might get more service out of what you have, maybe years, but it's a lot nicer to do replace it when you choose rather than when it chooses.
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Jan 6, 2017 06:43
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ExplodingSims posted:Also, what with that time box thing hanging off the side? I believe it's some kind of load shedding device, that the previous owners opted into. The program no longer appears to be active, so I never bothered removing it. Saving some trivial amount on your power bill for a few months a year (from what I found, it was like $5 for 3-4 months), to not have your AC working at peak times does not sound like a good tradeoff.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:25
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I think I get the basics, but can anyone help explain the fine details on when my Honeywell VisionPro 8320WF thermostat decides to turn on electric aux heat in addition to my heat pump? Lockout temps are set correctly (0F compressor, which we will never see, 35F aux heat). My goal is minimal aux heat usage, I'm okay with the aux heat coming on in the morning on cold days, or if the heatpump can't maintain the set temp, but otherwise I'm okay with slow recovery times and being a couple degrees off of the set temp and don't want to pay for the aux heat to run much. When I bought the house the aux heat ran most of the time, because the thermostat was set to "Comfort mode" which turns it on whenever the current temp is more than 1F below set temp. I changed this to "Economy / Manual Droop" mode. I thought this would turn on the aux heat whenever the current temp was below the set temp by the droop temp, but when I set the droop temp to 6F the aux heat was still turning on immediately when the schedule changed and the difference was 5F. I changed the droop temp to 10F, and this seemed to do what I want: In the morning the heat pump would come on, and if the house hadn't warmed up after an hour, the aux heat would come on until it reached the set temp, then the heat pump would hold it all day. Recently I made two changes: Set the wake time 30 minutes earlier and added a mid-day program with warmer temps for someone who is staying home. Now, the aux heat seems to only turn for the mid-day hours, not the morning, even though the house isn't heating up to the set temps. This doesn't make sense to me, so it seems like I don't actually understand its logic and only accidentally got the behavior I wanted before. Late edit: I guess the real answer is to get an Ecobee, it just chafes that this drat thing should be smart enough to do what I want, except everything about its functionality is so drat opaque. Alereon fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 22:27
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So I had my oil furnace replaced around Dec 18th, because we could smell some exhaust sometimes when it was running, and the repair guy said the heat exchanger was cracked. I also have a foobot, which measures VOCs. I heard there is some oil that a furnace is shipped with that "burns off" the first few times that it is used, but we keep getting high VOC measurements when the new one runs, a few weeks later. We can't smell any exhaust. Could it just be that initial oil burnoff thing or could it be a sign of something that needs fixing?
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Jan 8, 2017 22:31
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Bozart posted:So I had my oil furnace replaced around Dec 18th, because we could smell some exhaust sometimes when it was running, and the repair guy said the heat exchanger was cracked. I also have a foobot, which measures VOCs. I heard there is some oil that a furnace is shipped with that "burns off" the first few times that it is used, but we keep getting high VOC measurements when the new one runs, a few weeks later. We can't smell any exhaust. Could it just be that initial oil burnoff thing or could it be a sign of something that needs fixing? Worry about CO, not VOCs. A VOC alarm could be set off by spilled oil that seeped into your concrete floor. Unless it tells you discreet measurements for things it detecting or alerts differently it's little more than a "call the fire department so they can bring a real gas meter" alarm (call the non-emergency number). I'm not dismissing this.....I mean you really should worry about CO and have a good new CO alarm right there near the furnace. It's entirely possibly it could be leaking a bit because of a defect in the exhaust run or otherwise. With newer cleaner burning oil heaters that are properly calibrated to burn right you don't necessarily get that "oh poo poo" stench with an exhaust leak.
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Jan 9, 2017 22:25
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I hadn't bought R-22 in a while and was a little alarmed by the price from my contractor who just swapped out two Bitzer screws for me at work, but apparently I was getting quite a deal! Is $770 for 30 pounds retail the real world we're living in or do I need to shop around? I just have one small building so I don't need it often enough to buy bulk, but all our equipment is 22. I guess it's time for me to do my homework on drop-in replacements, huh?
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Jan 9, 2017 23:34
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glynnenstein posted:I hadn't bought R-22 in a while and was a little alarmed by the price from my contractor who just swapped out two Bitzer screws for me at work, but apparently I was getting quite a deal! Is $770 for 30 pounds retail the real world we're living in or do I need to shop around? I just have one small building so I don't need it often enough to buy bulk, but all our equipment is 22. I guess it's time for me to do my homework on drop-in replacements, huh? Don't worry. Once Trump and the congress castrates the EPA, they'll be dropping the phase out. R-22 will drop in price once the import and production ban goes away, they will bring back R-12, and I can keep fixing leaks in the same stupid pieces of poo poo over and over again. 
