David_cary, the expense of back-up heat is a factor that I tend to forget because I don't have a need for it, mea culpa. I am in the Gulf South. I would tend to think that humidification is a small issue for a tight house in a cold climate. Dryness in winter is very dependent on infiltration of outside air. If you control that, you will not have such dry air. Trust me, I know about cold climates too. I grew up in a house with an oil-fired hydronic system. I moved 5 times in 15 years between different cities, hot and arid to cold or humid, before I moved to South LA a decade ago. As far as efficiency goes, my worst of three systems is supposed to operate at SEER 17.5, and HSPF 8.9. The 1:1 systems are rated better, some over SEER 20. Obviously, I do not have to subtract duct losses from that. I appreciate the ability to put ducts within the house envelope, but you can still get pressure differentials from room to room that push air out and suck it into the house. Yes, some people don't like the units hanging on the walls. There are many alternatives to that now, but I have 7 of the old-fashioned wall units. The only place I would change in my house is the dining room. It is a small room and it is obtrusive there. I should have used a ceiling cassette in there. They do cost more and are less efficient. I have 7 rooms totaling 2000 sq. The mini split install cost me about 15K. That was about $2000 more than a 16 SEER (2-stage) system with all new ducts in the attic and under the house. My house is a 1950 raised, wood-frame house that probably could have been built in 1920 for the construction techniques. It must have been conservative builder. It is notable that the house still has all the doors and walls that it ever did. (I have none of that open floor plan nonsense. If I am going to stay married, I need to be able to get away from my wife sometimes and she needs doors to slam when she gets mad at me.) We only seriously heat or cool rooms that we will be in. We are not home much either, and we are working in the kitchen a lot when home. The life style has a lot to do with our decision. The first cooling system in the house was a water-cooled, 3-phase system "monstrosity" (the word used by a guy that grew up in the house) of some sort. The house originally had a floor furnace. At the time of the first central system addition, the duct was a central trunk that consisted of a dropped ceiling in a hallway. Later, this was supplied along with additional ducts (some to additions and some to the original rooms) from a sheet metal plenum connected to a gas furnace in the attic with a split evaporator. The condenser/compressors that I had were two, 2-ton that were staged and used a single-speed blower. As a side note, I am not as confident of our nation's NG supply as you are. We might be in trouble if we have to depend on the shale gas that is purported to be under our feet. I think that the amounts are way lower than estimates and the whole operation may look like a Ponzi scheme by the time we are done. The damage done from making the ground like Swiss cheese could be a nightmare. More details are available, forgive me for being lazy and editing some earlier posts. Follows are modified excerpts from my previous posts: My system is Mitsubishi (7 in, 3 out). On paper mini splits are more efficient due to inherent efficiency and the inherent zoned nature. We have been having pretty hot weather and with my wife out of town this week, I have been pretty much been cooling the bedroom and the kitchen with some intermittent cooling in the utility room where the exercise machine lives. Note that I am not much of a sit and watch TV type. One thing to think about is that, many of them don't have back-up heat so you will not have any heat while they are defrosting. You also have to pay close attention to cold weather performance for the mid-Atlantic region. Cold weather performance has been getting steadily better and they claim that some are good to 0 F so you should not need back up heat in climates where other heat pumps do. I know that with Mitsubishi's current residential equipment, the 1:1 systems have better low temp performance than the multi-splits. They are more efficient too. Even if they do have back-up heat, you can kill the efficiency pretty fast if you need back-up very often. Keep in mind that there are lots of options to the wall-hung indoor units. They cost more, but there are units that can be dropped into ceilings and others that sit on the floor. There are also short, ducted units that would solve that big room problem by splitting the supply and return. (You could also install more than one indoor unit/room.) Condensate needs to be dealt with using pumps. Installing a mini-split through outside walls, as is it usually promoted, is pretty quick and straightforward (Read fast and cheap, straight through the exterior walls.) compared to