I am the owner of a single family house with a 15-year-old heat pump.Recently the unit stopped defrosting. I had a service technician come to inspect the unit. He said the electronic board that controls the defrost cycle is not working and must be replaced. The estimated cost is about $350. However, due to the advanced age of my heat pump, the service technician recommended replacing my entire unit — inside and outside. The cost of replacement is about $5,000.Generally speaking, I love my current heat pump. It is very reliable and very economical. I have extremely low monthly utility bills and the unit does a good job in winter and summer. Which leads me to my two questions. Do heat pumps really need to be replaced at such an early age? Everyone I talk to seems to say heat pumps generally only last about 10 to 12 years. Anything more and you are on borrowed time. Everyone tells me that the service technician is right -- replace the unit, don't fix the part. I don't get why a heat pump should need complete replacement after only 10 to 12 years -- in my case 15 years.

It seems like you should be able to repair and fix the unit many times before you will ever match the cost of replacing it. 2 ton ac buy onlineI know many older furnaces would last for 30 plus years.what is the best residential ac unitOur society seems to be a very "throw away" society these days.how much is a ac window unitWouldn't it be wise to invest money into repairing a heat pump, before replacing it?Do you feel that both units should be replaced as a "matching set"? Or can you just replace one unit at a time? My outside unit is the one with the problem. The inside unit is fine. Although it is even older than the outside unit -- probably 20 plus years old. But once again, everyone seems to tell me the same thing -- replace both units.

I don't seem to understand the logic behind replacing both units.I'm going to echo the advice of your service provider and the other wise folks with whom you've consulted. I must tell you, however, that your 15-year-old compressor/condenser has done its job and doesn't owe anybody anything. It has served you well but it's time for it to go for a couple of reasons. Sure, it seemed to you to work well and operate at a level that did not weaken your bank account, but all things are relative.Let's look at it in its 15-year time frame and compare it to what happens today. Heat pumps have a reputation for lasting from 8 to 12 years -- in my experience -- on average. Some last longer -- some less. That's because they do double duty; both heating and cooling. Those furnaces that you eye enviously lasting 30 years plus are only working less than half the time the heat pump does -- no A/C -- so proportionately the heat pump's right up with them. When I see a heat pump working well at the age of yours I always say the good news is, it's still working and bad news is, it's still working.

The older a heat pump is in today's world the more electricity it will use to do its job.There is a formula that is used in the industry to calculate the energy in against the heating and cooling that comes out of it. It called the SEER rating and means seasonal energy efficiency rating. You see them written on the sides of the newer units and they are numbers that hover around 10 and up a bit. The SEER number indicates the amount of electricity that goes into the unit against the amount of heating or cooling capacity that comes out- - the higher the number the more efficient it is.Your 15-year-old unit is probably 10 SEER or less. Since January 23, 2006, every unit sold in the U.S. has to be at least SEER 13. That's pretty darn efficient and to do that the heat pump engineers had to go to a different coolant and had to redesign the units – both inside and out. That's why both have to be replaced.Pouring money into your old unit is not economical in the short or the long run in view of the requirements.

You could nurse your old soldier along with $350 here and $200 there for maybe a couple of years or so and then the technician will come out, look at the unit and deliver the bad news -- it's shot and that's all there is to it. Now all the money you put into the older unit is money gone and you're right at square one for the new unit.So go ahead and get on board with the replacement system and keep a sharp eye on your heating and cooling bills.I'll bet you'll be pleased.Keep the mail coming. If you've got a question, tip, or comment let me know. Sign up or log in to customize your list. This happens with me many times. And people misinterpret it. But then I thought for a while and now think that I should have some unambiguous sentence to convey my message. Could you decrease the AC please? Fifteen minutes later - Hey, it is chilling. Didn't you lower down the AC? It was 22 degrees and I made it 18! Ah, I mean decrease - make it less effective/intensive. The AC was too much.

Does increasing AC (Air Conditioning) means moving the degrees from 18 to 22 or 22 to 18? The former is increase in AC as it's increasing in temperature and the latter one is correct in a way that it increased the intensity (like, increase the volume, it's not audible). The problem is of course that we are more used to heating systems than to cooling systems (heating is much easier, and humans have been doing it for tens of thousands of years). And with every heating system, turning up the system means increasing the resulting temperature. Many A/C systems have a temperature indication, and many even have buttons to increase or decrease the temperature. So effectively, when you mean "please decrease the effectiveness of the A/C", you are asking someone to press the up-arrow key on the A/C, increasing the temperature. This is an contradictory thing for many people. When I turn up the heating, I increase the temperature. Now you want me to turn up the A/C, then I will likewise increase the temperature.

Strictly speaking, your interpretation makes sense (and as a stickler for literal interpretation, I have used it myself!). For most people, however, "turning up" any appliance that controls temperature means adjusting it in such a way that the temperature will increase. There are examples where people mean the opposite of what they really say. Maybe the most common example is the confusing fact that electrical current runs in the opposite direction of the movement of the electrons. With a heating system, an oven, a fan, water flow, etc. to turn up or increase or crank up the setting is unambiguous -- you want more of whatever the thing is doing, which means raising the temperature or flow. To turn down or decrease the setting reduces activity (leading to a lower temperature, etc.). With a cooling system, it is potentially ambiguous, as the usual meaning is still to increase the activity, but the result is to lower the temperature. Thus the convention (at least in the US) is "turn up the A/C" means to make it colder (lower temperature) by increasing the work the A/C unit is doing.