All aluminum versus copper/aluminum coils for air conditioner?

I have spoken with several HVAC contractors regarding replacement of my old Lennox central air conditioning system. All of them are Lennox dealers except one who also carries Trane products.

The dealer who also carries Trane was trying to switch me from my original Lennox preference, stating that the Trane coils, which are 100% aluminum, rather than the Lennox coils, which use aluminum fins and copper tubing, provide a better, longer lasting design.

He felt that Trane was superior in other ways also, since they used "composite plastics" in the outdoor condensing unit case rather than steel to ensure that no corrosion or rusting would occur.

The basic claim was that Trane, using aluminum for all of the refrigeration loop, had a longer life expectancy that Lennox, given the newer Puron refrigerant.

Does anyone have any experience with Trane, and is there any science to support this type of claim or any other prior experience to say that Trane is somehow better?

Thanks for any advice.

Reply to
Smarty
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It has been on the market for years. It is cheaper to build, more difficult to field repair.

All aluminum coils were starting to come into play in the late 1960's. I worked for a company that made HVAC units until 1970 and we made our own copper tubed coils and they started to buy aluminum coils.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

As the original poster of this question, I am very sorry to see not a single reply............

This newsgroup really has become quite pathetic over the years, thanks to the combined efforts of those who think it deserves to be a place to discuss everything BUT home repair topics.

To the trolls who like to post about getting their c*ck caught in a carpet stretcher, to harry who insists on rambling about all things political to all the other folks who seem to think this is the right place to show their skills in endless threads about nonsense, I say a big FUCK YOU as you have effectively weakened the value of a very useful forum and made it into a garbage pile.

Maybe some new forum will arise where people with home repair issues won't be surrounded by these huge message turds which offer nothing of value to the average home repair person.

Reply to
Smarty

Thanks Ed for your reply and information. I just noticed that you have taken the time to provide useful and helpful information which I appreciate very much, and I am going to go with the copper / Lennox approach. My very limited experience working with aluminum leads me to the same conclusion you state and copper seems like the better choice. I am guessing that aluminum is becoming popular more as a result of rising copper costs than other, technical reasons.

Thanks again.

Reply to
Smarty

You didn't see my post?

Thinking about it some more, well, I have read a bit about repairing aluminum, and it's a lot harder than repairing copper tubing. For that reason (as well as what I mentioned earlier), I'd avoid the aluminum unit.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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As the original poster of this question, I am very sorry to see not a single reply............

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I didn't think you saw what I wrote.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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Thanks Ed for your reply and information. I just noticed that you have taken the time to provide useful and helpful information which I appreciate very much, and I am going to go with the copper / Lennox approach. My very limited experience working with aluminum leads me to the same conclusion you state and copper seems like the better choice. I am guessing that aluminum is becoming popular more as a result of rising copper costs than other, technical reasons.

Thanks again.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

reply now that I have read it. My gut reaction closely follows your advice and opinion, and I am committed to copper for this next a/c unit.

Tonight I did find this article (see link below) from a company which apparently offers (only) aluminum and not copper heat exchangers / coils, and they offer claims that aluminum is superior, but I am not convinced. If they offered both and showed the relative benefits of each, I might find it more convincing.

I guess I am both too old and also too old-fashion to get very excited about an all aluminum solution. Since Trane is the only A/C manufacturer using it as far as I know, I have to believe it is not the obviously better solution, especially given the relative costs of copper versus aluminum.

Thanks again for replying.

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Reply to
Smarty

This, IMO, is the most important line of the story: "Thus, together with the cost savings of replacing copper with aluminium, the accumulated benefits of switching to all-aluminium heat exchangers are considerable."

It about the money.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

It's always about the money, but saying that doesn't tell you much. Silver is a better conductor than copper. I don't have a Trane system, but I wouldn't avoid one because it uses aluminum coils. Trane markets their Spine-fin aluminum coils as a selling point. They've been selling them for outdoor units since 1968. The coils are only one part of a system. I don't know the cost difference between the manufacturers. I would grill some *good* HVAC guys to find out about his. You don't want somebody selling you a crap system with a lousy compressor and inefficient operation because he brags "This unit has copper coils." BFD.

In this thread it's said aluminum heat exchanger manufacturing cost eats up the savings vs using copper.