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Jan 9, 2017 23:42
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glynnenstein posted:I hadn't bought R-22 in a while and was a little alarmed by the price from my contractor who just swapped out two Bitzer screws for me at work, but apparently I was getting quite a deal! Is $770 for 30 pounds retail the real world we're living in or do I need to shop around? I just have one small building so I don't need it often enough to buy bulk, but all our equipment is 22. I guess it's time for me to do my homework on drop-in replacements, huh? Yup! R22 is super expensive now, and pretty much everyone we work with now who still uses R22 equipment is either switching to a drop in or upgrading. Personally I like M099. It's super close to 22 and doesn't require any moification. Same with NU22. Don't go wit R422D though, you need to change the TXV when you switch to that
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Jan 10, 2017 14:52
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glynnenstein posted:I hadn't bought R-22 in a while and was a little alarmed by the price from my contractor who just swapped out two Bitzer screws for me at work, but apparently I was getting quite a deal! Is $770 for 30 pounds retail the real world we're living in or do I need to shop around? I just have one small building so I don't need it often enough to buy bulk, but all our equipment is 22. I guess it's time for me to do my homework on drop-in replacements, huh? just use propane 
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Jan 10, 2017 18:47
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Qwijib0 posted:just use propane Apparently a propane/butane mix was super popular with my dad's friends back in the 80s and 90s as a replacement refrigerant for their cars because R12 was just banned and they were all way too lazy to fix/replace whatever was needed to convert it over. Do the math right and you can get the enthalpy curve almost dead-on R12, with the added side effect that those pinhole leaks in the coils are now bonus fire hazards.
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Jan 12, 2017 05:34
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MRC48B posted:Advantages of HVAC: You can get in snowball fights in June.
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Jan 12, 2017 08:15
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Alereon posted:Late edit: I guess the real answer is to get an Ecobee, it just chafes that this drat thing should be smart enough to do what I want, except everything about its functionality is so drat opaque. As someone with heat pumps and ecobees, you really should. They allow you to be very spergy about the aux heat settings and the graphs and monitoring in the web portal is very useful for tweaking them. I have our max aux heat set to 28f and aux heat temp differential set to 2f, so it wont' come on at all unless its <28 outside and >2f below the set point inside. I found it was better to do that and barely turn the heat down at night (70 daytime, 68 night) than do a big setback and have it run for hours trying to bring the house back up to temp. If your coil is upstream of the aux heat strips in the air handler, ecobee will also allow you to run the aux heat and compressor simultaneously which supposedly helps efficiency a bit.
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Jan 12, 2017 22:50
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sanchez posted:As someone with heat pumps and ecobees, you really should. They allow you to be very spergy about the aux heat settings and the graphs and monitoring in the web portal is very useful for tweaking them. I have our max aux heat set to 28f and aux heat temp differential set to 2f, so it wont' come on at all unless its <28 outside and >2f below the set point inside. I found it was better to do that and barely turn the heat down at night (70 daytime, 68 night) than do a big setback and have it run for hours trying to bring the house back up to temp. If your coil is upstream of the aux heat strips in the air handler, ecobee will also allow you to run the aux heat and compressor simultaneously which supposedly helps efficiency a bit. I'm curious why you would only be able to run both if the coil is upstream?
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Jan 13, 2017 00:24
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devicenull posted:I'm curious why you would only be able to run both if the coil is upstream? Because if the coil is downstream, the air entering the coil will already be in the mid 100s after being heated by the strips, and the pressure in the coil will be too high. If it's upstream, you can heatpump preheat the air and then the strips don't care.
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Jan 13, 2017 00:27
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Do heat pumps ever really make sense when natural gas is available? I've been playing around with heatcalc.xls, and it seems that it's always more expensive to heat with a heat pump. We pay $0.82/therm, and $0.16/kWh, so it doesn't seem like it would make any sense to switch. We'd probably still need a furnace to deal with the cold days (electrical resistance heating seems like a terrible idea), so it's not like we'd be saving any money on that.
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Jan 24, 2017 01:25
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It depends entirely on the latitude and climate in which you live. If you only need heat for a few weeks a year, and don't use natural gas for cooking, then yeah it can be worth it. If your winter lasts several months and you're heating an average poorly insulated residential home, then no. It is not.
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Jan 24, 2017 01:31
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Unless you've already performed or had someone perform a blower door test, you're probably looking at an uphill battle in terms of saving yourself tons of money by just throwing a heat pump (or most appliances outside of water heaters) at your house. The buildling shell (well-fitted insulation, sealant foam in all the holes drilled in studs and sheathing where wires and plumbing run through, checking the crawlspace and attic) are all what you should shoudl get done before you start playing around with online heat calculators. If you don't know the difference between a thermal bypass and an air bypass or latent versus sensible heat, then I suggest you check out Residential Energy: Cost Savings and Comfort for Existing Buildings (you can get a copy from https://www.residential-energy.com or check with your local used bookstore for an old copy, and there's some iffy-legally-speaking copies online of some older editions), or simply find someone to come and perform a residential energy use index and energy audit on your home. First off for instance, you'd want to know how to calculate your heating and cooling degree days over a minimum of a three-year period (with utility bills for at least one year or more as well), to figure out what kind of HVAC system would be the most appropriate for your home.. Then you can easily decide which solution would be optimal. (HDDs and poo poo for whatever your locale, can be found on the EPA website, iirc - somewhere near the portfolio manager tools.) Ultimately though, it comes down to your own personal use of the building, your schedule, and a lot of personal minutiae which are kind of hard for anyone to professionally go through and point out as ways to save - because residential customers hate to change their usage habits so even with super-efficient appliances and a tight shell, the savings to investment (SIR) ratio of a residential upgrade is iffy at best - which is why utilities are often more interested in giving incentives to commercial buildings rather than private residential clients. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 02:44
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Anyone familiar with high-velocity AC systems? I'm probably gonna have to replace my central AC in the next decade, and these things seem to tick a whole bunch of boxes for me. Are they getting more common, or are they still super-rare?
