for those of you that have the acadia. did you have all your supply lines pasted at the joints then taped then insulated, as per acadia's installation guidelines. I have been having some problems with the installer, and I was told today by hallowell that since the ducts were not installed by these guidelines I am sacrificing a lot of efficiency, and IT MUST be done. they also think my main trunk is severely undersized. I gave them the layout of the new duct design and they were not to happy....

I have an Acadia in our new home and have been using it this winter successfully. Spareho - yes, all of our duct work has been sealed and insulated. However, this was a requirement for the Energy Star certification and not from Hallowell, I don't believe.

I live in southern, NH where we've had a ton of snow and it has been very cold. Here is what it has cost me to heat my 3,500 sq' home with the Acadia model 36:

11/15/08 - 12/12/08: $158.97
12/13/08 - 1/15/09: $202.82

This is quite a savings over propane, which is up to $3.10/gallon here now.

Also, the folks at Hallowell said it is more efficient to keep the temperature steady in the house all day vs. dropping at night and heating back up in the morning. They said the system is more efficient holding steady state rather than climbing a number of degrees. I had been dropping the temperature at night, but will now hold steady 24x7.

Hope this helps.
-Dave

Dave,

It sounds like the Acadia has been working well for you -- thanks for sharing your electricity costs. We are currently in about the same size house as yours, and we just paid $832 for about 5 weeks of propane. Fortunately, this is just a rental and our new home will be much more efficient.

How do you heat your domestic HW?

I think we're probably in the same vicinity... we're in Hollis. Would you mind sharing the name of your HVAC contractor? We have been getting quotes from several in the area, but not many are knowledgeable about tight, well-insulated homes.

I'll put my email address in my profile if you'd like to take this offline.

Thanks,
Camille

dave, thanks for the reply. I have been on the phone with hallowell alot these past couple days. the tech guy actually told me the duct sealing process is for their specs and it says in in all caps in the installation manual. I pointed this out a couple times and it was disregarded. I am having some other problems, that are being worked on now and was wondering if you had any similar things going on. I think mine is mostly installer problems but just want to ask:

do you have loud lineset noise. mine is very loud. they hung them to the floor joists below

can you hear the compressor from the acadia in the house. once again mine is loud like it is struggling. it is making a wha.... wha ...wha... wha noise (haha that helps) it is loud enough to hear halfway across the house.

I think alot of it has to do with an undersized main trunk and very undersized returns. they are redesigning my month long installation and making it right, sealing and insulating all supplies, adding more returns, you know doing what i am going to pay them to do. They hired a bad subcontractor that really threw my job into the gutter, now they are fixing it. I hired a very reputable company, I introduced them to hallowell, and they decided to be retailers. this was their first unit sold, so this didnt sit well with hallowell that things are going this way. they are very upset with the install and expressed they are very picky about their retailers, if things are not done right they will pull from them. hallowell has been fantastic in helping me. their customer service is top notch, they really spent alot of time troubleshooting and made sure i understood everything (hence our 2 hour conversation.) i feel very comfortable with them as a company.

Hello!

Camille - I actually live in Brookline, NH up off rt. 130. We moved into our house just a few months ago from another house we had built in Brookline that used propane. The propane costs were through the roof, so I supplemented with a pellet stove. I ended up with a net savings of about $500/year in heating costs, but the stove was high maintenance.

We have an on-demand hot water system that uses propane. It's made by Rinnai. It takes a little longer for the water to heat, but we never run out.

Our house was built by Adamyk Homes. Keith was not up to speed on anything related to efficiency or energy star, so it was a bit of a struggle and costly to get us there. I would not recommend his HVAC guy for a few reasons. The reasons may just be specific to us, but let me know if you want details on the situation. I'd suggest getting contractor recommendations from Hallowell if they can provide them. I will tell you that it cost us almost $15k to UPGRADE to the Acadia over the standard propane furnace.

Spareho - you are right - I went back through my paperwork and the ductwork sealing and insulating was part of the Acadia upgrade we did, not an energy star requirement. I think part of the problem is that the local contractors are not familiar with the Acadia system yet. Our HVAC guy admitted it was new technology to him. We were steering towards geothermal until the quote came back at $35-40k. Then he recommeded the Acadia. Funny you should mention the installation manual - I had a similar experience. I saw they were going to put the Acadia condenser on 4 cinder blocks. It clearly says in the manual that it needs to be on a solid pad. I left the manual open and highlighted that section for the installer to see. Next thing I new the blocks were gone and a pad was poured :-)

Our system does make some interesting noises sometimes. I have heard that wha wha wah noise as it fires up on occasion. I've also heard a high pitched whine. I think these noises occur when it finishes its defrost mode and purges out the water droplets from the fan area. I remember reading that it starts with a burst of air to excavate that water, so I figured that must be it. It seems to be working just fine, so the noises must be normal.

When we first decided on the Hallowell, I contacted the company. They offered to send out one of their engineers for FREE to oversee the installation. Our builder said thanks, but no thanks. I do think the system has been installed correctly, so I guess it worked out in the end.

Let me know if you guys have any more questions!
-Dave

"I will tell you that it cost us almost $15k to UPGRADE to the Acadia over the standard propane furnace. "
you would have been better off with a regular heat pump at this price diff. it will never return that diff in savings.

Hi xracer,

I would have balked at that price too if I wasn't getting central A/C as part of the package :-)

Hi All,

Just posting our last heating bill $$. For the period of Jan 15 - Feb 13, it cost us $233 to heat our home with the Acadia. That includes a 2 degree increase in the temperature of our 1st floor.

Anyone have a house on Long Island ? I am curious if the Acadia works in our milder climate. It seems to work very well where its colder, but I have noticed from posts on various forums, perhaps, not so well in warmer areas. Thanks

Hi sunnyflies,
My unit has not had good luck keeping the house warm when the temps outside are mild, around 40's to 50's. We set it to heat the house to 66 and it will often cool the house down to lower 60's when outdoor temps are mild. I am working on getting a reason/solution for this problem now. Otherwise it has been working well for me.

Hi dsilvest,
I was interested to see what your electric cost where this winter so I could compare them to my own. I live in souther Maine and installed my acadia last sept. I will post my electric cost/info later.

Bumping up, as I am curious to see updates if possible, particularly from nh residents, on reliability and performance of Hallowell. Also, does anyone have comparable experience with Mitsubishi or Fujitsu?