I am also in central NJ. If you are near Mercer county I would like to send you the contact info of the Carrier dealer I used and trust. Let me know if you are interested.

Don't buy your HVAC equipment through PSE&G or any other utility or big box store. You will pay a higher price and you have to work with a contractor who needs to cut corners in order to make a profit.

Condensing furnaces (90%+ efficiency) will have issues with freezing condensate if they are installed in unconditioned space. I am not sure what this contractor is proposing to do to solve the problem. In these situations heat tape can be installed to keep the condensate from freezing.

The fact that he wants to sell you a mismatched system of a Rudd furnace and a Trane condenser is a major red flag. It is highly unlikely you will achieve a 17 SEER rating, and even if you did, he could not produce a document verifying the rating. You should not be signing any waiver that gets him off the hook for a bad installation. On top of this he is reluctant to give you model information. Please don't work with this contractor.

You are doing the right thing by asking questions. If a contractor can't spend 15 minutes answering questions, then he is not a the right contractor and you should keep looking.

Thank you very much, Mike. I was hoping you'd respond & were closer to Monmouth County. I'm in eastern Monmouth County but not beach town.

My neighbor downstairs who bought the NJNG system gave me copy of her paperwork. They had "special" which says she got furnace for "free" with purchase of Trane XR13 A/C. I wouldn't tell her I thought overall cost of $5,500. was an awful lot for just that A/C model if that was predicate for getting "free furnace". When I looked on Trane web site it said the XR13 a/c unit is 2nd from bottom offered. Nothing wrong with that if you have set amount to spend for okay performance but I get bad feeling when they seemingly dupe people with "free furnace" language.

When I asked about matching A/C & Furnace, as I've seen on manufacturer web sites, the salesman said "they're all made by the same company". I know there are only a handful of OEM corporations but if a company says this matches that I'd think they should quote that way.

If there's one thing my late father taught me....ask questions, get answers in writing, compare written info and don't believe BS sales pitches. I do my best to follow his sage advice but it's taken me a while to figure out HVAC components & what their specs mean. He used to take care of making inquiries of this kind for me. I was spoiled by a great father!

I know I don't need a gold-plated system but want to get best I can for reasonable cost.

I went through my later father's files & found name of independent HVAC company he used for years (for sizable center hall Colonial) after much investigation and comparison. They're sending someone over on Wed. to review situation & give proposal(s) for couple options. Don't know if it matters to people more familiar with HVAC but their installers are NATE certified which I believe requires continuing education. Hopefully they already got common sense at birth!

It didn't dawn on me until later that my outdoor utility room must have some insulation because it also holds the hot water heater and pipes which don't have external insulation but haven't frozen in 27 years. A condensate pan under furnace is probably more prone to freezing due to lower depth & possibility of other things freezing along the way. I just know it's not very cold in there during winter but one could presume that's because the furnace is blasting!

It's difficult for me to deal with a tradesman once I get a feeling I'm being given a blatant pitch or blown off for asking questions. Every purchaser can't be well versed in HVAC so I'd think a lot of people ask lots of questions.

Thanks again for your help. Stay afloat with heavy rains out your way.

Leslie

Received email saying "jimbop99" posted reply on my thread but it's not shown here. Sent notice to Houzz about it so I can see jimbop99's full text. If you see this, jimbop99, know I'm not ignoring you but I just can't see your comment!

I posted but mike_home said it all, so I deleted mine.