I've got a 3 story with finished basement 1900 sq ft of total living space new construction townhouse corner unit that was built last year. The HVAC system is new, we have a 3-ton condenser. It seems to struggle to keep the house cool, consumes a lot of electricity and runs more than it should, so I'm trying to narrow down reasons why this might be.
The two supply trunks are run from the basement where the handler is through two 16 inch 2x4 stud bays in the exterior wall. More on that later. One of the trunks stops in the first floor living room where the grille is, the other goes up two stories to the third floor hallway. Here's a photo of the supply trunks before they were drywalled. You can see how the trunk on the right terminates at the ceiling, and the left one goes into the ceiling and up to the third floor. When they installed the supply grille for the first floor (pictured here) they cut the drywall about 6 inches into the supply trunk on the left, going to the third floor.
I'm wondering if this is a design flaw, I can't understand why you would want to partially open up the 3rd floor trunk on the first floor, this seems like it would just rob pressure potential from the third floor supply and make the system less efficient.
Another thing I realized is that the supply trunks are running up the entire side of the house, and since they take up two entire stud bays, there is no insulation. The exterior wall is clad in metal siding, and it is a southern facing wall, so I'm assuming these trunks are taking on a decent amount of heat from the siding and bringing it into the system, reducing efficiency.
Lastly I noticed they ran Romex through the supply trunks, can see that in the first link. Is that kosher?
[link] [comments]
No comments:
Post a Comment