Well itÂs time for another: The new Goodman, managed by a whole lot smarter people, so as typical the new head of manufacturing, Bill, had to show immediate results in the form of increased profits, so as it goÂs the first and easiest place to have a short term success is to reduce labor costs. Now remember, Bill is of this new breed of self proclaimed manufacturing geniuses that could live 10 life times and still never achieve the level of success as Harold Goodman. So to get back on track, the first coarse of action was to change the way they hire people, so as you guessed they went to temporary labor from a temporary labor source. Every time I went over there on a service call, I saw fewer people that I knew and a whole lot of new faces. The people that I had seen over the years were all suddenly disappearing. As this was taking place, I was receiving phone calls at all hours to assess and repair pre mature stamping die failures. They would bring a temporary worker in and put him or her to run a progressive die, with practically no experience. As you can imagine the beating that the dies took was becoming evident as seen on the finished parts coming off of them. Then to make matters worse, they decided to operate their coil fin dies with a water soluble lubricant rather than the recommended lubricant that is recommended by the fin die manufacturer. Well it seemed as if quality and production were suffering, so rather looking for the manufacturing experts that can put the wheels back on the track, they chose to hire these alleged new, cheep wizards of manufacturing from India as well as the United States. So, I found myself teaching these people all that they needed to know to perform their jobs. Apparently, these highly accredited Indian,Bangladesh and U.S. universityÂs left out of their manufacturing engineering curriculum anything that had to do with manufacturing equiptment. So you ask, what credentials do they need to earn these positions? Well guyÂs I am sorry to say that all of you out there as well as my self that are shop and hands on trained people mechanical experts in or relative fields are no match to these types of people that tout there college degreeÂs as their merit badge of superiority over us. And the use of these new wave manufacturing terms like lean manufacturing, kaisan , six sigma, black belt mba, iso 9000 and so on. These goofy inadequate engineers end up taking these kinds of correspondent courses and then for some reason believe that they carry the same credentials as a Harold Goodman. So letÂs start to add all this up so far, we have Bill from the looser company, we have inexperienced temporary seasonal labor and we have some inadequate manufacturing engineering people. I have more to come so stay tuned because as Bill paves this type road to the companies alleged success the competition starts to pave the same type of road.

soonermom first off,I like HPs as well-for the right application. HPs are not for everyone or every application. There are many factors to consider for HPs and those include location/winter climate, comfort, home's envelope/insulation properties, and electric rate vs other alternative heating fuels. one system or two for such a large home? I would think a 95% eff furnace paired with at least a 15 SEER AC or HP. any hot/cold spots within home need to be evaluated by dealer and recommendations made to improve. brands to consider are Carrier/Bryant, Trane/AmStd, Rheem. if you have long hard winters then perhaps one of the new modulating furnaces like York. I do recommend any furnace to have the VS blower. what size HVAC are you replacing? request a load calculation from quoting dealers for both cooling cooling and heating to determine correct sizing. IMO Good Luck!

The 9 ft ceilings might be your friend. Look at that level with an eye towards furring down in a way that makes it look like it belongs rather than having been added in. If you try to make it architecturally interesting rather than hiding it, you might make it work. The AHU for minimally-ducted (low static pressure) mini split units are very compact and if you use two or three of them, you may find places to steal enough space for them inside the existing envelope. You might steal the upper reaches of a closet in one room and part of the adjoining room's closet upper reaches for ducting in that room and the next. You may lower the ceiling in an entry area and it can look good. Varying ceiling heights can be pleasing to the eye. I am going to assume that if you don't like the look of the most common, high wall mini splits, you won't like any kind of exposed ducting ;-) There are also ceiling cassette mini splits and floor consoles. Have you seen them?

Humidity related condensation in terms of duct work is a very complicated issue. The problems with condensation mostly tend to occur in a humid prone region. The duct work (the circumference of it) needs to be able to breathe within the humidified space in which it sits. (the air of the area in which the duct sits can reach all portions of the duct without interference from other ducts in the area.) In other words, placing two or more ducts that contain conditioned air going thru a non-conditioned space that has these humid factors, the ducts can sweat around areas of the duct that can not breathe. You may have to read that above several times to get this to sink in. Why would you want to keep condensation from forming? Because if you don't mold comes next. I service the Katy, Texas area in which we deal with the same sort of humidity related problems.