Ok so, heres my situation longish post warning. I have 3 Hvac units. My house was built in 2006 by a competitor to me but reputable (ocean front land is hard to come by you take what you can get). I am the second owner of the house. Located right on the atlantic ocean so salt air takes a toll on everything and I figured this year was a good year to replace my rusting janitrol systems (builder/owner cheaped out here) replaced them with middle of the road trane units. 2 are Trane XR 17 seer units, and a trane xl16 package unit. We also elevated the units 25" off the ground to accommodate our new fema flood plain requirements.
My house is approx 5300 sqft maybe a bit bigger. (not including closets or bathrooms) Two floors floors with full sun during the day, lots of south and east windows which get full sun. House has new windows and doors just installed last year with andersen smart sun low e/argon impact rated glass. But no shade at all Palm trees and dunes are all that surround us.
The package unit is a 3.5 ton and it works amazing. The air is ice cold out of the vents and cools the downstairs down to 65 even on the hottest of days (just tried it once to see). The way my house is laid out is it has a main house with an up and down stairs, and a guest house with an up and down stairs, they are attached however. The main house has the package unit for down stairs, and a 2 ton split system (natural gas for heat all around) for upstairs. The guest house has a 2.5 ton for both up and down.
I mention this because cooling the upstairs on the main house is impossible, and cooling the guest house entirely is impossible. The only part of the house to be comfortable is the 3.5 ton unit. The HVAC company replaced them with the same size units that were installed originally when the house was built siting that they knew what they were doing back in 06. Logic stands that the two split systems simply aren't large enough to deal with a second floor full sun load. In our 100 degree heat index days the upstairs is running 24/7 and barely getting to 78. While downstairs is 68 no problem (we keep downstairs cooler than normal to help the upstairs).
The 3.5 ton is cooling about 2000 sqft, just down stairs. The 2 ton is cooling about 1500 sqft upstairs. The guest quarters is about 1800 sqft split between up and down. This area is the greatest offender in that in the winter time, you have to absolutely bake the upstairs to make the downstairs comfortable, and in the summer, you can't get either up or down cool. The air coming out of the downstairs vents is about half as powerful as the upstairs, I mentioned this to the hvac company and they put a damper in, but theres just simply not enough flow to all the vents unless you shut either the upstairs or downstairs off. Main house upstairs has the same issue, air flow is very weak and not very cool out of the vents. Package unit air flow is stellar, all vents get lots of flow and a good 30 degree delta measured with my laser temp gauge. Upstairs were lucky to get a 10-15 degree delta. However upstairs vents are attic based. Down stairs vents are crawlspace so I'm sure that makes a difference. Might need to look at duct work too.
So whats my fix here? I have called the company that did it and they will come look but over the phone were very "thats just the way it is" kinda attitude. Do I need to start over, I'm ok throwing money at the problem to fix it, and working something out with the company in exchange, the units were just installed last month. But Im sick of having 2/3 of my house not comfortable 90% of the year. But I feel like the systems aren't large enough for the house, and there may be a better more efficient way of cooling the house. I honestly don't care if the guest quarters is independent and wouldn't mind going to like a 5 ton package unit and having it cool the entire downstairs on one thermostat, and then having the upstairs use two units. but I think the upstairs 2.5 needs to be at least a 3.5 ton unit for the load it has to cool (if keeping it independent from the main house). The reason I mention it doesn't work as well as with the older units the air was far colder out of the vents, almost like in an effort to be more efficient the units don't work as well. The package unit is still as ice cold as ever however. So please any help or tips or suggestions is greatly appreciated. I am a home builder but I'm not an hvac engineer. This is a company that I sub out all my home builds to and have a great working relationship with and have never had issues in the past with them. Maybe should just suck it up and build my own house haha.
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