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Welcome to Let’s Build with Armada, the podcast where Washington homeowners learn how to remodel with clarity, strategy, and confidence—on a schedule that follows real projects, not a rigid calendar.
I’m Charlie Carter from Armada Design & Build. After years of working across the greater Seattle area, I’ve learned that successful remodeling isn’t about luck. It’s about planning, transparent conversations, and understanding how every decision—from windows to insurance to material selections—affects long-term value.
In each episode, I sit down with experts to answer the questions homeowners genuinely care about:
- Why your PNW windows cry every winter
- Financing options that actually make sense in 2026
- How to not get burned by a cheap insurance quote
- What adds value in Seattle… and what just burns cash
- How to plan a DADU without turning your backyard into a 2-year construction zone
Whether you’re preparing for a kitchen or bathroom remodel, planning a full-home upgrade, or exploring a backyard DADU for equity or rental income, this podcast gives you the clarity you need to move forward confidently.
Listen here, watch more real projects on our YouTube channel, and visit us when you’re ready to build with confidence.
And don’t forget to follow the show—so you never miss an episode that could save you time, money, and stress.
Visit the Armada Design Center in Bellevue when you’re ready to start planning your own home transformation!
📍 15600 NE 8th St. Suite O2, Bellevue, WA 98008
📞 425-587-8286
🌐 https://armadabuild.com/?utm_source=transistor
Welcome back to Let's Build with Armada. Armada and Design and Build our podcast. Here we are based in beautiful Belleview, Washington. We're in our showroom today and we are going to be talking about I think one of the most important parts of a home. whether you're remodeling, building new, particularly is HVAC, talking about heating, cooling, ventilation, making your home comfortable, healthy, and that kind of thing. So, we're going to dive into it. Uh, I'm very excited about this topic. It's one that I think is important. I think I know a pretty good amount about it, but just in case, I have an expert with us today, Carl Christensen, the owner of Legacy 1 Heating and Cooling based out of Muckle TO Washington, suburb of Seattle. Um, he is here with us today. He's being a trooper. He's a little bit under the weather, but he came in anyway. So, if he's a little, you know, just forgive him a little bit, but we'll um we'll dive in and get going here. We're going to talk about what you need to know. Um the questions you need to ask, the things that are important about modern HVAC systems, energy codes, a big deal, being compliant with that, making smart choices for your home, which there are many choices. So, Carl, great to have you here. Thanks for being here and fighting through not feeling so great. Um, but before we get started, as always, like, subscribe, leave a comment down below, topics that might be interesting, things we may have missed. You want to have Carl back for another one. I guarantee you we could turn this into a couple of episodes. Uh, rate and review on the podcast platforms. We're everywhere you want to go find your stuff. So, thank you for being here and I hope you learn something. I expect that I will. A little bit of Carl's background. Um, he's a Washington guy. Born and raised. Been here forever. Went to college for a while. That wasn't a thing. Went into construction, specifically pipe fitting and sprinkler systems. Right. Did that for a minute. Then went back to school. Got a degree in environmental technology and sustainable practices. Then started working in controls and energy tracking, energy auditing. transitioned into HVAC service tech as you know doing the work for about 10 years or so. Didn't like kind of how all that was going and what you were seeing. So, and then in 2016, Legacy 1 was born and he's got about 14 guys, technicians out working in the field these days and just recently added electrical. So, he's got some electricians now, too. So licensed electrical and HVAC, but HVAC is kind of your main thing. All right, perfect. So, okay, so let's dive in. So much to talk about the few emails and conversation that we had specifically about this and prepping and like what do we want to talk about? And I think maybe the number one thing is heat pump versus traditional furnace, right? I think there's a lot of controversy out there, maybe a lot of misinformation or lack of information. people just aren't sure what's right, what's better, so on and so forth. So, give me kind of open with what's the difference, what do you like and why, what makes sense, etc. Let's go. Okay. Well, I'm going to give you the diplomatic answer, which is it really depends on what you're looking for, okay, in your house. Um, heat pumps are amazing if they're used right. All right. They do really, really well at maintaining temperature. They do not do well at overcoming