US manufacturer develops heat pump for cold climates

Argh! Lennox is the worst! They sell them so cheap, because the parts cost an arm and a leg! Rheem and Trane are known for their reliability. I wouldn’t recommend any other brand of furnace. Split AC units, on the other hand, are nearly all the same. All but one company use pretty much the same Copeland compressors and have decent coil designs. If you have dogs, get something with full louvered metal housing, because dog urine will eat aluminum fins. Trane has their own compressor design, which is nearly indestructible. Other than dirty coils causing capacitors to blow, and the occasional fan failure, most condensing units are problem free. But furnaces are where you have to be diligent. Both Lennox (Ducane, Armstrong, Heatcraft,etc) and Carrier (Payne, Bryant, Tempstar, etc) are sold for less and expensive to repair. Goodman has rebuilt itself into a better brand than it was a decade before. Your best bet is to go with the major line of the brand, like Rheem (not Ruud or Weather King), as they are stripped down versions used on budget builds. They work fine, but lack the options and dependability of their higher name. For example, Weather King would typically come as a single stage unit, 80 or 90% with a simple three speed blower. It’s Rheem counterpart is available with a minimum 4 speed blower, ECM blower, single, two stage, multi stage burners, 80%, 90%, 95% efficiency. You definitely get what you pay for, but do your due diligence. Bigger is not better in this industry. As homes get more efficient, the size of the units decrease. If your 1960’s home has had windows replaced, new siding, and insulation, your furnace and air conditioner need to shrink in capacity. In the 60’s, furnaces we’re huge, 100k plus BTU units, that were 70% efficient. Without making any changes to your home, a new furnace would be 75k BTU or less, depending on its efficiency. With upgrades to your home, you could be down to 60k BTU! Plus, those old furnaces would heat for 5+ minutes before the blower would kick in, while your house keeps getting colder, then the burner would turn off at the set point and continue blowing hot air for several minutes more. You could have a ten degree shift in temperature between heating cycles! Now, the blower starts less than a minute after the burner, which takes 30-45 seconds after the call starts, and it heats slower (to heat furniture and walls) so that at the end of the heat cycle, they continue to give up heat to the air, and reduce that temperature shift to a few degrees at most. We don’t just heat and cool your home, we bring you comfort, safety, and efficiency. We can bring humidity in the winter, high efficiency filtration for allergies, and UV microbial sterilization. Our job is customer satisfaction!

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