Furnace & A/C Brands
 

Looking to upgrade my furnace and A/C to newer HE units, and there are so many brands out there with pros and cons. It seems like every guy I know swears by their house brand of furnaces and a/c units.

Right now I have a couple guys in mind who use the following manufacturers;

- Luxaire
- Goodman (furnace GMVC95, a/c GSC14)
- KeepRite
- Lennox

I thought there might be some trades folks in here that could comment on what a good brand would be... or more importantly what brand I should stay away from.

Looking for an unbiased opinion on the brands above.

Thanks!

There all good..... I am a Lennox dealer so which one do you think I would prefer...lol

They are all good but there are not a lot of good installers. Make sure the contractor has been in business for a long time, has no BBB complaints and get some references from neighbors, co-workers or other people who have had a good job done and proper service on it.

never heard of keeprite...had nothing but trouble with luxaire...lennox,,goodman have performed well for us....ben sr

keeprite/heil/comfortmaker all the same unit made by ICP. not my favorite but if installed properly will work OK.

If they don't do a proper manual J and a manual D then they are too lazy to do a good job.They take a short cut in bidding for the job and you can bet they will take a short cut in installation.Its not their house so you end up living with any mistakes they make on your job.

so you are saying without a manual J or d you can't do it right ......:eek:

That is correct.

Estimated a house yesterday: currently has 1.5tons up and 2.0 tons down. Load calc was 1.5tons down and 2.0 tons up. manual d showed duct going to Room over garage was too small (hence the complaints)

very well...... i guess I made thousands of homes comfortable by fluke.... better to be lucky I have been told.....:thumbup:

When you go to the doctor,do you choose the one that don't believe in blood tests???

In 95% of our homes here the ducts are large and we have very few airflow/oversizing issues. We also size our furnace for extreme cold of -40F or -40C as they meet there. With LOTS of experience I and Carmon can size a furnace perfectly. In a milder climate you can undersize and run them longer but we need the capacity for the extreme cold and older drafty poorly insulated homes. Thats the way it is.:yes:

Also with people buying 3 stage and modulating furnaces with variable speed ECM blowers they rarely hit high fire so they are actually not oversized.

Why would anyone want to pay a lot of money for a furnace size they will never use? :thumbsup: like buying a bus for a family of 4 :)

We are in a more cooling climate and in our area cooling and heating loads are pretty equal. I can see where you are the heating load is greater than the cooling loads and you ducts are probably sized for heating with a higher delta T.

It might be a regional thing, so no offense to you or carmon when I say around my region boneheads here "been doin' this for xx years....everyone else is wrong, you need 500sqft/ton.....or the other sharp fella that told one of my customers you multiply the square footage by 20%

So where do you go for new horse shoes and buggy wheels?????
I'll bet you set up oil burners by eye too.What a joke,maybe someone should welcome you to the twenty first century.

Opinions vary

I don't buy if no manual j then the install will be bad. I install without manual j's hundreds of times and systems work FINE.

It can get much deeper than this but I'll leave it at that for now.