After recently moving to Nevada County from San Francisco, we were thrilled to enjoy our first summer in the foothills and bask in the heat of the days. What we weren't ready for were relentless scorching nuclear rays that decimate all carbon-based material from June-August and parts of September. In a nutshell, we weren't ready for the heat! But we had a monster A/C unit in the house which would definitely keep us comfortable, right? Wrong.
For starters, our AC unit is medium-sized and serves our home of roughly 3,300 square feet. It functions normally, was built installed in 2014, and for all intents and purposes is OK. When it kicks on, our property experiences a dramatic home-dimming draw of electricity before banging on to loudly forcing air all over the place. It sends dust flying and ensures to suck all of the animal hair and dust near the intake vents to clog the air filter and send throughout the rest of the home. At roughly 33 amps, it's either ON or OFF and when it's ON it's absolutely decimating our wallets, consuming nearly 7kw per hour. During the day at $0.47/kwh, the AC unit alone costs us over $3/hr to run. Want to stay cool all afternoon and into the evening? That'll be $20/day, please! Even when we were hyper-conservative with our use, we still had electric bills over $600. WTF.
What's worse is that the HVAC blew cold air wonderfully near the main ducts close to the unit, but as one travels to the further reaches of the home, the air piddles out of the registers and only a faint temperature difference can be noticed. On most nights, our master bedroom remained over 80 degrees inside, without the ability to do more than move air around from a space fan. So we were paying to cool air ducts and unoccupied rooms. And for all the loss. The LOWEST our home was able to reach in the hot summer days was around 82 degrees. That's with all cylinders firing on the HVAC unit...
After two months of this nonsense, being uncomfortable/angry, and sweating through our sheets each night, we decided to call All Phase Electric on a recommendation from Precision Electric (Thanks Rachael!). It was probably the best call we have made in 2018 and remains so to this day! Brad came over and assessed our situation within days, and was able to recommend an expandable system within weeks. In addition to the temperature difference being night/day, we no longer had earth-shattering kicks form the AC unit and flurries of blustery air all over the house. The units now maintain constant temperatures in each zone and run quietly.
In terms of electrical load and efficiency, these things are a sea change from our old forced air system. Our current system is a three-zone setup which services 5 rooms but helps with other surrounding ones without the wall units. We've got some medium-sized units in the bedrooms and a larger unit in the common area connecting our kitchen, dining, and living rooms. The new system **actually cools and heats the home*** and the condenser outside runs much quieter than our old system, even at full blast. But most times of the day, the fan runs so quietly I don't hear it unless I'm outside and near it. The rooms each run very quietly as well. Which is great for young sleeping children.
It also runs by zone and doesn't rely on one thermostat in the hallway. Each zone maintains itself and can "connect" with other zones simply by opening doors to rooms/bathrooms that aren't serviced directly by wall units.
And through all this, the system is 100% electric. No propane, no natural gas. This means that when heating our home, we're not paying $1.50+ in propane to heat the house. Which means our tank lasts longer and doesn't need to be filled during the peak winter season (with peak prices).
The electrical consumption? Incredibly low. Whereas our old system would run at ~7.9kw - ~9.5kw when cooling and ~1.8kw when heating, the new system averages ~800w - ~2.5kw for both. And when it runs like that, it runs for under 5min. Our old HVAC could take 15-45min to set the temperature for one cycle. Then, minutes later, it'd kick back on again for another 15-45 min! Never again...
Clearly, these things have changed the way we look at HVAC systems and the fact that they're all-electric allows us to directly benefit from solar, home battery storage, and better overall efficiency (and comfort!). Thanks to Brad and his team at All Phase for their incredible recommendations. We'll be back if we ever expand our system! read more