If you already have a gas line in place and had a furnace before, I'd stick with gas heat. One big reason is because you'd need more power (230v) for the air handler compared to what the furnace is supplied with (115v). I'm not sure what you have in place now. Lennox equipment is fine (not much better or worse than other similar manufacturers if installed correctly), but your observation is correct. While the 14ACX isn't a bad unit (they've made it nicer with the louvered cabinet), there are better options from the Elite Series and Signature Series which I would recommend exploring. A 2 stage outdoor unit with the variable speed indoor unit can help improve comfort in terms of dehumidification, especially when configured with the right thermostat to run a dehumidification cycle. Let us know if you have further questions. Your price looks fine to me. It's critical that they're quoting you the right size equipment for your home. You'll hear mixed brands on equipment depending on who you speak with, but it's true that installation is the most important aspect. I personally feel Lennox has a history of making solid equipment, especially in the commercial market.

Chlorine, when energized, escapes the water and enters the atmosphere. This is off gassing. UV light from the sun will energize it. Cyanuric acid, aka CYA or stabilizer keeps the chlorine sort of busy so even if it does get some energy from the UV, it isn't enough to keep it from "playing" with the CYA in the water.This also can keep it from doing work though so having too much CYA prevents Free Chlorine. aka FC, from doing it's jobs of oxidation and killing biological pathogens. Generally speaking, you need about 5 to 7% of the ppm count of CYA for FC with salt cell equipped pools and 8 to 10% for all other forms of feeding chlorine to a pool. Too much CYA, and the elevated levels of FC are very difficult to make happen on a regular basis. If the CYA were 150 ppm, can you see trying to maintain a residual of 12 to 15 ppm? Drop the CYA to 30 ppm and 2 ppm of FC is much easier and costs less. Please note that salt cell equipped pools often have somewhat higher levels of CYA and FC to reduce the cell's ON time so it lasts longer. Generally, pools, when on, they either have a tablet feeder or tabs in the skimmer (generally not a good idea, BTW) or a salt cell which won't work without water moving. Pools get the most use during the day. Activity will cause some gas off too, in addition to the demands that sweat, tanning lotions, killing bio-badies, etc... place on the residual FC in the pool. These can deplete a pool pretty quickly if the FC isn't replenished as it's being used. You need to keep that residual FC in there. Running at night when nobody is there doesn't help the swimmers if it isn't there when they are. Without the UV of the sun, aka night, the FC stays put. The water is safe. I do recommend keeping the pump running whenever there are swimmers using the pool, day or night. Scott

Personally, I would not trust any tool from a manufacture that is trying to sell you a pump. That is why I developed my own spreadsheet using the data published by the California Energy Commission. The manufacture tools generally use gross approximations and tend to use unrealistic scenarios plus they don't show you how the calculations are done. You can download the CEC data yourself or you can download the spreadsheet below and do the analysis yourself. Unlike the manufactures web site tools, I built a completely transparent tool open for full review so I am not trying to hide anything from the user. But it really only takes simple math to prove the case of a two speed pump in some situations. Assuming decent plumbing and using the CEC data from Curve-C, a Whisperflo WFDS-24 will produce about 42 GPM @ 380 watts while an Intelliflo will produce about 30 GPM @ 140 watts for a difference of 240 watts. This may seem like a big difference but the money saved is not all that great. In a 15k pool and a turnover per day, the Whisperflo requires 357 minutes on low speed while the Inteliflo requires 500 minutes for the same turnover. So the Whisperflo uses 2.3 kwh/day and the Inteliflo uses 1.2 kwh/day or a difference of 1.1 kwh/day. Again, it sounds big until you apply the electrical rates. So if your electricity rate is $0.07/kwh to make up the $500 cost difference between the two pumps you would need about 6500 days (>200 months) of run time before the Intelliflo starts to be more cost effective than the Whisperflo. However, you can make the case for the Intelliflo by changing some of the assumptions. For example, if the electrical rate is $0.30 like in CA and the user was running two turnovers per day, then the Intelliflo will become more cost effective than the Whisperflo after only 750 days (25 months) which makes the Intelliflo the better choice. However, some POs need to run their pumps at higher speeds for part of the day to run cleaners and/or solar so that can diminish some of the benefit. Even though we have high electricity rates here in CA, I chose the two speed because much of time I run the pump at higher speeds for solar so the benefit of the VS was not as great for me. You can see my situation in Scenario 3 of the spreadsheet. I modified a 1 HP Northstar pump to create a 1/2 HP two speed pump but was able to do that for only $120 so it would be hard for any pump to beat that lifetime cost. Anyway, you can run all of these different scenarios using the spreadsheet. Here is a link that might be useful: Pump Cost Calculator

My new issue that has been coming up randomly is that my trane furnace (xc80). Has been kicking into the higher speed mode but not sure why this is happening. Sounds a little like error code hell to me. Something I learned nearly 10 years ago with communicating systems. It's an interesting story but not much fun IMHO. I know this is primarily where everything is headed with nearly every US manufacturer all they do is copy one another with their proprietary signal garbage. Hector, Is there a way for you to figure out what the "device event is" or the "device that is triggering this rhetoric over and over"? My guess is probably not and that you need a skilled person there diagnosing it in person. Given the age of this system (less than a year old) it's a job for the installing contractor to figure out & to fix. But if you can find out what device is causing, this can only help find the problem. They said it was hard to stop a Trane, yet recently in the news a real one was derailed dumping toxic crap everywhere. I guess stopping isn't your problem right now or it's signaling an upcoming "derail event"? Not what I would call comforting for a system that is less than a half year old. Not such a great deal now. If I've seen that once, I've seen it a thousand times. Good luck I hope your contractor figures it out... because this will be your path forward every time it acts up. Keep us posted with developments as it makes for a good story of what not to do. Helping others. I service the Katy, Texas area. (not for you, but others who may not read the whole thread) Things are changing in HVAC in the near future I lay out the R410a phase down time line and upcoming equipment ban in chronological order and more click here to see the fun headed your way for home comfort solutions of the near future.