I’m getting the AC swapped out in the house. It’s been between 77 and 81 degrees in the house for a couple of weeks now.
Two guys showed up at 9:00 sharp to begin. By about 1:00, I had cool air moving. At that time it was 85 in the house, so the new system had its work cut out.
The new condenser outside is much more quiet than the beast that was out there before. It’s shorter and fatter too, if that makes any sort of efficiency difference.
In the attic, everything is new. A new drop pan to replace the seriously rusted old one. Even the mounting of the air handler was improved. It got raised up a few inches and a new plywood base was installed. I’m keeping my existing air filter box, which has a non-functioning UV light attachment on it. Maybe some day I will replace the UV light, I’ve been told they are costly. To do that, I would have to run a power line to it, since the half-assed previous install powered the UV light from a power socket off the attic light. If you switch off the attic light at the switch, the UV light is turned off, too. That’s stupid.
At the same time, I had the guys install a new programmable, WIFI thermostat. I am really against cloud-based management, but I will admit, being able to see my thermostat in a web browser was cool. If I can do the same thing locally, staying inside my network, I will be good to go.
After a day of usage, I feel a little underwhelmed. It took a really long time to cool the house. 8 hours later, the temp had dropped 10 degrees. Maybe that’s normal, but my old system, when it was running well, would drop the temp 5 degrees an hour.
I’ve read a lot of HVAC and learned that having an oversized AC unit may not be the best thing because it cools the air too quickly and doesn’t reduce enough humidity. To handle this, advanced systems (like my old one) will run the fan at a slower speed to dehumidify without as much cooling. That feature was eliminated when I changed the motor to a single-speed, so I have no idea if this system is better or not. Also, I never had a hygrometer in my old thermostat, so I have no idea what the interior humidity was.
A day later, the system has held my house at 73 degrees all day, so that’s a good thing. And I know this because I can check the temp remotely.