Big day today. HVAC people here to install new furnace and a/c. Super high-efficiency units but expensive. I’m: a) not happy about having people in the house as I’m still fully sheltering in place and don’t want anyone to bring Covid-19 here, and b) afraid it will be noisy and disruptive. We’ll lock the cat in one room, I’ll be in another with mask handy. It will take a day or maybe a day and a half. I’ll be glad when it’s over.
[click on the picture to make it as big as you like]
the “old” furnace, installed in 1998.
What do you think? How old is your furnace and, if you have it, a/c unit?
Tip the Wink 
That does not sound like fun but I am sure you will be happy with the results when done. We have no air conditioning and mostly in Santa Barbara that is fine. Although in the last few years there have been hotter periods that could be miserable. We have radiant heat in the ceiling. Not perfect but works for what we need. I have heard that other condominiums in our complex have changed to other heating, but we have no plans to make that effort.
I’ve heard of radiant heating in the floor, but never in the ceiling. When I lived in Laguna Beach, we only had heat, no air, and never needed air.
We had a window air conditioner in the living room/dining room which we replaced a couple of years ago with a new, bigger, more efficient one. We got a new, smaller one for the bedroom at the same time (the super installed them both for us), and had the old one in the bedroom moved to the den. We live in a building with FREE electric, so pay nothing for air conditioning, even were we to use it 24/7, as some in the building do. Originally we were told that we could have two air conditioners, but had no trouble over adding the third one, so it’s all good.
Mostly we use fans where possible, including a ceiling fan in the bedroom (plus two floor fans when necessary), a couple of small desk fans in the den, and a couple more floor fans in the living room. We don’t have to worry about a furnace in the apartment, obviously.
Stay out of the way today, and good luck with it.
Sounds great. The last three condos/ houses I’ve lived in have had central heat/air, I can’t imagine going back to window units. But you in an apartment; I haven’t lived in one since the Seventies. All I know is in hotels those units seem noisy. Hopefully yours aren’t.
You’ll love it when it is done. When we got ours redone it made such a tremendous difference with cooling and heating our home well.
Don’t know how much difference it will make day to day, but the bill should go down some.
That always helps. When we replaced ours it was because the previous owners hadn’t put in an air conditioner big enough to actually cool that square footage, and there were fewer vents and returns than were needed. It made an amazing difference getting the right size one installed and having additional vents cut.
I live in an apartment so I don’t have to worry about this sort of stuff. I can run my air conditioner constantly and my bill only goes up about $20.
That’s great for you, Steve, but we wanted a house with room for books and a large yard for gardening. By the way, glad to hear you got the eye shot, sure hope it solves the problem!
We just replaced our furnace last year. The A/C is about six years old. We had a masked workman in our house today to measure one of the windows in our Florida room that sprang a leak. A team will probably show up next week and replace the window. Like you, we’re not happy about people coming in our house durning the coronavirus pandemic, but sometimes stuff just has to get fixed.
Sorry to sound stupid, but I had to look it up. A Florida Room is a room with large windows and a glass roof, designed to allow in a lot of sunlight. Right? You have that?
The former owners of this house had the Florida room built. With my allergies, I seldom use it. But Diane likes it and will spend time in the Florida Room reading.
Not clear why allergies would case a problem in a closed room, so I guess you open the windows. It’s screened, right?
We added central air a few years ago. The furnace isn’t too old but I’m not sure when it was installed. My upstairs office/modeling room doesn’t get the air from downstairs so I use a space heater in the winter and a window air conditioner in the summer.
Yes, the Florida Room has sliding glass and screen doors. Pollen around here gets in and can trigger a sneezing fit. Hard Pass for me.
On borrowed time.