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paulsm

condo unit

paulsm
12 years ago

I live in a converted greystone four stories high. We have two units... 1st and 2nd floors each about 1100 sq ft. All the units have the same setup. The brand is armstrong. Magic pac I believe.

It seems like there is always a system breaking down in one unit or the other in all 4 floors. I am beginning to question whether this brand is a low level quality setup that was installed at time of conversion. The unit upstairs was installed in 1997 so it is around 14 years old. My guess would be that that is not very good. How long should a quality system last on the average. The repair person said the condenser was shot so he recommended replacing the whole unit... cost around 5 grand.

We replaced the complete setup in the 2nd unit about 2 years ago... cost around 5000. That setup did not work from day one and they had to yank it out and take it back to their office to work on it. They brought it back and it worked for about a week before it went down again. Another repair visit and now it seems to work ok.

I don't have any specs and am not sure where to get them unless they are posted on the unit somewhere. Each setup exhausts through a hole in the brick wall so replacing the setup might present a problem with the size of the hole.

I think I need to find a picture of what a setup looks like and some description of what each part does and how it interacts with the rest of the setup. Right now I don't have a clue how any of this works.

In reading through some of the posts I get the impression there are 3 tiers of quality brands. A short list of some brands in each level would be helpful.

Anyway I am not excited about another 5 grand of costs. Perhaps I will just get a small window a/c unit for the rest of the summer. The repair person said the furnace part looked ok.

Thanks

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