Yeah I intend to go with some sort of energy monitoring at some point it is just further down my list of things to do with my house. To be clear I wasn't suggesting that folks are going with 20 SEER units I was just responding to a poster who said the savings was only 24% as clearly that varies by unit.I installed a couple "emporia vue" energy monitors in my panels to track AC and heat pump energy use. not hard to do if your panels have some free space. it's been pretty illuminating, I found a couple things I wasn't expecting and my heating/cooling energy use is put in perspective
going from 12 seer to 20 seer is a huge jump, most people are not contemplating that kind of leap (not to mention the large fraction of people spending more on heating than cooling, or having very short cooling seasons)
I bought the units I bought for their quality (they are rated for light commercial use) and their silence. The old upstairs air handler was rather noisy and this seemed as do as much to duct design as the air handler itself (a lot of the houses in my neighborhood have the same issue upstairs). Both outside units were outside of my bedroom and living room windows (in a back corner of house) and could easily be heard inside the house. The new inverter units are silent (my neighbors units can be slightly heard in my house but not mine). The upstairs inside unit completely eliminated any noise from the air handler.
Energy savings was a factor but not the primary one. Also my units (and the units they replaced) are (were) heat pumps. Upstairs it is heat pump with resistance backup and downstairs is heat pump with fossil (NG) backup. That means they run for the cooling and heating seasons. Right now at my electric rates and gas rates the economic cutover to my 97% furnace is in the mid-20s (I can control the cut over) so I expect to probably get decent savings 8 months out of the year out of these units. I live in the mid-Atlantic region and I believe despite our pretty warm summers we are still a heating dominated climate. Historically my electric bill with heat pumps was higher in the winter than summer and that is despite the marginal cost of electricity being higher in the summer.
When I replaced my upstairs unit I got bids from five companies some of whom submitted multiple options. The cheapest bid was a Run Tru (which I think is a Trane off brand) for $7,500 and was 14.5 SEER. The one I went with was a Mitsubishi P series inverter unit for $11,600 rated for 20.2. I also got a tax credit of $2k on the Mitsu so my net cost was $9,600. I would have easily paid $2k more for the improved comfort both sound, heating, cooling and the build quality of a Mitsu over a Run Tru so any energy savings at this point is pure gravy to me.
But I agree with your point folks should run the math themselves and figure out what works for them and their climate and I admit I seem to have been fairly lucky in find Mitsubishi equipment installed that doesn't have a crazy markup (well by HVAC installer standards anyway).
Statistics: Posted by THY4373 — Mon Jul 01, 2024 8:33 am — Replies 178 — Views 18974