OMG its TOO hot! Where is the best place to buy Central air?!

2ManyKMfor1Tank

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OT: OMG its TOO hot! Where is the best place to buy Central air?!

Main floor tonight at 8:00 its 28 celcius and its way hotter up here.... No way I'm going to last the summer.
Anyone have any experience purchasing Central Air Conditoning? Would love to get ahold of a well-regarded
company - so many out there.

Thanks
 

h2h

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At the burlington home show the cheapest i could find was about 1800 cash from Halton Cooling Inc. I think it was a 1.5 ton unit.. Cant remember..

Al Doering
HVAC Technician
905-299-8765
Halton.hvac@yahoo.ca

Hes from burlington area but i think he comes out this far.. Well he said he would for me.. :)

Theres tons more companies out there.. Just get quotes and try to bring each otheres quotes down..
 

caloony

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I have a couple that we pulled out of our house...used, but work fine. However, they do require a hole to be drilled to the outside
 

Silver02TDI

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I hooked up the portable air conditioner last night as well since it's too much for me now... Unfortunately our house is older, so we can never get central air :(
 

Windex

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I used to work in the business, and can point you in the direction of a reputable, quality HVAC company run by a friend of mine. He's based in Hamilton, but will do installs from London to Mississauga. He is not the cheapest out there, but certainly not the most expensive either. I had him do my house with a 14 seer unit, and my hydro bills for A/C are half what they used to be. PM me if you're interested.

-Adam
 

2ManyKMfor1Tank

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Thanks everyone for the replies, seems an average price for a 2.5 tonne 13 seer unit is around $2500 installed which is roughly half what I thought it would cost. Was thinking I would have to finance it and pay later, but given a couple extra shifts here and there I think its possible sooner rather than have the financing nightmare later on.
 

dr_p

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my friend owns enersolve.com while im sure everyone knows someone they are fully licensed, bonded, and are certified carrier dealers (you can save a few bucks and get the commercial payne line)problem with these cash guys is twofold, insurance will ding you if you cannot prove a licensed installer put it in, and if the unit is grey market (ie stolen or purchased without a license) they will not honour warranty parts replacement (unless it is a york unit, those guys could care less)
 

JASONP

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2ManyKMfor1Tank said:
Thanks everyone for the replies, seems an average price for a 2.5 tonne 13 seer unit is around $2500 installed which is roughly half what I thought it would cost. Was thinking I would have to finance it and pay later, but given a couple extra shifts here and there I think its possible sooner rather than have the financing nightmare later on.
How many sq ft is your house?
2.5 ton is pretty large, 1.5 ton will suffice for up to 1800 sq ft.

3 yrs ago I paid $500 cash for a 12 seer, 1.5 ton KEEPRITE, installed:eek:
I'll try to find dudes contact info. This guy only buys scratch and dents from Mfg. warehouse.
 
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VeeDubTDI

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It's a bit more complicated than simply applying a basic tonnage per square foot equation to it. You have to factor in window area, insulation, number of floors, sun or shade, etc.

A professional HVAC technician will be able to spec out an appropriate system for your home.
 

JASONP

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VeeDubTDI said:
It's a bit more complicated than simply applying a basic tonnage per square foot equation to it. You have to factor in window area, insulation, number of floors, sun or shade, etc.

A professional HVAC technician will be able to spec out an appropriate system for your home.
Yeah, that's what my HVAC guy told me, not my words ;)
 

2ManyKMfor1Tank

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JASONP said:
How many sq ft is your house?
2.5 ton is pretty large, 1.5 ton will suffice for up to 1800 sq ft.

3 yrs ago I paid $500 cash for a 12 seer, 1.5 ton KEEPRITE, installed:eek:
I'll try to find dudes contact info. This guy only buys scratch and dents from Mfg. warehouse.
Wow! Yes please dig him up for me! lol
My house is about 2000 square feet.
 

darkscout

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Suck it up wanker.

It's 40.5C with heat index here. We have these spinny things that resemble propellers. Except they blow air. Place them at opposite ends of the house and get a good flow going. Place them in front of sweating humans.

Grew up in Indiana. The hots of south and the colds of Ontarioz and with out central heat or air.
 

nicklockard

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28C and you need air conditioning?:eek: :eek: You do realize body core temperature is 37C???

***>?
 

VeeDubTDI

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Just make sure that you get something that is sized appropriately for your particular house and location. A unit that is too large will cause high humidity. A unit that is too small won't be able to keep up on the hottest of days.