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that thread is from 2007, when copper prices were lower. Here "something" more. Probably all marketing BS.
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Anyway, there are SEER ratings, and HVAC guys who have long experience with this. Whether it's aluminum or copper is just one thing to consider. My furnace and central air is Rheem. Except for getting the main board replaced, it's all worked fine for

13 years. Why do I have a Rheem? Because my brother was a GC then, needed the work, and had a HVAC installer sub who needed work. They decided I got Rheem.. Maybe I could have done better on the cost by shopping, maybe not. But hey. what goes around comes around.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

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motivation being financial, but really have no good way to compare reliability and failure rates in any other meaningful way. Consumer Reports seems to be silent on the whole matter of central A/C reliability. And even if they published historical data, the move to Purson and these much higher pressures may change the game entirely in terms of who has the better components in the long term.

Like most things, it will be a bit of a coin toss in the final analysis, but I wanted to see if this whole aluminum versus copper thing was a "red herring" thrown out by a dealer whose profit potential or other motives makes him sell both Lennox and Trane, and then recommend Trane for this specific reason of aluminum coils.

Thanks again!

Reply to
Smarty

He probably didn't see any from google groups. They went into limboland until today. Did for me anyway. A bunch of 3-4 day old posts just appeared.

Reply to
Vic Smith

I did a little research, and it seems formaldehyde forms formic acid on copper coils. Since the SEER minimum increase to 13, manufacturers started making copper coils even thinner, which leads to faster corrosion and holes caused by formic acid. Aluminum coils are not susceptible to this deterioration and holes from formic acid.

Reply to
Shep

My Carrier air conditioning units are almost 9 years old and the copper evaporator coils are totally rusted. I have an air conditioning guy that I totally trust and he told me something interesting. He said that Carrier knows that there are issues with the coils rusting out prematurely. Carrier use to have all aluminum coils and aluminum never rusts. Carrier and other manufacturers realized if they switched to copper coils their customers would have to replace their coils approximately every 6 to 8 years (10 years if you were lucky). So it all comes down to what's called "Planned Obsolescence" and you see it practiced with almost everything you buy these days. It just puts more money back in the pockets of the manufacturer and repair industry.

He also told me that Carrier and others are starting to bring back aluminum because of the backlash from customers. I am now getting aluminum coils installed.

Reply to
mangino

a good friend from the 1970s who taught HVAC around here highly recommends goodman. they use standard parts that are commonly availble from many sources.

unlike trane and others that use OEM parts with no alternate suppliers, so they decide when a model is obsolete. they just quit supplying parts.

my goodman is working fine its 8 or 10 years old and came with a great warranty

Reply to
bob haller

Seems kind of odd that Carrier would switch to copper from aluminum on the theory of making some more money. If your evaporator goes at 8 years, how many customers are going to go with another Carrier or even an evaporator replacement? At that point, most people are going to get a new system and it likely wouldn't be Carrier. Also given the cost delta between copper and aluminum, I find it hard to believe it's even true that Carrier went back to copper coils, unless there is some other valid reason for it.

Reply to
trader_4

Things have probably changes since I worked for a company that made coils. Back then, they were copper and full aluminum was just starting to be made by a couple of companies. The only reason they changed was cost.

We had been making copper coils for many years and it would have been costly to change over with all the equipment involved and we did not make large quantities of a given size like Carrier. We did specialties from 6" x 6" to 4' x 20' For tubing we used copper, brass, cupro-nickle

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Yes there is another valid reason for the switch to aluminum (in addition to planned obsolence) and it's called Formicary Corrosion. You can get the FACTS by reading the industry research report containing scientific studies and analysis going into the details of aluminum versus copper. These are details you won't get from your air conditioning company.

Here's the link :

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Reply to
mangino

While I found the link interesting, how do you expect us to continue a discussion when you mess up a lot of good arguments with FACTS?

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

The facts here would seem to be that the document he just provided is exactly opposite to what he's claiming. He stated that Carrier allegedly switched to copper coils from aluminum so that they would fail faster. Yet the document says Carrier is using aluminum coils because they are corrosion resistant and superior. I don't see them saying they went back to copper..... So, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Reply to
trader_4

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I am sure that there are enough posters here to sustain *any* argument, with or without facts.

When I saw the word formicary (formica means ant in Italian) I decided to go look it up to see if it was related to ants (or Formica - which people tell me stands for "FORmerly MICArta). This is another site that describes the problem and claims it can occur within two months after manufacture.

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They say it can't be seen with the naked eye but I assume if any kind of corrosion gets bad enough, it will become visible to normal vision.

Learn something new every day!

Reply to
Robert Green

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