large temperatures. So, if you're a person that likes to sleep cold, okay? And live during the day where it's really warm, heat pump's a terrible idea. So, if you want to sleep, like we do this in my house that we sleep at 62 63° and then we don't go that high during the day, but so if you want to go from a 10°ree tip change from like night to day, right? that a heat pump not a great solution? Not at all. Not at all. Okay. So, so what so what is the difference between a like a heat pump and for people if we can explain it sort of simply like the difference between a heat pump and a furnace or a furnace and air conditioning? Can you kind of give me some technical jargon about what sort of what that is, how they work? So, a heat pump is the transfer of heat through refrigeration. All right. Right. So you're removing heat from outside, spilling it in the house. Removing heat from the house, spilling it outside, air conditioning, right? You're So you're not creating heat, you're picking it up and moving it. All right. You're relocating the heat. You're taking the heat and putting it in or taking the heat and putting it out. Correct. From the AC standpoint. So this is Now, if I'm not saying these words right, then you know, correct me and whatnot. I'm not the per the expert. So a furnace when we talk about a electric or a gas forced air furnace right is essentially a fire some heat source of heat in a box that then the blower blows air across. So it picks up that heat and then blows it through the ducts and distributes around distributes it around the home. Correct. Right. And then there's a return system. So it also pulls air back into the furnace and not it's not just a one-way deal. These are recirculating and the and the air moves around a little bit like your bloodream circulation, right? So comes in, picks up oxygen, goes around and around. The air in the house is doing the same thing going across some form of heat and then distributing it which then raises the temp in the house. Now air conditioning, right? If I'm not right about this, just check me on that. So then you've got the thing outside which is condenser or compressor. I've always heard the two terms. Depends where you live. Same thing. Okay. So, they're kind of interchangeable terms. Yes. Right. Okay. So, so then you got the air conditioner outside and then there's a loop there, right? And that's got like the freon or whatever it is these days. I know that's changed from environmental concerns of what the coolant is or the refrigerant. Yeah. Right. So, then that circulates and goes outside, dumps the heat. That's why there's a big fan it blows that's getting the heat out of it. Condenses or compresses the freon cools it correct brings it into the house into the air distribution thing. There's a thing called an a coil turns that essentially into a block of ice right or makes it very cold. Yes. Air blows across it cools the air draws the heat out and then makes a loop and dumps the heat outside. Yes. Right. Right. Would you say that's a fair explanation of how that works? Pretty simplified. Yeah. Okay. You're running through a coil, right? And picking up the heat. Moving the heat. And that's what that refrigerant is doing is moving the heat. It takes the heat from inside, takes it out, disperses it, cools down, goes in, gets more heat, and takes it out. Yes. Essentially, what's happening? So then a heat pump is kind of the same thing, but it goes both directions where air conditioning only works one direction. Correct. Just reverses the flow of refrigerant. just reverses the flow of refrigerant. So, it will go outside when you're looking for heat and it will get warm outside, come inside, make something hot, and then air Yeah. blows across it. All right. So, now here's the the the trick question, right? Is how can it draw air or heat out of the air if it's 15° outside? How does that work? What's the what's the voodoo magic happening there? The voodoo magic is that the refrigerant flash boils at a very low temperature. So it's not like water boiling at 125 212 degrees. Okay. It boils at 15°. Oh, okay. So that's where the magic is is in the the the chemical makeup, the transiting fluid or where the what's the actually moving the heat is that's where the magic happens is is in that really then. Yeah. Okay. And so now I do know that or I believe I know that heat pumps one of the ways that they're rated or measured or something like that is how cold outside it can be that they can still operate. Is that true? Like this unit will work down to this temperature, this unit will work to a lower temperature because it's more efficient or it has different chemical makeup. Is that an accurate statement? In general. In general. In general. So the higher the seir rating. S E R and that stands for seasonal seasonal energy efficiency rating or ratio. You should be something like that. Correct. Okay. Seasonal energy efficiency rating. Ratio. Okay. Yeah. I don't pay a lot of attention to SEIR. Okay. Uh everybody uses it up here. It's not really that important. HPF, which is your heating seasonal ratio. Okay. Basically, right? Because that's what we care about is how how well it's going to do in heating season. Okay? We get a month of summer. So, we don't we're not it's different here say than it would be in Arizona or Southern California or you know warm climate area. They have different concerns, different things they think about. