Hi Ilene, I'm kind of amazed y'all didn't have a frost because it looked pretty cold up there on the weather map. The green tomatoes I left on the vines are just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there. I don't think they are going to change colors and ripen until the sun shines. Supposedly we will have sunshine here on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I'll believe it when I actually see it since that also was our forecast last weekend and we had no sunshine and lots of cold instead. I think in the last two weeks, we've had a couple of times where the sun came out for 3 or 4 minutes, and last Thursday we had a hour or so of sun early in the day. It got our hopes up for a sunny day, but then that tiny bit of sun vanished. I saw an article on the website of either the Fort Worth or Dallas newspaper that said as of yesterday they were on their 11th straight day of clouds/no sunlight, so even that far south they are having about the same weather as most of us. The good news is that most of Texas has had a lot of rain and their drought conditions are receding. When the new Drought Monitor map is released tomorrow, we'll see a lot of changes.....I know that, not because I'm psychic, but because I have already looked at their KBDI map this week on another website and it shows great changes. Don't those Crocs have holes in them? I can't wear anything like that, including any sandals or open-toed or open-heeled shoes, that let the scorpions or fire ants have access to my skin or they'll take advantage of it. I learned that the hard way and have tried pretty hard not to slip up......if there is one fire ant in the yard and I go outside the house in sandals (I do wear them indoors), that one fire ant will find me the instance I step off the porch and onto the ground. We do have fire ant mounds popping up in a few places, and I still have some organic fire ant killer, so if we get a couple of dry days, I'll treat those mounds. Our puddles even have puddles, Ilene. The dog yard is a muddy mess but we've spread a couple of bales of straw there and that is helping. I think we need to get a couple more bales of straw and put out even more. When I walk in the garden, it squishes. I suspect this long, cloudy spell is a taste of the kind of fall/winter weather we're going to have this year. Usually October is one of my favorite months with its bright blue, clear, sunny skies and moderate temperatures. This year is a whole different story though. Dawn

Some of these comments are reiterated again and again. I am a retired HVAC/R professional with over 40 years experience. There is no cut and dried answer to most of these questions. Most of the answers are mostly correct in that you need to seal your ductwork, insulate it if it is in non-conditioned space (attic/crawl space), and the ductwork needs to be laid out correctly to supply AND return the correct amount of cfm to each room. After that, NO air conditioning technician in the world can correctly diagnose an air conditioner's problem unless several criteria are met. First and foremost, BOTH the condenser coil and the evaporator must be clean and the furnace (air handler) filter must be clean and not restricting flow. If you call a company out to your house and the technician comes up to your house with his gauges and refrigerant tank FIRST THING and immediately hooks the gauges up and starts putting refrigerant in, my advice is not to call that particular company back again. The coils MUST be clean before you can even begin to decide that the system is under or overcharged. Next you must make sure that you are moving the correct amount of cfm for the size air conditioner you have. 400 cfm/ton is the nominal amount for air conditioning. NOT ONE person has mentioned how important this is. On MANY occasions, I have seen brand new equipment installed and no one can figure out why it won't work! With brand new equipment, we know the coils are clean so that is not the problem. Let's say we have a house that is 2400 square feet and a new furnace and air conditioner are installed. It's a 105,000 btu furnace and a 3 ton unit. The homeowner complains that their old furnace and a/c (same size) worked fine until they had to have it replaced. Technician after technician comes out.....they hook up their gauges and add and remove refrigerant and can't figure out what the problem is. The a/c runs almost all the time and the pressures are correct but the relative humidity in the house is REALLY high and they can't figure it out. Some technicians recommend a whole house dehumidifier as a fix. C'mon people, let's not put a bandaid on this problem. What most technicians tend to forget with an installation of new equipment is that the new furnace doesn't KNOW what size air conditioner it is being mated with! The new furnace can typically be mated with (and has the blower assembly to work with) anywhere from a 3 ton to a 5 ton unit. These furnaces will have as many as 6 different speeds for the drive motor. A 5 speed motor is more typical but the factory sends these furnaces out USUALLY with the lowest speed set up for heat and the highest speed set up for cool. This means with the 3 ton unit (which needs 1200 cfm delivered), on the highest motor tap speed from the factory, the furnace is delivering 2000 cfm or more! Moving 2000 or more cfm through a 3 ton evaporator will result in a "delta T" of 10 degrees or less which explains the unit running almost continuously and the high relative humidity in the house. These technicians need to remember that they need to look in the installation manual to find the right motor tap speed to utilize with the size a/c being mated to the furnace. With the advent of the 95+ % furnaces, we are seeing ECM motors being deployed in the furnaces. These have no speed taps, but instead have a motor that is in essense a variable speed motor. The technician still needs to consult the installation manual as the motherboard in the furnace will have dip switches to set the motor drive unit to supply the desired cfm. Now, some "rules of thumb." IF your coils are clean, IF your furnace filter is not clogged up with dirt and providing a restriction, IF you are moving the correct amount of cfm for your size a/c, IF the superheat is correct and IF the subcooling is also correct, you should get a delta T of between 17-22 degrees and your supply temperature should be between 51-55 after the unit has run for 10 minutes or longer.

It sounds like you decided against the Victorian. I have Delta Victorian throughout my house - this includes 1 kitchen sink, 4 bathroom sinks, 2 showers, 1 tub and 1 roman tub. I love it so much that I'm also using it for our basement project (bathroom sink, shower, handheld on slide bar, and kitchen sink). Mine are all 5 years old and work great. I actually have 4 holes in my kitchen sink because I have a separate sprayer, but I love the pull down sprayer and will probably get that for the basement kitchen. They all look wonderful after 5 years. Delta has been great to work with (the roman tub had a finish issue and they sent me a whole new one right away. Didn't even ask for the return of the old one.)

I see you have a 3 ton air handler with a 2 ton condenser. A 3 ton air handler is going to give you a nominal 1200CFM while a 2 ton air handler would give you a nominal 800CFM. So the delta is going to be lower because of the higher airflow. You might want to see if the air handler can be dialed down to around 800CFM. Now, this shouldn't influence the system's ability to cool the house - the delta is lower but the airflow is higher, so these would tend to cancel each other out. Having said this, the delta is still too low. You need to escalate this with the installation company's management and find out what the problem is.