a barrel of this: house

Central air

Posted by K Sun, 30 Apr 2006 18:18:00 GMT

Treehugginess aside, I want central air. I have been living in the land of the uniseason, between 50 and 70 most of the year, and I get wilty and pathetic and whiny when the temperature goes above 75 or 80 degrees. Welcome to DC, wimp. Get ready for some suck.

In any case, I have been doing some research on the phenomenon since we got a quote and machine name from an AC place in DC, through our contractor. However, I have been reading about the puron versus freon thing (freon is being phased out) and am having trouble finding info on the model we are supposedly getting (and that is because of a typo, Matt just discovered).

Questions I am thinking we need to talk to dude at AC place about are:

- Puron v freon, maybe we want a Puron unit even if it costs a little more?

- Where would unit be installed? It is a split system, I believe, so part would probably be in the attic and part outside somewhere.

- How loud is the unit when it is running?

- Is there any maintenance included in the price (ie yearly checkups, which seem to be sort of important)?

- What is the warranty on the unit?

- Is the SEER rating 13? (I am guessing so.) I believe 13 is the minimum allowed as of this year. Should we look for a higher SEER rating or anything, even if higher SEER units are more problematic (or so I hear, maybe AC dude can enlighten us there).

- Where in the top floor would the ductwork run?

- What is the EER of the unit? It had better be over 11.6!

- Does the unit have a TXV/thermal expansion valve?

- Is the air handler variable speed?

There are some good articles I read on central air:

This Old House talks about installing central air.

Popular Mechanics does the same (this one is extra good since it talks about maintenance).

Consumer Search talks about puron v freon, among other things.

I just found FurnaceCompare and it might have some useful info once I sit down and read it.

Oh, and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has some tips and info on AC selection, as well.