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, what is it? HS. What? PF. HSPF2 now. Okay. So they it used to be just the refrigerant how um how efficient the refrigerant was making it and but they didn't take into account the energy using for the fan for the air handler all those things. So now companies have to take all of those the whole system the whole as a system do it as a rating. All right. So uh HSPF is the for the whole heating season. Okay. is an average. All right. Average over the heating season. So the higher that number is, the more efficient it is at heating. The more efficiently it heats. So if you have a HSPF of what? Like what's the is it at 12 or 100? Like what's about 9.5 I think is what like Washington State they go up higher than that. But but the cost of those units starts getting so crazy. To go from a 9.5 to an 11 that like a 9.8. Oh, so it's really tight. Okay. So, from a 9.5 to a 9.8, the equipment costs a lot more, right? A lot a lot more. And the savings you get is smaller. Every step you go up, right? So, the price tag goes up. You're spending thousands more for the equipment because it's more efficient, but you're not like it's incremental tiny bits of improvement for a lot more acquisition cost. Yes. Right. Okay. So the and that's a an axiom that I have talked about with clients and for years and years is that generally speaking the more expensive something cost to buy or install the acquisition cost the more efficient or lower the operating cost. Yes. Typically. Right. And then the lower the acquisition cost, the higher the operating cost. Yeah. Like, so if I go down to the big box store and I buy a baseboard heater, an electric baseboard heater, those are a couple hundred bucks, I plug it in or hard wire the thing, it's going to heat my room, but the energy bill is going to be a lot for the heat for that room just because it's such an inefficient system or unit. Correct. Correct. Then I buy one of these super high efficiency heat pump guys that's got this big number and it's thousands and thousands but it's the operating cost is low. Right. All right. So that axiom does hold true. Okay. So then heat pumps you said are good at maintaining temperature not good at moving you across a temperature range. Like you want to kind of keep it within what would you say four like you know hot to cold. It's three standard just four to five degrees. So 4 to 5 degrees. So if you like to sleep at 68 and you like to be during the day at 71, a heat pump might be a good option for you. Yeah. Okay. But if you're moving 10°, something like that, day to night, you're saying no to that. Yeah. You're you're going to be very unhappy when you get your electric wheel. Okay. Cuz it's working hard to change the temperature. Okay. Now that I appreciate that. I did not know that. I That's a great piece of information. So you got that right. Heat pump. good alternate if you like to keep your house relatively within four or five degrees 24 hours a day unless right and now unless you're gone out of town for a week and then you lower the temp or raise the temp depending on the season then you come home and you know all right I'm going to bring it back up then like you know every now and then not a big deal but on a day on a daily basis staying much more even is better yes for a heat pump and so then the alternative if you're a big mover then you would say furnace, typical furnace, and if you need cooling, then AC. How much AC do you do around here? Cuz I know that there we don't have that many days that the AC is like, "Oh my gosh, I got to have AC" kind of thing. Like what how does that work? What's What do you experience in that? It's much more common now. Okay. When I first started, I sat around on call just on waiting for calls, right, in the summer. Now, everybody moving into the moving into the state or just once you live with air conditioning, it's not a luxury anymore. Got to have That's how I look at it. Yeah. Yeah. You got to have it. Yeah. Even for those few days and then and then now and AC is also measured on the sear rating scale. That's on the sear rating, right? So that's a sear rating thing. So in hot weather places they require much higher sear like up into the 20s, right? No, not that high. No, they're I think we're 14 now and they are 15 or something. Oh, okay. So not that far. Yeah, cuz you can when you start getting into like the 20 sear air conditioners, right, the cost is pretty prohibitive for the equipment just because of the technology and that's in it or the components or whatever. So the the the cost of those things go up. Okay. Um