How Comfort-Sizing Can Help You Save Money on Heating and Cooling Costs

If you are considering replacing your heating and air at home, or if it's something you haven't even thought about, either way, when it comes down to replacing your heating and air, your system should be comfort-sized for your needs. So what is comfort sizing? Well, it's a term we use around here, but really anytime a contractor or anyone replaces the heating and air in your home, a load analysis must be done. Heat loss, heat gain, something called that, basically is measuring your home, orientating your home. Where is your front door at? Where is your front door in relation to north, south, east, west? And that's going to affect the walls, the windows of your space to come up with the load analysis. So when they go out to your home, when someone goes out to your home, they should measure your square footage, measure your square footage of the home, of the space, get the orientation, get the sizes of the windows, get the sizes of the doors, um, and measure that and put it into a formula sheet or computer program, or you could do it by hand with the sheet and calculate how many BTUs, British thermal units, BTUs your home is going to use. So a BTU is 12,000 equals 1 ton. So when you're talking about air conditioning, you're talking about tons of air conditioning. So You've heard people say, you know, I have a 2-ton or a 3-ton or 4-ton. What does that really mean? Well, that means the kind of BTUs it outputs. So a 4-ton would be 12,000 times 4, 48,000 BTUs of cooling. So what 48,000 BTUs of cooling isn't the actual cooling you're going to get out of the system. Because again, it's not, it's not 100% efficient, so it's not going to give you 48,000 in the house, um, because you're going to lose, going to lose air through the duct system, through the ductwork, um, and that's, that's going to happen. And actually the warmer it gets outside, the less efficient the cooling gets when you have an air-to-air system or something like a traditional heat pump or air conditioner. When you have a traditional, what's called air-to-air system, it gets less efficient the warmer it gets outside. So I think we're sized here for 95 degrees a 95-degree day. Well, there's some towns where it gets to be 100 degrees. It's not that often, it's not the average, it's not the normal, but once it gets to, you know, 98 or 100 degrees, the unit is not going to keep up with the demand because it loses the efficiency. And you're sizing the system off of What's normal? A 95-degree day is the normal. A 20-degree day in the wintertime is normal. Sometimes it gets below 20, therefore your heat pump has trouble keeping up then as well because it's below 20 degrees. So, uh, that's outsized here in southeastern North Carolina. Uh, 93, 95 degrees in the summer 20 degrees in the winter. But sizing your system is more than just doing the load. It's seeing what do you want, what are your habits, do you like your house to be a little cooler in the, in the summertime, do you need a two-stage system, do you need a variable speed system, do you need a What do you need? You know, is your home going to give you what you need? So, comfort sizing is— that's one piece of comfort sizing, but it's not the only piece. But that is the main piece. A load analysis should be done on your space every single time. I mean, you might be saying, hey, well, Derek, you know, the home's 25 years old. This is the first time we're replacing the unit. I shouldn't need a different size unit. Well, maybe you shouldn't, but we should check, right? I mean, probably in 25 years you probably upgraded a door or a window or added insulation or even added a room, right? All these factors come into play with how— what sizing you need and how efficient you want to be. Um, because they have different tiers of efficiency. In 2023, they come out with SEER 2. What is SEER 2? Well, as different than SEER, which is what they have traditionally been, SEER 2 is more efficient and different standards than what the SEER rating was. So all these factors come into play. It's just It's just not a box. It's not like a refrigerator. It's not a box you plug in and you're done with it. The heating and air system is not complete. It is a box. It is the equipment. And yes, all of the equipment is pretty similar. You know, you have Trane, Goodman, Carrier, Ruud. Yeah, all these brands, but it's pretty much all the same stuff. There's only a handful of people who make compressors, who make control boards, who make reversing valves, things like that, make heat exchangers. I mean, there's not that many people, and there's only a few brands that make all the brands. Um, so if you look at Carrier, just that, or look at Goodman, let's look at Goodman. You look at Goodman, you got They're owned by Daikin. Uh, they make Daikin, they make Amana, they make Goodman, uh, they make something called Distinction, which is another lower level line. So that's one brand. I mean, that one company makes what, 4 brands right off the bat? So there's not much difference. The difference is the box when it's installed. It's not— again, it's not an appliance. Uh, it's not something you go to Best Buy and pick it out and plug it in and be done with it. It is an incomplete, unfinished product. Um, it's not something you can buy on eBay or Amazon or online and say, hey, can you hook it up? It's not the same thing. It needs to be done by a professional because The most important day in the life of a new system is the day it's installed. The day it's installed will tell you if that unit is going to last or not going to last. Do they give an extended warranty with it outside of what the manufacturer does, or don't they? I've been to quite a few homes that's had For example, um, I'll get really technical here, but, um, customer is complaining and we went to the home and another company installed the unit. It was a 4-ton unit and it had like a 5/8 size line set for the upstairs, going upstairs, going up the wall to that system. Okay, so that unit was doomed from day one. So if you look back here in my line set chart, 4-ton upstairs, so it's probably about 50 feet, um, at minimum. I would probably do a 7/8. 7/8, I mean, inch and an eighth, you're gonna be perfect. At 7/8, you're gonna have a little bit of loss, but How you size that line set, which carries the refrigerant, which carries— that carries the blood, basically. Uh, if the unit is your body, the refrigerant is the blood. Uh, the line sets— when it's a split unit, the line set is the veins and arteries going to the unit. So if you have trouble getting the blood to where it needs to go the system is going to have problems, right? So that system, even though it was a branded unit, it was a highly respected brand, the way it was installed, it was never going to operate efficiently and correctly. So again, it's an unfinished product. So comfort sizing, what we call it, is very critical because you have to understand the science of what you're doing, and you have to do it correctly and by the manufacturer's instructions. Um, Goodman— Goodman is a good brand. Uh, it's gotten a bad rap over the years because they sell to everyone. Anyone can buy Goodman that has a contracting license. So, uh, the standards of quality have really been compromised. And they started putting what's called a filter drawer in the outside unit because people were not putting these in for units. And the filter drawer is very important. It goes on the refrigerator side and it filters out the bad things of their— in the refrigerant. So that was not being done, so they had to install that into the units to to help solve this problem. So when you buy a new system, make sure it's oversized. Make sure the contractor is doing the heat loss, heat gain analysis. Make sure they're already a third party pulling the permit, getting inspection, and getting a kind of third set of eyes to look at what they've done to make sure it's good. Because choosing the right size system But choosing the right contractor to install that system properly makes all the difference. Makes all the difference. So you want a company that's been around for a while, a company with a good reputation, and someone you trust will be there when things go wrong because it is a machine. It will break. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So when it happens, who will be there to make sure you, the homeowner, are taken care of? So all that goes into replacing your system, and all that goes into comfort sizing.