This Arcoaire 80% furnace has seen its last days, the repair costs are getting to be to much for my customer. Time for a upgrade to a reliable furnace.
Older Arcoaire Furnace
In this installation we are looking at an upflow furnace, not your typical NW Washington installation. The supply air is discharged from the top while the return air comes in from the bottom.
New American Standard 95% 2 Stage Variable Upflow
Like any other brand American Standard makes more models of upflow furnaces than downflow furnaces, this is because most of the market does not have crawl spaces. This American Standard 95% 2 stage variable furnace fit right into place. I made a new base can for the furnace to sit on and new transition to reconnect to the supply ducting. I then added a Honeywell 4″ pleated filter system off the basecan. Old vent was removed and we vented the furnace sidewall of the garage.
I know I keep repeating myself … but American Standard IMO is the best furnace you can own. I have sold, serviced and installed them and can tell you I’m very proud to be a dealer!
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
In some cases with heat pumps your faced with just replacing the coil and heat pump. In this case the air handler was in good condition and we really did not see the need in replacing it but the heat pump was shot.
Access to crawl space.
Above you can see that sometimes the access points into crawl spaces are not always from outside or from a nice warm basement. Thankfully the new American Standard coil could fit through the opening.
Existing Coleman Coil
The existing Coleman coil had to be replaced considering we are going from R-22 to R-410a refrigerant and we need to match up to the new American Standard heat pump. The coil above is known in the industry as a slab type coil.
New American Standard A coil
After fabricating and installing new transitions we slipped the new American Standard heat pump coil into place. This is considered to be an “A” type coil. Slab type coils are very seldom used anymore.
New American Standard Heat Pump
When replacing a R-22 unit with an R-410a unit its always a good idea to replace the refer line set as well. The last thing you want is these 2 different types of refrigerant mixing in the new system. Here we replaced the older Coleman heat pump with a new American Standard heat pump. Lines where replaced as well.
The American Standard heat pump is more efficient and much quieter than the older Coleman unit. I’m sure she will be very happy with the new unit.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Here we have an Arcoaire gas pack, they are called gas packs because they are both an air conditioner as well as a gas heater packaged together. In our neck of the woods we seldom see a gas pack used in a residential application like this.
Arcoaire gas pack
I think using gas packs is a great concept for residential homes if you have the place for it and you can get your ducting routed to it. This Arcoaire has seen its last days, the control board was no longer available so we recommended going to a RHEEM Packaged Heat Pump. Switching from LP as their main source of heat to a heat pump with LP back up heat will really save them money.
RHEEM Packaged Heat Pump
The RHEEM unit dropped right into place all we really have to do had was remake the connecting transitions, everything else was minor.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This Laars Lite pool heater has seen the end of its life, sadly to say it was only 10 years old. The really unfortuate part is that this appeared to be the 3rd pool heater replacemnt since the pool was installed. Fortuantly at this time my customer wanted to do more than just heat the pool, he also wanted to heat the pool room and he did not want to have to replace the heater in another 10 years.
Existing Laars Lite pool heater
I’m not use to dealing with pool heaters, but after seeing what kind of corrosion can occur I do not understand why pool owners still use them. Now it could be this is a lower quality of pool heater?
Laars Lite corrosion
Never the less my customer did not want a repeat. I proposed using a Burham ES27 boiler with a Triangle Tube MF-135 heat exchanger to heat their pool. This way we have a closed loop system that heats water with water. The pool water will never be introduced into the boiler system. The ES27 is 85% AFUE and is atmospheric, and because its cast iron … its built to last.
Burham ES27 Boiler
Being a cast iron boiler the Burham ES27 did weigh considerably more than the Laars Lite pool heater, fortunately I did have help on this day… I just didn’t feel like wrestling 460lbs all by myself.
Boiler Loop
If you can make it out the Triangle Tube MF-135 heater exchanger is the black cylinder just to the left and down from center. Its hard to believe a small cylinder like that could heat an entire pool. We control the pool loop with a Ranco controller.