so traditional furnace. Now what about from a furnace standpoint? Um gas or electric? Right. Gas is the standard, right? I mean are there but gas is are people really are they really trying to phase out gas? Is like what like are you heating with electric? My personal opinion is yes, they are. But it doesn't make sense. Okay. I don't think we're ever going to have the grid day of everybody on electric, right? I can be wrong. Yeah, I guess. So, if you thought about that, right, convert all the current homes that are heated by gas, say even in the Seattle metro area to electric, like who know, I mean, somebody may, but like the extra demand that would place on the electrical grid would be tremendous. Yeah. Yeah. Huge. And you know um with car chargers and all the other things now people are starting to put 400 amp boxes in their house. They are just to keep up. So I mean I don't think everybody can do that, right? So you don't think gas from a heating standpoint is necessarily an endangered species right now type of thing. Okay. We're not going to see that totally go away. Um all right. So we talked a little bit about heat pumps. We talked about furnace. You talked about AC. Then why don't we now just sort of segue a little bit and talk about minisplit. Yeah. Right. So minplit a lot of people you've heard about minplit. You've heard the term that's the cassette I guess what I call it or a head that goes on the wall right where the air blows out. You see these in Europe a lot. Yeah. Places old buildings that don't have duct work, right? Because this is one of the big benefits of mini splits is no duct work required. And they are also are they not also but they are heat pumps. Yes. Right. So what's the difference on the technology here kind of what's the deal and where did that come from and what you know just give us a little bit on the mini split which is a heat pump but what we were talking about before was kind of the traditional sort of furnace in the house or the garage with the thing outside and a blower that's blowing all over the house in duct work. Right now many splits different. So talk to us about that. Many splits are different in the fact that they are an inverter. Inverter. Okay. Uh they're not different in the fact that most unitary duct work systems heat pumps are all turning to inverter. Okay. So it's a different indoor part. Same basic idea on the outdoor, right? So, they're not really that different anymore other than you have ducted and wall cassettes or ceiling cassettes, right? Yeah. They a lot of people, that's one of the things people don't like about those. I hear in the comments is like, "Oh, I don't like that thing stuck on the wall, that big ugly Yeah." you know, deal there. Is there an option to not have that? There is. There is there is there's uh a couple have a inset in the ceiling, right? We've done those. I've done some of those where they kind of flush mounted into the ceiling and you see just a grill or a grid kind of thing. Yeah, there was four ways. So, you have them in the center with four directional. Okay, those were the old style. The new ones are one ways which fit them cuz I kind of like that guy up there. Okay. Um there's floor units now. Um there's lots of different options. They're getting designer heads out. We just had a change in the refrigerant, so we lost some of those, but new ones are catch back up, right? They'll come back with those, right? So, how old is the mini split technology? Like, is that cuz that's sort of new, at least here for me in the US. I mean, like, how long what what are we 6 8 10 years? 1932 was when the first one was made. Okay. All right. I'm a little off on that. 1932 for the first mini split. For the first duckless Yeah. mini split. Okay. That was Dyky. And what took so long? for it to become as prominent and get the the foothold in the marketplace that it clearly has now. Well, we didn't care about energy efficiency till the 80s recently. Okay. So, they didn't care. It wasn't there were they I'm assuming more costly. Yep. A lot more costly. So, a lot more costly. A lot more bulky back then. They're becoming slimmer. People are not liking duct work. Mhm. That's where it becomes, right? We fight that battle a lot with people like I have to make space to run these ducts for the air to blow through and so we have to lower the ceiling or we have you know whatever the case may be. So big benefit no duct work you don't have to accommodate it right. All right and they're getting lower costs. How how would they compare like say for a 3,000q ft house for like a mini split system to do a 3,000 ft house new construction versus a regular heat pump system versus a furnace and AC? Can you give me like a a lot like kind of flat and I know on furnaces for example that there is a difference in the efficiency of the furnace. I know that that varies, but assuming kind of a flatline, what would you how would you rank those? To do a duckless unit through your whole house is going to be the most expensive. Okay. It's probably going to be double double 3,000 for a gas and air conditioner. Okay. Unitary system. All right. Um the amount of labor that goes into it, the amount of parts, the equipment. Okay. Equipment. Um sizing it right so you have it right. So you can't do things like bathrooms. So there are places small rooms you can't actually use Douglas in. Right. So if you're doing a 3,000 foot house, you're doubling your price most likely. Just on the HVAC component. Yes. Alone. So in that instance then you would recommend what? Like a just a regular heat pump. