Did my installer make a mistake?

[digger12345]

I appreciate any input anyone can give me.

I live in North Central Florida, so it rarely cold, and often very warm and humid for much of the year.

I live in a condo that's 1300 sq ft. It's an interior unit, but has 2 large south facing windows (single pane) and large west and north facing sliding glass doors, and the attic isn't well insulated (thus it gets pretty warm in the summer).

I just had my old air handler and compressor replaced. The old system was a 2 ton air handler, which the previous owner had mated to a 1.5 tone compressor.

The unit heated fine (it was a straight cool with heat strips)...but never, never cooled properly. I could set it to 70 and it would run constantly (I mean for hours and hours) and never make it below 76.

My installer recommended a 2.5 ton heat pump unit. But after about a week of using it, I'm becoming concerned that it's oversized. The unit works fine, and I really don't have any annecdotal stories about it's cooling capacity. but I can say that the heat pump seems to warm my whole unit in a very short time period (raising interior temperature by 4 degrees in about 10 minutes or so).

Should I be concerned? Or am I just making a flase assumption based on the crappy older unit that I had?

[chucko615]

Why didn't you spend some money and insulate the attic better? Insulation pays for itself every month.

[propmanage]

cools nice heats nice ? would you like it to take a long time to heat and less time to cool?

[coolguysfl]

Your contractor (if licensed by the state) has the competency to perform a load calculation for you that will validate proper sizing.

You've already identified the 1.5T outdoor unit + the 2T indoor unit (BTW - this match is not unusual) would not cool your home. (assuming something else wasn't wrong w/ the old unit)

Without a detailed load calc it's hard to make any comment, but in VERY generic terms, 2.5T is not remarkably over-sized, (many 2.5T units actually have a lower capacity then 2.5 T) the concern would really be will the existing duct work handle the additional volume of air.

Did the job get permitted?

Was a load calc performed?

Was the air filtration system upgraded?

You may want to share your concerns w/ the installer or engage another contractor for a 2nd opinion.

[billva]

I have an old 1100 sq. ft. condo, where summers are pretty warm and humid.

My load calculation (poor insulation,crappy windows, middle floor) calls for a 1.5 ton even though a 2 ton was installed originally(29 years ago)

Mine cycles frequently during the hottest days meaning it oversized for my area.

It's more likely your old system just wasn't running at it's full capacity as when it was new.

bottom line: 2.5 ton is way oversized, but a load calculation will be necessary to determine.

[dash]

Adding insulation would have been a much better thing to do,then increasing the system size.

The old system probably wasn't producing the full btus it did when new,so it may have been the correct size,if it was you'll have very short run time when cooling and high relative humidity ,do to this.

The duct system is very,very likely too small.This may prevent the system from delivering the required btus,which will increase the run times,good thing there ,but may also damage the equipment(compressor).

Could you post the model numbers of the indoor and outdoor units?