installing a new duct system in an existing house with no existing central AC. My install was done through mostly interior walls running the lines/cables under the raised house and out to the side which was much more complicated. If I were doing this over and I had a good duct system within a house envelope, I might stick with it to save install money. The trouble is, what is a good duct system? More often than not, they are outside of the living space. In addition, they are considered good when they leak 5% of the air and they only get worse as they age. Even if the whole duct system is within the envelope, you will still get pressure differentials that can force air in or out of the house. My system was in the attic with parts of the duct system in the attic and a trunk that was a furred-down space over the main hallway. That was both in and out of the conditioned space. The worst part was one duct that started at the AH in the attic, dropped down under the house in a chase and ran for about 30 feet before it reached the first of three floor register in an addition with a flat roof (thus no attic). It then reduced in size and ran another 25 feet under the house. That part might have been mini-splitted even if the rest of the house retained a ducted system. In general, I think that ducted systems are trickier to design and install than mini-splits so there is more tolerance for less than careful and knowledgeable installers with mini-splits. Due to their ability to handle variable loads, choosing the right size is not as critical either. (I had 4 tons cooling plus a gas furnace before, now I have about 106% of the cooling and 60% of the heating. The heating was way oversized.) My system will handle cooling fine with the house the way it is, but I should not have trouble after I make improvements to limit infiltration and add insulation. My installer is knowledgeable, smart, very workmanlike, and experienced (he has taught the trade for 30 years). He would have installed new ducts and a two-speed system for a lower price than the chosen mini-split equipment. I doubt that he would do my project for the same price if doing it on a similar home going through interior walls. He did not have much mini-split experience and brought in a collaborator that does, on this project because he was looking forward to a learning experience. I don't think that he lost his shirt, but I don't think he made as much as he usually does. Mini split sellers market their good dehumidification heavily. The variable-speed-blowers and variable speed compressors should help with low-load situations. Some variable-speed ducted systems might match it. If you have a lot of air infiltration, you will have a humidity problem no matter what you install. Ducted systems can make a passive infiltration problem into a power-vent infiltration problem under some conditions. If the leaking supply ducts are outside of the house envelope you suck hot, humid air in somewhere else to replace the leaking, humidified air. If the leaking return is sucking air in from outside, conditioned air will leave through holes elsewhere. If supplies and returns are not set up perfectly, you will pressurize some rooms and depressurize others relative to outdoors and get both at the same time. One advantage of ducted systems that I have considered is their ability to use the capacity of the system in one room of the house. That might sound weird, but consider the situation of a party in your house with a large crowd gathered in the living room. Your HVAC system can be running at full capacity picking up heat from the bodies in the LR. Unless your mini split was sized for a large crowd, it might get warm in there. If you have frequent parties, you might size it that way, or install two. Most people will not do that. If you go mini splits, don't mount a wall unit above where you will have a bed. I saw advertising that showed that and planned that but changed my mind figuring that at low speed at night the cold air would sort of cascade down over the heads and be uncomfortable. I am glad that I changed my mind about it. I don't know if that problem would occur. What I did find, since we did the installation during heating season, is that the default programming of the heat pump mode makes the units good ceiling heaters. (Predictable really. I have experience with ducted systems in predominantly cooling climates that do the same thing.) As they approach the set point the blower speed goes way down so hot air gets stratified near the ceiling even though the louvers are pointed down. Setting the blower speed manually to a slightly higher speed fixed that. Putting the indoor units above the bed would have been uncomfortable if only for that reason. It is going to be difficult to provide any meaningful operating costs. We are changing too many things on our house so it is a moving target from one month to the next.