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can get every room. You can zone it. You can you can do a lot with it. Especially nowadays with some of the trusses they're making, the open open web trusses because you still have the ducks then, right? We're still got to accommodate for the ducks for blowing air all over the house, but our heat gain and heat loss our heat transfer system is more efficient because it's heat pump versus furnace and AC. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But you can do full heat pump system still ducted, right? It is about as efficient. You lose some efficiency in the duct work. Sure. But I mean that's changing from a code standpoint, right? We have to seal them. We have to insulate them. They're all interior now. More crawl spaces. Got so that we're we're not having to heat air that then gets bled off in a crawl space cuz we have a lot of crawl spaces around here. In our part of the world, we do see a lot of crawl spaces. So duct work traditionally would be run under that and that wouldn't be insulated. That space would be it have vents in it so air could blow through to keep it dry. And then you heat the air and then you lose all that heat in the duct work. Yes. So now those can't be there anymore. Code says you can't do it anymore, right? Washington state is not enforcing that as of yet because we're such a downflow system or Yeah. All right. The downflow pushing it in. Yeah. But we are you do have to insulate the ducks and make sure they're sealed and they're not leaky and that kind of thing. Right. So they're more rigorous about that. Yes. All right. a new construction. They are making that happen. They're not uh on remodel, retrofitting. If you have a crawl space system, they're not making you go away from that. Correct. Currently. Currently, but that could change. Yes.
When how do you know when it's time to replace a system? Like what? But I mean obviously if it quits working, right? But it's one of those things too like to me like it's like a car, right? You can take it to the place and they can change the transmission or like you can fix this stuff generally speaking, but where's the tipping point of putting too much money into an old system to repair it versus how where is that like where are you at on that? Until recently, it was considered 15 to 20 years. Okay. This is the lifespan of a of a furnace or a heat pump. Okay. In the last couple years, it's went down to 10 to 12 years. Okay. And why is that? I don't know. And this is from the manufacturers. They're telling us now industry. Industry. Yes. Okay. Are they making them less well? Not really. No. No. The ones that are built cheaply are still built cheaply. That are built nice are still built nice. Okay. So, there's an array of quality like in everything else, you know. Okay. So they're just are they is it because they've been out there in the real world and they were thinking it was a 15 20 year deal and they're now finding that for whatever reason this is kind of how long they're lasting. Is that maybe driving that a little bit or they just want to sell more units? I think it's a mixture of a lot of things. Okay. Um I think they want to sell more units. I do think that the more circuit boards and advancements you have like that, maybe they don't last as long as the old 1960s furnace that was mostly mechanical, didn't have any computers in it or the circuit boards, things that were beat it with a hammer and it's not going to stop working. Okay, that's fair. I mean, I think that everybody knows that a old car with no computer is a lot more resilient than a car with 27 computers in it and all the issues that go along with that. All right, that's fair. That's efficient. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Yeah, that's getting 6 miles to the gallon versus, you know, 35 miles to the gallon essentially. All right, so was 15 to 20 now kind of more 10 to 12. And then you can still like repair a system, right? And you can go out and fix my something's broken, get a part, replace it, you know, on you go and then keep doing that until some point it's law of diminishing returns. You're putting money into it. Probably not the best idea. Just update, go up for a whole new system. Yeah. All right. That's where I look at the five years. After 15 years, does it make sense to replace a $1,000 circuit board on a 16-y old system? Probably not, right? But because then something else could break. You know, you just get into it. Yeah. You're getting into that spiral. I got you. Like a car. