Heat pump for upstairs bonus room? We're going to have to replace our AC/furnace gas pack element this...
We're going to have to replace our AC/furnace gas pack element this spring. It's a 8-9yo Bryant unit, but the coils surrounded by the A-coils are leaking and it'll be $2500ish to fix. We currently own a dual-zone unit - downstairs and after we have a 300 sqft. bonus room above our garage. Currently the zone system isn't markedly effective. The upstairs and downstairs can't run concurrently so it never really stays comfortable up at hand. Would a heat pump or something of the close to be too much? Our current unit is 3.5 tons and we've be told to replace it with indistinguishable (1830 total sq. feet). Could we get away next to a smaller gas-pack unit if we added a steam pump? Would a better zone system do the job? Do they gross them where they run concurrently? We also don't own an "off" setting upstairs so we just hold to crank the thermostat up to 90 in the summer and 55 surrounded by the winter to keep it from coming on when we don't want it to.
Answers: It depends on where on earth you live and what the most efficient type of fuel is contained by your area. You inevitability professional advice from a few HVAC contractors contained by your area. That you can't turn it rotten in a zone sounds only wrong. Also, I have never hear of a furnace that couldn't do both zones at once. It sounds resembling it was seriously undersized if it could solitary hear one zone at a time. Consider a pellet stove or wood stove for your bonus room. The pellets and biobricks (to use contained by the wood stove in place of split wood) are relatively verbs, affordable, and carbon neutral. I warmth my entire house with two pellet stoves -- 1550 sq ft + a full subterranean vault.
You have too copious options to index them here. The place to start is to get a nouns calculation. This will update you what size unit you necessitate.