Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
I agree about the size of the unit. A rule of thumb is that a ton of cooling will cool about 600 SF of living space. Some contractors will automatically propose to replace your unit with the same size unit that you have, without doing any evaluation. But, if your house is 20 years old, you need to intelligently determine what is the appropriate size unit for your house. So, if you have an undersized or oversized unit, you want to replace it with the proper size unit. But, you are more likely to upsize because a 20 year old house will leak more energy than it did when it was new.
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If people think their house may be leaking energy, it may be useful to have an Infrared heat scan done. Attic insulation can settle, and it is possible that it wasn’t thick enough to begin with when it was blown in. Blowing in more is pretty easy, and it makes living space much easier to cool, sometimes saving a couple hundred dollars per month.
People who have can lights, especially, should have them checked. I once went into an the attic of a very fancy house that had a couple dozen can lights and found that the original contractor had put a two foot square styrofoam box around each can and left it open to the attic air so it wouldn’t overheat. Of course, heating and cooling the attic this way cost the owner a couple thousand dollars a year Than necessary. For ten years or more, building codes have required special can lights that are less likely to catch fire And so can be better insulated. Good builders put boxes built of styrofoam around them, then covered them with blown in insulation. More recently, many builders use LED can lights that are much cooler, and I think they can be completely covered, but still, each one is a hole cut into the ceiling and difficult to seal. Many builders these days are putting in, instead of can lights, nearly flush-mounted LEDs that need only a hole for a wire, easily sealed. Big money saver! Indeed, I would urge everyone to replace as many bulbs as possible with LED bulbs, everywhere in the house.