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Um, so what would you say is one of the most overlooked or misunderstood parts of home comfort, right? Like where's the gap? What what are we missing? What are we not doing? What are we not addressing? Why is my house cold? Why is my house hot? or that part of my house is always cold or hot or whatever. What What do you got for me there? The biggest thing that we run into is is duct work. Duct work is is just the size of the duct work. Poorly designed. What What about the duct work? Poorly designed sizing. Mhm. Um when you buy a new house on a cookie cutter 7500 plat all the same, right? There's no code for duct work other than every room's got to have a supply in it. Okay. They don't measure how much air is coming out of that supply. There just has to be one there. Correct. So you can have the most efficient system in the world and you can have garbage duct work and your house is not going to be comfortable. Okay. And I know and I've heard from you and whatnot over the years is that the turns in duct work. Yes. Right. elbows or 90° or doing this spaghetti shaped maze type thing that s substantially reduces the flow at the end of the run. Yes. Correct. Always a thing. Yep. Okay. Always a thing. And so if you've got like the room and everybody like my this is the hottest room, that's the coldest room. Can those some of those things be corrected or balanced, right? So that you can get better distribution sometimes. Sometimes, right? Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do without tearing out all the walls and redoing the duct work, which isn't really The way I did it in my daughter's room is I essentially made like a restrictor plate over the vent, you know, so the vent was this big, air blowing out, just heating the room up. And so I just made a piece, put it under the duct, and so now the hole is about this big amount of air that can come out of that vent. So, I don't know what I'm doing to the system, but that air is not coming out of that room as or into that room as much anymore. So, that was my fix. If you reduce the flow in a couple rooms by 50% or so, you're fine. Right. Normally, if you do a bunch, you're probably not doing your system any favors, right? You're causing you're back up at the start. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Y All right. Um, smart thermostats. Let's talk about that for a minute. These are not that new now anymore. You know, the digital connected smart learning thermostats. What? Talk about those. Are these a good investment? Are they worth it? Is there something that's better about one? What feature should you look for? Gotcha. I'm still of the opinion that simpler is better. Simple is better. Simple is better. With a problem with some of the learning thermostats is they have sensors in them. If you don't walk by them every once in a while, they learn that nobody's there, so they turn the heat down. Okay. So, they're not great with heat pumps. All right. Moving the temp, right? Okay. Unless you disable a lot of those features. Yes. All right. So, but are you recommending these generally speaking, but not overblown, overly complicated ones? Most of the time it goes more into people want to deal with control it from their phone. Okay. is the biggest more than any of the other. I don't want to have to walk down the hall or go into the wherever that thing is, go upstairs, downstairs, they can just Exactly. I want I'm I'm driving home. I want it to be hotter at home. Okay. Cooler. Right. So, I mean, are you doing these in mo are you still is there still old school thermostat? Does anybody do those anymore or is it not really? That's kind of gone. That's gone. Okay. That's gone. So, some variant of a smart thermostat just sort of house smart, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Homeowners never try to DIY. What about an HVAC system? What would you say? I mean, there's I'm sure there's a long list of things that they shouldn't do, but you know what? Do monkey with duct work. Can can a homeowner change a thermostat? Is that get scary? If you are handy, all right, there are things you can absolutely do. You can probably change your thermostat. Okay. You could probably go on YouTube and fix a couple other things on there. Right. Right. Replace your filter. Please God. Yeah. So, okay. That's what's the filter situation? What kind of filter do you recommend? What are the options out there? And then what is the how important is it? And what is the frequency with which one should change it? So, they range from about MV 2 to MV 8. What is that? Sorry. MV MV 2 to about MV 16. Okay. So, what is MV? MV is just how tightly the fibers woven, how fine a particulate it will trap. Okay. And so, a low number is traps less and a high number traps more, I'm assuming. Right. Okay. MV 8 to 16. MV two is actually the lowest is those really cheap like green almost like a foam kind of a thing. