Furnace & A/C Brands

ldogg

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!

carmon

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

yuri

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.

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ben's plumbing

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

yuri

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

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REP

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.

carmon

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

Technow

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)

carmon

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

REP

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

yuri

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.

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.

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Technow

Why would anyone want to pay a lot of money for a furnace size they will never use? 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%

REP

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.

HVACDave

Opinions vary

Doc Holliday

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.

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Thanks.