A 1977 house in The Trails is on its third air conditioner. Make the fourth one count.
Most houses here have replaced the system twice without ever replacing the ducts. The equipment keeps getting better; the ductwork stays 1977.
Three systems, one set of ducts
A house built in The Trails in 1977 has probably had its air conditioner replaced around 1995 and again around 2010. Each time the new unit was better than the last. Each time it was connected to the same duct that was stapled into the attic when the house was framed: fiberglass trunk lines, early flex branches, a single return in the hall. The replacement crew did what replacement crews do, which is set the new equipment and leave.
Now the 2010 system is coming due, and the owner is about to make the same decision a third time. This is the page where we ask you to make it differently.
The community under the canopy
The Trails is a planned community from the 1970s on the west side of Nova Road, built around a network of walking and biking trails that still thread between the back yards. The lots are wooded, the streets curve, and the architecture is the era’s: cedar siding and stucco, low-pitched roofs, split-level and two-story floor plans with great rooms and cathedral ceilings, carports and garages tucked under the oaks. The Trails Shopping Center sits at Nova and Granada, and the neighborhood has aged into one of Ormond Beach’s steadiest.
The oaks are the defining feature for us. They shade the houses, which helps, and they bury the outdoor units in debris, which does not. Matthew in 2016 brought limbs down across the neighborhood, and every spring the pollen and catkins pack condenser coils tight.
What fails in a house this age
- Original ductwork. Crushed trunks where someone stored boxes on them, flex that has sagged into traps, joints that opened as the tape dried out. We find leakage of a quarter of the airflow or more in attics here, which means a quarter of the FPL bill is cooling the attic.
- One return, far from the big rooms. The 1970s floor plans put the return in a hallway and the heat load in a great room. The great room never catches up.
- Condenser coils under the trees, packed with organic debris that holds moisture against the fins and accelerates corrosion.
- Electrical panels from the 1970s, some of them brands that electricians now recommend replacing, feeding compressors that pull more current as they age.
- Short cycling in houses where the 2010 replacement was sized up “to be safe” and now runs ten minutes at a time without drying the air.
How to replace the next one
The fourth system should be the one that fixes the house. A replacement in The Trails done the way we recommend includes a duct inspection with a leakage test before the quote, repair or replacement of the trunk and branches that fail it, a second return or a larger one near the great room, and equipment sized by a load calculation that accounts for the shade and the ceiling heights rather than by the nameplate on the old unit.
Two-stage or variable-speed heat pumps suit these houses: they run long and slow, which is what a humid, shaded, 1970s house needs. A ductless head in a cathedral-ceiling great room is a cheaper fix than a whole second system. Zoning dampers on the existing trunk can give a two-story Trails house separate upstairs and downstairs control without a second air handler.
FPL pays an instant rebate on qualifying high-efficiency equipment through its participating contractors, and its duct-sealing and insulation rebates apply after a free Home Energy Survey. Financing with low monthly payments covers the whole job, ducts included.
Where we come from
Cook’s reaches The Trails from its Palm Coast headquarters in a little over half an hour, I-95 to the Granada exit and a few minutes east to Nova. The phone is answered all night; a night call costs what a day call costs.
Asked by homeowners in The Trails
My outdoor unit sits in full shade under the oaks. Isn't that good for it?
Shade helps with heat, but the canopy drops leaves, catkins and pollen into the fins from February through April and after every storm. A shaded unit here needs its coil cleaned more often than a sunny one in a treeless subdivision, not less.
What's the difference between a system from 1998 and one installed now?
Efficiency, staging and refrigerant, mostly. A current two-stage heat pump uses noticeably less power for the same cooling, runs longer at low speed so it dries the house, and uses a refrigerant that will still be available in fifteen years. The 1998 unit’s R-22 is the opposite.
The house has a cathedral ceiling in the great room. Why is that room always warm?
Because the original duct design put one supply in a room with twice the volume, and the return is down the hall. Zoning, a second supply run or a ductless head for that room are the usual fixes, in rough order of cost.
Do you handle the heat side too, or just cooling?
Both, and in The Trails it’s the same machine. The heat pumps we install cool all summer and heat the handful of cold January nights; we service the gas furnaces a few houses still have as well.
Under the oaks in The Trails
Call for a replacement that includes the ducts, not just the box.