I find this prob once a month. Just today, I found two new units installed, (same house) and they were both overrated by about 20 amps.
Too often, when the unit is upgraded, no permits are pulled, and the installer doesn’t care, or doesn’t check
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Ok, so I have a question here. We don’t really have “air handlers” too much in my area. What I am seeing in this thread are two breakers, one labeled for the air handler, and one labeled for the AC. Are they not two separate units?
The AC label the OP posted shows 30 amp max, and the AC breaker is 30 amps. But I have not seen a picture of the air handler label to see if the 60 amp breaker is too large. What am I missing here?
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The label he posted is from the air handler, because when a heat strip is added, it changes the requirements, and the demand
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Deep in the installation manual for the heater kit, the max amp rating includes the the Air handler
But, triple make double sure we would need the model of the air handler.
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Ahh, gotchya. He called it the AC label and that was throwing me off. Now it makes sense.
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What do you have?
This is a heat-pump air handler, it contains the blower section, possibly a heat kit and coil.
Oh, yeah, he should have said air handler…
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The “heat pump air handler” in your diagram would be a gas or oil furnace in my area. We cannot rely on just an air source heat pump due to severe cold conditions in MN.
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So, this is what I do for clarification in my reports.
Exterior unit (AC or Heat pump)
Interior unit (Heat-pump/air handler or furnace/air handler)
We have a good mixture of both. Typically a gas furnace for the main living levels and a heat-pump for the basement finished areas.
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All of our “air handlers” in the frozen tundra are furnaces. I have only seen one standalone air handler (without heating capability) in my almost 3 years of inspecting and it was early on. If I remember right, it was being used to blow cool basement air into the upper levels.
That said, it appears my original confusion was because of the mislabeled data tag in the OP.
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Right, there are many configurations. Sometimes cooling only, sometimes electric in-line duct heaters or fan coil units running off a broiler. Interesting how different parts of the country use various configurations and fuel sources.
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Sorry for the confusion - I think I was going off how it was labelled in the electric panel. Like Brian, in my reports - to make it simpler, I usually refer to them as the interior or inside unit, and the exterior unit. From HVAC guys, I have heard the outside unit sometimes called the condensing unit, compressor, etc.
@ruecker - You may start to see a lot more on the electric air handler…In my area (Seattle) they are going away from gas heat for 2 reasons:
1 - Trying to be green and not have emissions from homes for the environment. I hate the concept, but tree hugging happens and it does add up over the long run per home and with a lot of growth still happening. Gas is cheap heat, but now not allowed in Seattle proper and many other areas in King and Pierce County not permitting it for new construction
2 - There are a lot of incentives for builders here (And I would guess coming in many areas) to go all electric for heating for part of this. They ultimately get a break for LEED points in the financial side of the world…This has moved a lot of stuff also over to having primary heat coming from heat pumps.
It is all kind of an interesting shift in the thought of heat for a home, but from my experience in the past 12-18 months, seems to be the trend that we are seeing on the west coast and may spread east. A lot of new construction now is not even having gas plumbed to the home or at the street. I am also seeing a lot of Electric powered Heat Pump style hybrid water heaters. It will be interesting to see if others in other regions are seeing this trend, or if it is just a PNW thing for the Puget Sound. My Asian and Indian clients especially do not like electric heat for cooking as they have grown up with gas all of their lives. Some have gone so far to add in propane tanks for cooktops, even though they are in incorporated areas with sidewalks and such.
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Most heat pumps in my area are “single fuel” electric systems, with electric heat as a EM (Emergency Heat) or aux heat. I am seeing more “dual fuel” systems which is a heat pump with a HE gas furnace as the EM or aux heat.
These new more efficient systems are coming soon.
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@bcawhern1
@kleonard
@tglaze
@ruecker
Thanks to all ofyou on this. Great topic. Learned plenty.
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