Just turned mine off. We love the cool tiles on a warm day. Ours is from Flextherm. It has a feedback loop (thermostat) and is silent. However, the manual that comes with it is quite confusing. At least it has default settings that you can use while you're figuring it out. Also, be sure that the warming elements are close enough to your sink to keep your tootsies warm. I challenged my contractor on this just after they installed the wire. He promised the warmth would extend several inches laterally from the wires. It doesn't!!!!!! idiot!!!

i emailed an ebay seller of one of the 16 seer amana's and this was her reply.... Hello, This is a 2 stage condenser. All of our 2 stage condensers will have 2 stages of cooling but only one stage of heating. the amana literature shows a low and high btu, but perhaps that is at 47 deg F and 17 deg F....???

I would think the pool represents a big heat source. You have to calcualte how much heat is being put into the pool, and how much of that heat is transferred to the air. For a quick approximation you can add the area of the pool to the outside wall area for the load calculation. If the outside design temperature and the temperature of the pool are both in the 90s should put you in ballpark unless I have overlooked something.

tigerdunes - I have learned a lot from reading your postings on this forum and I appreciate your inputs. Your minimum specs list has already been very useful (though a lot of sales people really struggle to find answers about some of the items on that list), and IâÂÂm leaning now toward the XL15i instead of the $660 more expensive XL16i. I still havenâÂÂt completely ruled out Carrier and Rheem, but a neighbor has had a 4-ton Trane XL14i for over three years and I like the way it does not seem to have collected very many of the evergreen needles that are everywhere around here. I am curious though just why the XL16i has so much trouble with dehumidification, and whether that is important to our well-shaded house just outside of Seattle. We havenâÂÂt bothered to run our heat pump in cooling mode for at least the last decade, so I remain mostly concerned with heating performance and expect to use very little cooling. Also, is the XL16i any less reliable that the XL15i, or is it just (as I understand from other forum postings) that it is more complex to hook up and hence more prone to improper installation? I am also puzzled when I compare ARI heating performance of the XL15i and XL16i. At 47 degrees their ARI heat capacity and COP are identical, and at 17 degrees the 15i has only 1% more heat capacity. The 16i has the better 17 degree COP, 2.86 versus 2.82, but it falls down on HSPF to 8.50 versus 9.00 for the 15i. This seems to imply that the 16i spends more time in defrost mode, but I do not understand why. Returning of your spec list, I assume âÂÂstaged backup heat stripsâ refers to the capability to selectively turn on part instead of all of the backup heat? Our old heat pump has this feature, but I have yet to find a sales person who can tell be whether modern systems can do this. One issue is not really relevant until our new heat pump is being installed, but opinions about it are so amusingly diverse I cannot resist asking. Our power utility offers an extra rebate if we install a lockout control. What should it control? We have a lockout set at 32 degrees on our old heat pump and I understood it prevents the backup heat from coming unless the outdoor temperatures is below 32 degrees. The âÂÂenergy expertâ I talked to at our power company agreed, but said the lockout should also turn off the heat pump compressor at 32 degrees to âÂÂprevent a spike in our electric bill.â I recognize efficiency is down at that temperature, but unless there is a lot of icing up it still seems to make sense to run the compressor. Sale personnel were about evenly split whether the lockout should turn off the compressor. Is there any clear answer on this?