In my experience as a HVAC contractor and as a HVAC technician i can safely say there are many different questions a customers will have, when choosing the system they want for their air conditioning replacement. There are many different brands and seer rating that you can choose from. Today i would like to give you some tips on the SEER ratings and what we at newtons heating and air conditioning recommend. Now you maybe wondering what even is a seer rating for a air conditioning system. All units have and them, even the portables that you buy at Walmart or home depot. The government or the united states department of energy actually mandates the minimum seer you are allowed to install in your home and this creates a lot of problems in my opinion. To put SEER into laymen’s terms its just how much your air conditioning system consumes in electricity. So all of the equipment manufactures actually have to follow these rules when manufacturing the equipment. So at a typical company or especially at a larger company you will be given multiple options of SEER ratings for your equipment rating typically ranging from 14 seer to 21 seer. So higher the SEER rating the better right? It takes less electricity so i should have a lower electric bill! Well i will tell you that a higher SEER equipment actually comes with a catch 22. Let me explain, on a basic 14 seer system on the condenser you will have a capacitor and contactor that turns your equipment off and on. These systems are very basic and are easy to test and best yet most parts on a 14 seer equipment we will have in stock on our truck. So a 21 SEER air conditioner is the same right in its reliability? Well here comes the trade off for that lower electric bill. Firstly they are so expensive that i don’t think the increase of cost will ever be offset by the increase amount of your new equipment for your electric bill. I have seen higher SEER equipment be any where from 50% to 100% more expensive than a 14 SEER equipment. Lets put that fact aside, are they at least just as reliable as a 14 SEER air conditioner. I can safely say as a HVAC technician and as a HVAC contractor that they have the most amount of problems out of any unit. In Florida we have a very unstable power grid, meaning when you come home all of your clocks are reset or maybe your lights flicker when your watching tv. These changes in your electric are called power surges or brown outs and you guessed it. This is the number 1 reason of why high efficiency equipment fails beside all of the extra bells and whistles that always seem to have problems. Lastly the parts or so difficult to get. typically these parts for your higher SEER equipment are weeks out. When we call the supply house asking for the parts on the system I’ve seen lead times of getting the parts as long as over a month. Lastly the cost for these parts are so expensive that when your unit is out of warranty i have seen boards cost easily $2000 vs a 14 seer equipment having a bad capacitator that is on our truck and costs less than $200 out the door. So in conclusion when your are considering your new equipment for your air conditioner installation we highly recommend 14 seer equipment. This is due to higher SEER equipment not being able to offset the price of your electric bill. They are much less reliable and when a part breaks it very expensive and can take a long time to get the parts. If you like this article and would like to see more like this you can visit us at www.newtonsheatingandairconditioning.com
Air Conditioning Replacement Tips For People In Saint Pete, Clearwater, Largo Or All Of Pinellas County
