Hello,
What kind of crane costs that much money? When I was doing Dry Cleaning maintenance, I regularly hired cranes. The average cost in 1990Âs was about $85 for the first hour. After that it was a little cheaper. Typically I was able to lift the old unit out and set the new unit within 15 minutes of the cranes arrival. Once I had to use a large crane for a second story high building. I was 45 minutes late and it still only cost about $150. If I were to call a crane company, the cost would have been maybe $500 for the first hour, but I always used a sign company. They also rent out cranes daily. The sign companies are more reasonable. The larger crane can drive up to the front of your house and lift over the house, with a 40 ft front yard, and a 40 ft deep house.

If the house does not cool properly, how much time is allowed to cool in the afternoon. Typically a house needs about 14 hours to cool properly in my climate. When I install a new unit, I do not attempt to adjust the Freon past making sure it has enough, for a day or more. This allows the system to cycle several times, after cooling the structure.

Your 3.5 ton system could be small, if the structure was not extremely well insulated. You did not read on this forum anything about 700 sqft per ton. If anything the statement could have referenced a set of conditions for a particular house that has ZERO relevance to your situation. We constantly tell people do not believe in a sqft per tonnage. It can be different for the same floor plan house sitting across the street, by as much as a ton of AC. If I used that number it would probably be in reference to the new Texas laws that specify sqft per ton to obtain a minimal energy efficient rating on a new home. The problem with the law is it doesnÂt work for 98% of all construction.

The only way you can be sure of minimum needs is to do a manual J on your house. Someone competent should do the analysis, before offering a bid.

Hi-- thanks for the information. I don't know what a manual J is--- but company #2 measured the house square footage and came up with the 4 ton unit figure. They called this an engineering analysis. This company also showed me a chart listing charges--- $499 for any situations that involved special situations such as the crane.