I had three different companies quote and the quotes mentioned are from my current HVAC company that has been servicing my units for the past ten years. The quotes and recommendations were from my service tech who has been servicing my units for the past nine years. No one has done a review to determine the correct tonage. They are just working from my current system tonage which is two 2.5 ton units. I'm leaning toward spending the extra money to get the two stage units as it sounds like they may provide overall better comfort. The 20i qualifies for the fed credit and there is another rebate from the state of pa for $500 so I could put in two 20i units for $12,400. Curious about your opinion the life expectancy of the two stage units vs the single stage units. Seems like they would last longer given there are two compressors(20i) sharing the workload? My current units are Lennox(22years old) so also keep thinking the single stage units worked well for all these years so maybe just stay with single stage new units and keep it simple. The new technology on the 20i sounds impressive though. Thanks for all your feedback today. Appreciate your help.

"I know the salt conv-will add 1000 or so, yet can it be reliable & really save that much in chemical costs over say 10 yrs(if the Grid & Controller live that long)" Reliable, pretty much. At $1299 or so for a new unit that will last 5 years and another $600 for a cell for another 5 years, you're pushing 2K in 10 years. Most people will spend more than that in chlorine products in that time so there is really only a slight cost advantage. It's really a convenience thing. "If it was a pros pool like yours would you spend the Extra $$$ WHat 1500 to 2000? to automate--" I'm a fan of automation. It's really a cost thing. It will run you $850 on up depending on what you want. Keep in mind, my costs are much lower than yours will be so I have a slight advantage in saying I would go with it. "-Have you ever played or heard of the Chlorine Factory-(No salt in the pool)" ????? "Do you think the intelliflo is just overkill for a simple pool like this?" Perfect pool candidate but your budget will dictate. If you went with the Suntouch, the 4x160 would be a better buy considering you need a pump. If you went 3.2, you'll lose the automation option without a huge increase in expenditure. Most of the 3.2 pumps go on mechanical time clock systems. "SHould I just go to 1.hp single speed EE .with a whisper flow that you may recommend and save a ton now, (with the 1.5hp it always seemed to cavitate)" It's really a choice. If you want to save energy compared to what you have now, don't be fooled by the EE label. It's not going to do it. You need to go 2 or variable speed and the cost outlay on this type of pool is going to dictate savings potential. I can guarantee you that at 15k, you will save enough energy with a variable to justify the expense. Keep in mind, you're already a pump shopper. $800 for the WhisperFlo, $1200 w/clock for the two speed, $1235 for a 4x160 or $1600 for a variable. The savings potential needs to be weighed against those differences, not the entire pump cost. "I don't want to keep paying 150 to 200 mo on PGE's bill just to run the Pool. In the top tier every month. " Just read that. I'd say go for the biggest saver. You should have rebate money also. "I'll just re plumb the sweep to a vac. I still would need to fiter the pool when the waterfall is on. Like it is now no matter what i do if I am understanding your post." No reason to run that fall if you're not staring at it. That is a huge cost that id floating your tier higher.

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

Thanks for the responses. We're not throwing out the old system, I'm just planning ahead for when it fails. We installed the unit in Jan. 2001 and nothing lasts forever. The cheapest option would be to just replace the compressor when it fails with a 2 ton R22 Copeland scroll model, assuming the coil is still in good shape. Our fan coil is compatible with this and I see that they are still for sale online for around $700-$800. Our house is a split level in S. Indiana. It's a common style from the 60s-80s and is very energy efficient by its nature, that being, the finished lower level is partially below ground. There are shared rigid metal ducts between the floors; registers downstairs are on the ceiling and upstairs are on the floor. R42 insulation in attic and newish two pane windows with low E film. Air infiltration is not terrible. We are maintaining app. 50% RH at 68F with the temperature outside 5F right now. 3 people and some cats. Bathrooms/stove have exhaust fans and are used when needed. There is no door between the two levels (and one won't be installed), so the cold air falls and there is 5-7 degrees F temp. stratification in the summer without a low speed coil fan turned on. Yes, we leaned long ago to turn off the fan in the summer due to higher RH in the house. Unfortunately, there is no way to bypass the indoor coil for low speed airflow in the summer. That would be a nice option. I'm a big fan of the low speed "always on" function for a comfortable home. Aprilaire filtration is used. Of course, all of this comes from a single speed compressor mentality, circa 2001. I guess the question is this: will a new variable speed compressor operate "on" at a low capacity constantly to provide proper humidity levels and less air stratification than our current system in the summertime? I see that Emmerson has released the 2nd generation high efficiency Copeland scroll compressor: 25 Seer, 13 HSPF. Awesome! Now if Carrier can address NVH with their expanding/contracting big outdoor metal boxes during the wintertime, then I'm interested. This post was edited by newtalk on Thu, Jan 8, 15 at 10:09