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FWIW... aside from personal laundry and clothes wear habits, living in the south means sweat (or in the case of southern ladies "glow") and clothes becoming unwearable sooner. It also means more showers.
Your local utility may/should have a portable watt meter device that will record consumption on any questionable device....This should be able to help you pinpoint the usage increase. Also have they replaced your meter with a new smart meter? There have been a large number of customers that have seen the same thing you have after a meter change out...Last but not least your utility should be able willing to conduct a residential energy audit that may help as well.
2 loads a week!!! I need to know your secret. We have about 6 loads a week, and there are only 3 of us. We have a super capacity HD washer and dryer, and we have 1 large load of towels alone. Then there's the whites, work clothes, permanent press light/dark, it comes to at least 6 a week. Even before my son we had several loads a week. Please share you secrets.
I want to know too. We do 2-3 loads a day. Not every day, but there are few days we do not do at least 1 load, and more days than not we do 2-3. We have 7 people and too many pets to count, butstill if we could get down to six loads a week, I would be thrilled.
So, i can't figure this out!
nothing has changed since last year......(except for newer appliances), and my usage is through the roof. last March: 1062, this year 1611). We've replaced the HVAC unit outside as the old one was bad......nothing else has changed.........thermostat on 67 where as last year it was on 69 or 70......no new appliances.....no new habits/changes.....
Question: Could a bad fridge cause over usage? Our fridge has issues (frost in the freezer......defrost a few times a day....always seems to be ON making sounds....) could this be the culprit?
You changed your outdoor unit only?
How old is your house and was the outdoor unit the original unit?
Mixing and matching indoor coils to outdoor coils is a no no for efficiency. There have been many studies that all resulted in the same thing. For heat pumps it's a big no no mean it's not acceptable in any circumstances. For straight air systems there were test done where a 13 SEER outdoor unit matched to a 10 SEER indoor evaporator coil resulted in a total SEER for the system of 8. 10 + 13 = 8
That's bad.
The reason you don't mix and match newer heatpump outdoor units with older evaporator coils is the older coils were smaller. What that means is that your newer smaller compressor with larger outdoor coil will be absorbing more heat from the air and sending it to the smaller indoor coil where it will have a harder time releasing the heat because its surface area is smaller than what you should be matching for the outdoor coil.
That problem is exacerbated because that heat is recirculated back to the outdoor unit where it continue to absorb heat (it can't get rid of) which cause higher compression ratios which translates into higher cost to do the same work it use to. The loss can be 10 - 50% loss in efficiency (depending on heat strip setup). Depending on the size of your system that can translate into longer run times along with large increases in kilowatt usage.
Without knowing all your details this would be the first thing I'd recommend and if the instillation company said it should be fine then you need to run away from them as fast as you can and go find someone who cares about what they do.
I think you need the company that replaced your HVAC unit to come out and check on it to see if that is causing the problem. In April 2007 I replaced my 27 yr old system with an entirely new HVAC system. Seemed Ok during the summer because I rarely need air conditioning. Come December my usage skyrocketed and I knew something was not right.
Turns out that the inside unit in the basement had a defect. Something on it was cracked ( from the factory or during installation? not sure) and causing a leak. It was as if I was running on all electric - but, it did not become obvious until I was into the colder month of December.
Fortunately I have a 10 year parts and labor warranty on the entire system and did not hesitate to call them. It took two different technicians looking for the problem before they found the defect and another month to get a replacement part. As I recall it took them about 4 hours to take the unit apart and put it back together - but, it has been working great ever since.
Just because something is new does not rule out the possibility that the unit my be defective. Perhaps the HVAC is leaking freon and it is causing the heat pump to be running constantly.
How old is your house and was the outdoor unit the original unit?
Mixing and matching indoor coils to outdoor coils is a no no for efficiency. There have been many studies that all resulted in the same thing. For heat pumps it's a big no no mean it's not acceptable in any circumstances. For straight air systems there were test done where a 13 SEER outdoor unit matched to a 10 SEER indoor evaporator coil resulted in a total SEER for the system of 8. 10 + 13 = 8
That's bad.
The reason you don't mix and match newer heatpump outdoor units with older evaporator coils is the older coils were smaller. What that means is that your newer smaller compressor with larger outdoor coil will be absorbing more heat from the air and sending it to the smaller indoor coil where it will have a harder time releasing the heat because its surface area is smaller than what you should be matching for the outdoor coil.
That problem is exacerbated because that heat is recirculated back to the outdoor unit where it continue to absorb heat (it can't get rid of) which cause higher compression ratios which translates into higher cost to do the same work it use to. The loss can be 10 - 50% loss in efficiency (depending on heat strip setup). Depending on the size of your system that can translate into longer run times along with large increases in kilowatt usage.
Without knowing all your details this would be the first thing I'd recommend and if the instillation company said it should be fine then you need to run away from them as fast as you can and go find someone who cares about what they do.
I'm no expert when it comes to this - but it seems like you are.
When we replaced our failing freon compressor with a new puron compressor we were advised to change our old air handler as well because the 2 parts of the system wouldn't "play well" together. We followed the advice - and didn't have any problems. Could that be an issue here? Robyn
I'm no expert when it comes to this - but it seems like you are.
When we replaced our failing freon compressor with a new puron compressor we were advised to change our old air handler as well because the 2 parts of the system wouldn't "play well" together. We followed the advice - and didn't have any problems. Could that be an issue here? Robyn
So they replaced your R-22 compressor with a R-410a compressor with a new air handler and changed nothing else but the refrigerant?
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