I just rerouted the condensate from one of my two A/C evaporators (the other was too far) and an Aprilaire dehumidifier. PVC pipe painted to match a downspout brings the condensate from the 2nd floor attic to a rain barrel I've set up to catch it. Hose connected to the rain barrel faucet allows me to empty the condensate into the pool--and then hide the hose when I need to. My hope was to have enough to keep the pool topped off with 7.0 pH water (pure water is 7.0; our city water is 8.2; ideal pH for plaster pool is 7.2-7.8). Initially I collected the condensate in a 5 gallon pail for testing. Turns out the water has a pH of 5.8, which I learned is due to carbon dioxide dissolved in the water from the air. That's not a problem. In fact the small amount of 5.8 water will barely raise the pH of the 15,000 gallon pool. Right now, I'm getting only about 8-10 gallons a day, but this is fall, and the AC runs less than summer. I should get 12-15 gallons in the summer. I don't know if that will keep the pool topped off, but it will help with both quantity and pH. My other water tests showed, not surprisingly, -0- chlorine, -0- calcium hardness, -0-total alkalinity, -0- salt, and -0- cyanuric acid. CDC recommends treatment of AC condensate if used for other than watering plants and other applications that don't require potable water, as the AC evaporator can carry in-home viruses and bacteria. Well guess what? A swimming pool has built in water treatment: chlorine. I use a salt water chlorine generator and keep the pool at 4-6ppm chlorine level, which is well above CDC's recommended minimum of 2-3ppm (CDC is only concerned with health issues, while pool owners also want to prevent algae.) Reuse of AC condensate is likely to become more important in the future. Consider in Houston, there are about 2 million "housing units" and 110,000 business in Harris County according to the Census. Just consider how much water is created by AC units and then piped right into the sanitary sewer system every day at 10 gallons per household. 20 million gallons--and that's just Harris County Texas. I know a few people who capture the condensate and use if for gardens (5.8pH is perfect for most flowering plants.) There are 82 million single family homes in America. Do the water math and see how much we're throwing away every day. The cost of routing AC condensate out to a container instead of into the sanitary sewer would be almost zero for new construction. It cost me $150 for the AC guys to do it. I know I won't live long enough to get my money back in savings on my water bill and reduce use of muriatic acid for pool pH. I just wanted to know if it would work. I'm doing a tiny bit to save water.

2 separate units will do the job, but cost of maintenance and break downs of 2 units as opposed to one with zone controls will in the long run be more costly. You have 2 units to maintain, you have 2 units to repair when they break. Tag team event. One system breaks down one month. The other system breaks down the next month. Doesn't always happen this way... but it could. zoning has to be done right. So what does that cost? I don't know I am not there. 'Design, Design, Design' other wise 'Trouble, Trouble, Trouble'.

Goodman's warranty on upper tier equipment is lifetime compressor. This warranty is only on the compressor and the equipment must be 16 SEER or greater to qualify. This warranty on it's own does not include 'ANY' service costs. In addition to that Goodman only provides a compressor in the event the unit is covered by such a warranty. If the condenser in question is 14 SEER or 13 SEER the compressor along with everything else has only a 10 year part warranty. (The warranties described above are from the manufacturer.) It's possible that this company because you are under a service contract with them *may* be replacing the unit due to the nature of the failure, or how long it's been since the unit was installed. It's hard to say because: I don't know 'exactly' what kind of equipment you have, nor do I have the specifics of your service contract. Goodman makes a wide assortment of different units, just as much as any other HVAC manufacturer. Compressor failures happen but if this system was installed a short time ago and the compressor did indeed fail, there may be something lacking from the installation side of the equation. Meaning that if this problem is not corrected 'any' company comes in to replace the compressor (however it's done, the part or the whole condensing unit) and the new compressor suffers a similar fate an additional short time later. If someone misdiagnoses something, it doesn't give confidence that the diagnosis they have come to is anything better than they originally thought. In addition to all of that the refrigerant amount contained within the condenser can vary widely depending on the SEER rating of the equipment / not to mention if it is 2 stage equipment. The amount could be as much as 20lbs or as little as 4-6lbs depending on the type of condenser it is, and the cooling capacity in tonnage. AC condensers rated at 16 SEER or above contain a much larger refrigerant charge than a 13 or 14 SEER condenser. (non-micro channel condenser, but micro channel type have other worries, problems)