We just got a new Trane 15 SEER with two stage natural gas heat. They also added 3 motorized dampers so that our house is broken up into three zones. One zone for the upper level, and two for the lower level. It works like a champ, is super quiet, and is saving us a lot of money.

Total cost of the installation was $6500 for the new compressor and condenser unit, new evaporator, new gas burner and heat exchanger, three thermostats, three motorized dampers, and labor. It's probably on the high end of the pricing, but they did a great job and it's going to pay for itself after only a few years. They used the existing duct work.
 

TDIFred

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I am finding that the weather is perfect for boating on Peninsula and Fairy lakes in the Huntsville area! Hey, it's tough work AND I GET TO DO IT! Muskoka field work during a Southern Ontario heat wave...PRICELESS! :)
 

Tsagoth

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Silver02TDI

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nicklockard said:
28C and you need air conditioning?:eek: :eek: You do realize body core temperature is 37C???

***>?
28 C plus humidex which makes it 3X C. We had 39 C with humidex yesterday, which was pretty gross
 

Silver02TDI

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VeeDubTDI said:
Just make sure that you get something that is sized appropriately for your particular house and location. A unit that is too large will cause high humidity.
An A/C dehumidifies though, so why would too big an A/C cause humidity?
 

Windex

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Silver02TDI said:
An A/C dehumidifies though, so why would too big an A/C cause humidity?
An A/C unit with tonnage too high for the home will cool the home off too quickly. When this happens, the inside of the home is brought down to the right temperature, but the A/C does not run long enough to dehumidfy the air.

The result is a cool house that feels like a cave due to the remaining humidity in the air.
 

silverbeast

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Sorry to hijack your tread, but my A/C doesn’t seem to blow as cold.
Two years ago i have replaced the Start-up capacitor since it was all swelled up and everything was OK, but last summer i noticed that it had a hard time to bring temp down (even though i wasn’t working it too hard, only wanted to bring it down to 25 C from 29-30 C), so i had a guy come in telling me that it needed some FREON since it was a little low and charged me 175 bucks....which i thought was quite a bit for 25 min of work he did.
Anyways after the money i had to spend all was good, A/C was working good all summer.

Now this year, it seems that i’m in the same situation again; unit having problems/hard time bringing the temp. inside the house down.

One thing i noticed now and even last year, that b4 the tech. added some freon to the system, i would hear some gurgling in the system, and after he added some freon the gurgling was gone.

Now this year i could hear that gurgling again, so is the system low on freon again??

Do you guys know a reputable tech. that can diagnose my A/C for a reasonable price??? I’m willing to pay cash if he’s willing to diagnose it for a FAIR price.

Thanks,
Dan.
 

ymz

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Windex said:
An A/C unit with tonnage too high for the home will cool the home off too quickly. When this happens, the inside of the home is brought down to the right temperature, but the A/C does not run long enough to dehumidfy the air... The result is a cool house that feels like a cave due to the remaining humidity in the air.
Thanks for the explanation!!! (I was wondering why they were having a hard time deciding on the size of unit for my country place... I guess one has to calculate the cubic footage of the property rather than the square footage...)

Y.
 

VeeDubTDI

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Windex said:
An A/C unit with tonnage too high for the home will cool the home off too quickly. When this happens, the inside of the home is brought down to the right temperature, but the A/C does not run long enough to dehumidfy the air.

The result is a cool house that feels like a cave due to the remaining humidity in the air.
Exactly.

Yuri, you need to calculate total air volume in addition to the other things that I mentioned above (windows, insulated space, uninsulated space, number of occupants, other sources of heat like appliances and computers, etc). You need to make sure that you think about all of the things that affect the heat load of the building.

This is an interesting discussion... commercial HVAC is one of my favorite interests. At work, we have 8 large chillers that range in size from 100 tons to 400 tons. Total cooling load of the campus is close to 2,000 tons (24 million BTUs).
 
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Silver02TDI

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Okay, so am I being unreasonable if I expect my 12,000 BTU portable air conditioner to be able to cool my 1000 sq ft, 2 bedroom apartment? ha ha! Slave away, A/C, slave away!!
 

ic_ou812

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I remember when I built my house, the HVAC people sized the requirements of the system based on scfm, location of registers and cold air returns based on cooling. The heating requirements are far less of a constraint. I realized that it is quite a science and required blue prints of the house to do it accurately.
 
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