Hello everyone. Please bear with me and dont wreck me too bad for my mistakes LOL
I have an approx 1600 sq ft home in south florida. Home was built in 1999, with 70% of the home having ~12ft ceilings. Until 6 weeks ago, the home had the original 10 seer Rheem AC from ’99 (amazing). We had the whole AC system inspected when we moved in, in 2018. Had one heat strip replaced, evap coil cleaned, and proper charge verified. It seemed to always struggle on very hot days and run and run. Finally the compressor started sounding bad, and I walked into a warm house one evening after work. I work with several distributors at my job, so I was able to get a great deal on a complete inside and outside unit for less than 3k. It’s a York/JCI with PSC blower in the air handler set to low. Beautifully made equipment to my untrained eye at least.
My sales guy asked what tonnage, so I read the label on my air handler in the garage – it said 3.5 Ton. I told him, just going off the cuff, I would like to go 4 ton because of how the old unit struggled, plus, i have two kids that somehow cant remember to close doors behind themselves.
Everything came in, delivered to my driveway on skids. everything down to the foil tape, heat kit, drain line float switch, etc. I Tossed it all in and let it rip. It cools great, has about 8 to 10 minute On-cycles during hot days. What I was concerned about is humidity though. I have an RH & temp meter in the center of the house that hovers around 53-55 during the day, and goes down to the mid to low 40%’s at night time. My home stays set on 73 degrees. I was worried about when it starts to not be so hot during the days, say like December through february-ish, where the runtime is shorter on the AC. Because of this, I decided to get a whole house dehumidifier from the same supplier I got the rest of the HVAC equipment from. He sent me an AprilAire 1830. Beautiful unit, again, I am not a professional, but it looks very heavy duty and well made, with pretty decent instructions.
In the instructions, the recommended installation was duct to duct, basically pulling in air from the home air return, dehumidifying it, and dumping it right back in the same line prior to the air handler. This is how I did the install. The controller is wired into the air handler to be able to make its own fan call as needed as well, as it states should be done in the manual. Heres where my problem starts – The 1830 runs nonstop 24/7 and the RH goes up in the house instead of down. It pushed my RH into the 70’s one night, and I woke up all congested at 3AM. I pulled up the chart from the RH/temp gauge on my phone (its bluetooth) and it was the most awful thing Ive ever seen. The dehu is putting out water – I filled a 5 gal bucket in 12 hrs. I shut it off, and ran AC only and the humidity is back under control in the 45-55 range, and lower in the dead of the night.
I am thinking that the dehu is washing the condensation off the AC coil? could this be? If so, my hunch is plumbing it to dump into the supply would alleviate this, by not having to run the hvac fan with the AC off? What say you?
thanks in advance guys!