So...my wife and I just moved from Southern Indiana to Central Florida, and purchased a brand new 1850 sq. ft. home. I've got some questions about the way this setup runs, and if it's normal or not.
First about the home: Block/Stucco 1850 sq.ft. home on slab, R30 cellulose insulation everywhere in attic except garage, very little tree coverage (as all trees are new), construction was completed in 1/2016.
HVAC: Carrier Heat Pump (25HBC530 outdoor unit, FX4DNF031 indoor unit), Nest Thermostat (replaced Carrier TB-PHP01-A thermostat), single return vent just below indoor unit (16x20 return grille opening feeding 19.75x21.5 OEM filter), 9 supply vents running through the attic into the home (4 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, 2 bathrooms, master closet). X13 ECM blower with 5 adjustable speeds, factory setting for AC is 2 (medium 90 second delay) and for Heat is 4 (high 0 delay).
The story: Nest is set to 74 degrees from 10am until 11pm, auto schedule is disabled, early on is disabled. Unit runs most of the day to keep the house at 74 degrees, but it does keep it there and pretty dry considering Florida humidity. At 11pm when the thermostat lowers to 71, the unit will run until 2-3am to get to the set point most nights. At 10am, the setting returns to 74, but by 11:30 the home has heated 4+ degrees and the Nest commands AC again. It's worth mentioning that the humidity never goes above 50% even in 100 degree temperatures, and during the night when it's at 71, the AC gets the humidity down to 42-44% according to the Nest. Tested temperature drop, with a 73 degree intake temperature, I had 56 degree output temperatures, right in line with the 15-20 expected.
Below are images showing the AC run times. Temperatures have been hovering between 95-100 for the last week and a half here. The only time we have had less than 10 hours of daily run time was when we were gone from home more than 10 hours during the day, and auto away kicked in...but I am wondering about whether or not i'm saving anything by using auto away.
So here's my questions:
1.) Should I turn the blower up to setting 3 or 5? HVAC manual says 3 and 5 are the same, but 5 has a 0 second delay. CFM chart in the manual says that 5 actually runs a higher speed, which one is right? How much of an effect would this have on overall humidity levels in the home?
2.) Should I disable auto-away, and leave the unit at 74 during the day, and 71 at night? Auto-away sets the AC temperature to 78 while not at home, but causes extremely long run times to get back down to temperature at night.
3.) Return doesn't seem restricted, but is there too little? The grille opening sits right below the unit in the wall, and when I attempted to replace the OEM hogs hair filter with a MERV 13 pleated replacement, it felt like the blower was going to collapse the filter. Maybe I need to source MERV 6 filters instead, or continue to use the very inefficient hogs hair OEM filter?
Thanks in advance for any help you guys might be able to offer. Coming from Southern Indiana, and a 1250 sq. ft. home, even though temperatures got just as hot, our unit there never ran more than 8 hours in a normal day...so this just seems a bit excessive to me.
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