Modine Heater
Now for the pool room itself, we installed a Modine HC-108 hot water fan coil. We ran a separate loop off the boiler into the room. We control this with an Honeywell 4000 thermostat. Now for you people that know what a pool room can do to copper … we actually coated everything with a high heat clear coat paint.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Understandably in some areas in NW Washington you will find more brands of furnaces than in others. In some areas of Skagit County you will find more older RHEEM furnaces than any other because in their day they where fairly inexpensive to install.
Older RHEEM 80% Furnace
Honestly I can not tell you how many RHEEM furnaces I have replaced, going on 30 years in the HVAC business I personally may have replaced well over a hundred … and may have contributed to perhaps 500 or more RHEEM replacements overall.
Existing Supply Plenum
And like almost every furnace I remove the supply plenum can looks like the picture above, a trained eye can spot the fact that this is a non-sealed plenum. Back when this furnace was installed new it was code to seal these joints.
New American Standard 2-stage variable speed
After sealing up the existing plenum we installed the new American Standard 95% 2 stage variable speed furnace onto the new base. I fabricated and installed a new return plenum and cut in a easy access filter door. A new PVC vent was ran and a new condensate drain was added to the system.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
If not for a good referral I simply would not have gotten the chance to even bid this project never mind doing the project. This particular customer knew exactly what he wanted and because of my experience I believe that is why he chose Alpine. Referrals make up 80% to 90% of my business and I appreciate everyone I get.
The focus to begin with was not the furnace but his ducting, rats had taken over his crawl space and had severely damaged the flex lines. Unfortunately he had one of those systems that was 100% flexible. After the owner had a clean crawl installed he removed his insulation and ducting and hire Alpine to install a sheet metal trunk line with flexible branch runs. A much better method for air delivery and efficiency. We also installed balance dampers at the take offs for added control.
Older Arcoaire 80%
The older Arcoaire furnace was actually over sized for the home while the added on Trane AC unit was actually undersized. Here you can see even physically it was over sized.
Newer American Standard 2 stage variable speed
American Standard with their 2 stage variable furnace makes it a lot easier to match up to systems like this one. We get the full fan we need for the AC but yet we get the lower BTU that I’m looking for in the 2 stage. Even though I could not match up physically with the unit with the new furnace we where a lot closer to design with the existing AC coil.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Like I have stated in past posts its not always easy in this part of the country to add a humidifier, here I have a customer that is required by his doctor to bring up their humidity in their home and I was called to make that happen.
Existing Trane Furnace Without Humidifier.
As you can see in the picture above that there is no room below the furnace to add much of anything never mind a Honeywell TrueSTEAM humidifier. I thought about the remote mount kit from Honeywell but I would still have no room to do even that.
New Honeywell 9.0 GPD Humidifier Installed
So the only solution is to raise the furnace and install a taller base can, then installing the Honeywell TrueSTEAM humidifier on to that base can. As you can see I raised the unit about 26″ and extended the gas line and shortened the return and venting. I also had to replace the existing thermostat with a Honeywell VisionIAQ, This thermostat can handle both the heating and humidity.
The reason I chose a 9.0 GPD versus a 6.0 is because of the hardwood floors that are under the rugs. I have been encountered problems using the recommended size chart that Honeywell recommends when it comes to hardwood floors.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Installing an Honeywell Truesteam humidifier is not always easy to do, especially in NW Washington. Here in WA State we have mostly down flow furnaces and that can make for a very difficult install.
Existing Lennox Furnace
Here we have an existing Lennox gas furnace, because of the limited space below and the fact they also wanted to add a Heat Pump to the system I have to use a Honeywell remote mount kit.
Honeywell TrueSteam
The Honeywell TrueSTEAM humidifier mounted on to the side of the heat pump coil. We then routed the steam down and penetrated the supply duct work below the coil.
Honeywell TrueSteam remote mounted
Overall the installation went fairly smooth, I did have an issue with following the sizing chart that Honeywell provides, turned out that a 1600 square foot home with 50% wood floors requires a 9.0 gal unit not 6.0 that Honeywell recommends.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.