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Jan 24, 2017 19:52
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MrYenko posted:Anyone familiar with high-velocity AC systems? I'm probably gonna have to replace my central AC in the next decade, and these things seem to tick a whole bunch of boxes for me. Are they getting more common, or are they still super-rare? I seem them around here, but they are almost always a retrofit for a 1700/1800s farm house. I'm not sure why you'd want one unless it was nearly impossible to put in central heat/air without it due to the building.
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Jan 24, 2017 23:13
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Motronic posted:I seem them around here, but they are almost always a retrofit for a 1700/1800s farm house. I'm not sure why you'd want one unless it was nearly impossible to put in central heat/air without it due to the building. Air circulation, mostly. I'm in South Florida, where constant 15° differential AC is a fact of life. Moving air lets you set the thermostat considerably warmer, since it feels cooler than it actually is. Even running the circ fan on a traditional AC unit doesn't really do what I'm looking for.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:16
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Sounds like you need good ceiling fans?
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Jan 25, 2017 00:27
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MrYenko posted:Anyone familiar with high-velocity AC systems? I'm probably gonna have to replace my central AC in the next decade, and these things seem to tick a whole bunch of boxes for me. Are they getting more common, or are they still super-rare?
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Jan 25, 2017 00:54
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angryrobots posted:Sounds like you need good ceiling fans? MrYenko posted:Anyone familiar with high-velocity AC systems? I'm probably gonna have to replace my central AC in the next decade, and these things seem to tick a whole bunch of boxes for me. Are they getting more common, or are they still super-rare? What "boxes" is this thing ticking? You mentioned that "15 degree differential AC is a fact of life", so I'm assuming you're looking at an outside average air temp of, say, 80F? (Most heating degree day calculations use 65F as baseline for indoor temp, if you go higher or lower please mention it, say if you're elderly, or have a newborn baby, or if you are a polar bear like my old roommate who left everything at 50F and wore lots of sweaters.) How big is your building (can't do gently caress-all without sq footage really)? How many stories? What's it's orientation? If this a home, or a business? I mean with a few vent cutouts and basic passive solar design you can encourage airflow through the building shell without using a dime of energy most of the time, but "I want a high velocity AC system - it checks off a bunch of stuff!" is really entirely too vague to give you much, unless I'm a commissioned AC systems salesman whose sales materials yo were holding in your hot little hand while typing that post. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 00:56
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coyo7e posted:Unless you've already performed or had someone perform a blower door test, you're probably looking at an uphill battle in terms of saving yourself tons of money by just throwing a heat pump (or most appliances outside of water heaters) at your house. The buildling shell (well-fitted insulation, sealant foam in all the holes drilled in studs and sheathing where wires and plumbing run through, checking the crawlspace and attic) are all what you should shoudl get done before you start playing around with online heat calculators. If you don't know the difference between a thermal bypass and an air bypass or latent versus sensible heat, then I suggest you check out Residential Energy: Cost Savings and Comfort for Existing Buildings (you can get a copy from https://www.residential-energy.com or check with your local used bookstore for an old copy, and there's some iffy-legally-speaking copies online of some older editions), or simply find someone to come and perform a residential energy use index and energy audit on your home. Thanks! We're currently getting quotes for air sealing + blown in insulation in the attic. We have what's original to the house (from the 60s), where it's present at all... a bunch of it got removed due to water damage or terrible decay. I'm still waiting on the results of the energy audit. We know our AC is from 1989 and uses R22, so replacement in the near future seems pretty likely. I'd prefer to do it on my terms (rather then waiting for failure), especially when I can get a $10k interest free loan from the state for it. One of the big reasons for thinking about a heat pump was that we may end up getting solar panels in the next few years... it seemed that would end up giving us "free" heat for a good part of the year. I'm not really thinking we'd ever see a payback here, the average temperature here last month was 37F according to my bill, and we only ended up using $100 in gas (and it should go down even more, now that I realized I have a failed ecobee sensor that thought we were home all day so it never lowered the setpoint). Unless a heat pump were only a few hundred more then AC alone, I doubt we'd ever get a significant payback from it.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:31
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