+1
And having a two stage can also help. If you have days where it's high humidity but not such high temps, it will run longer, allowing it to take out more of the humidity. I don't have that kind of climate here, but where it's common it can be an issue.
The one I bought was 14 or 14.5
is that a variable speed A/H? Probably
Yes it was.
In a place with a 7 month A/C season, SEER will quickly eat up
I'm in NJ, the house is in a shady location surrounded by lots of trees and I have mostly a 3 month season for AC. My electric bill for the AC is probably $400 a year. It would take a long time to make up the savings to justify going to a higher SEER. The total cost for the HVAC eqpt, 120K BTU 93% furnace, var speed blower, 5 ton 14 SEER AC, lines, condensate pump, compressor base, etc was about $4K.
Before I bought mine, I looked at Consumer Reports listings of reported repair history for the various brands. It was interesting. There wasn't much you could conclude. Some of what you would think would be the better brands appeared to be no different than any of the others. I think Ruud in fact had one of the better histories, but from the data as I recall, my overall conclusion was that there wasn't a lot of difference.
And with any of these, I'd rather have a correctly installed brand of less expensive eqpt than a poorly installed system using expensive stuff. In fact, you have to wonder how much of the perceived problems people have with certain brands may be due not to the eqpt, but the fact that installers using less expensive eqpt cut corners on the install to save money too. Like not flowing nitrogen during brazing, for example. Customer would never know, and few years later the crud causes the system to fail.
I think the big downside is where do you put all the outside units, hide them where they won't be heard, etc. When I did my replace 2 years ago, I was about to do monkey see, monkey do, ie just put the compressor where the old one was. Then, I started thinking. The old one was right outside my family room where we watch TV a lot. I quickly concluded that with maybe
10 ft more piping, I could move it to outside the master bathroom. The electric run was actually much shorter and I reused the existing cable. Doing that, combined with the fact that the new Rheem is a lot quieter made a big difference.
Yes, that's another problem. And if you have a central, at least it's only 1 pump, or possibly none, if you can route it to a sump pump pit, etc.
Wonder if leaving the stat set to "fan on" will help?
. Christ> >
It makes me wonder if the system is over sized. Perhaps a smaller orifice / piston, or a TXV adjustment will allow it to run longer.
. Christ>
That's really the problem. It's fine during the day when the unit is working pretty constantly, or at least evenly. At night it pretty much coasts, or at least has this year. To keep it comfortable, I have to drop the temperature after sundown. I keep forgetting to tick it back up in the morning.
Thought about that. Nest has a new setting that allows the fan to cycle for so many minutes per hour (don't remember the specifics).
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