After getting five different estimates, we are deciding between the two estimates below. The hours I've spent online trying to learn about air conditioners, furnaces, and the different brands in these estimates is making my head spin. I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on our decision. We live in Seattle, have a two-story 2700 sq ft home with 16 registers (both contractors counted these--why?), and are replacing a furnace and installing an air conditioner for the first-time. Better-than-average insulation for our home that's 30 years old but not of the highest efficiency standards. Neither my husband nor I have ever lived in a home with AC, so we're new to this but I did notice from reading that insulation can make a difference with today's HVAC systems, so I wanted to add this piece of info.

Contractor #1-- $7775 total (not including electrician's cost to bring electrical to AC unit)

Rheem 75,000 BTU 80% single stage furnace--20 yr heat exchanger warranty, 10 yr parts

Honeywell F300 16x20 electronic air cleaner-- 5yr parts

Rheem 3 ton 13 SEER A/C--10yr compressor warranty, 10 yr parts

All the above includes a 1 yr labor warranty.

Use our current Honeywell RTH6300B Thermostat that we already have

Contractor #2--$8520

Bryant Model #310JAV042090 Single Stage 80% Furnace w/ filter cabinet and 4"filter

Bryant Model #CNPVP042 Coil Cabinet

Bryant Model #113ANA042 3.5 ton 13 SEER A/C with Puron refrigerant

Honeywell Vision Pro 6000 Programmable Thermostat

Bryant warranties are the same as contractor #1's estimate.

In case you are wondering why we are not choosing higher efficiency models, we took our energy bills from the past two years and looked at how much energy we used with our current furnace (which is close to 20 years old now). We learned that we would have to use our furnace for over 20 years in order to recoup the thousands of extra dollars we'd spend to buy the more efficient furnace models and our rebates with these models isn't very much to help offset the extra cost. Unfortunately, we have no AC experience to know if the AC models suggested by the contractors are the correct ones for our home.

We appreciate any help in comparing our two estimates.