All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

Lots of people complain about it, but there are a lot of people making millions in CA so it must be working.

 Yeah, that's very true. His budget is pretty low, you can do a new central air system for that amount, but you'd need to be doing a gut remodel to pull it off. But he can probably do some mini splits for that price.

A friend of mine is doing an STR in WV right now and he's doing a really nice HVAC system with round metal ducts and a variable heat pump. He's probably going to pay close to $20k for the thing, but he wants the best HVAC he can put in the unit to make it as comfortable as possible.

I looked and it doesn't seem that it gets that cold there, the low was like 19° in December. A heat pump or several heat pumps will do that.

The best system from a comfort perspective is likely to be a new HVAC system with new ductwork. You'll get ventilation and filtration.

Ductless doesn't provide ventilation.

But it is much easier to retrofit.

It depends on how much you want to put into it, and how nice you want the finished product to be.

When you say "heat" do you mean propane, gas, oil or electric?

Phoenix has like 300 years of water reserves that they haven't even tapped. The city uses the same amount of water that it used 60 years ago, despite the population growing 7x.

Right now they are pushing the boundaries of direct potable reuse, but recycled water is still only 2% of their supply, because it costs about 100x more than surface water. Water is still dirt cheap there.

But keep in mind this is a place that hasn't really even tried to reduce water consumption. They don't have the same restrictions that even California has on residential use. There are no showerhead inspections required. People with older lots can still flood irrigate. They still grow alfalfa in the desert outside the city.

 If you want to save energy with your HVAC system the way to do it is by installing the smallest system that you can. Air seal, insulate, calculate, and then buy the system. Most systems don't deliver the efficiency that they claim because the test conditions are so different from installed conditions (SEER will be replaced with SEER2 that uses more realistic tests) and most systems are oversized. In fact, the typical AC is 12,000 BTUs or one ton larger than it should be for the space in which it is installed. Furnaces are typically even more poorly sized. I bought an 80,000 BTU furnace for a house in Los Angeles, once. That was not correct.

Off the top of my head around 15% of all new homes in California are ADUs, and it's increasing every year. 

It's a good thing because people have to live somewhere. Would you rather they live in Los Angeles, or Prescott?

I don't have an answer for that. 

Mini splits aren't as good as a well designed HVAC system at ventilating and controlling humidity. They just aren't.

But for retrofits, there's as good as you're going to get without major surgery on your building.

I've used them to replace or augment gas heating in a couple of projects.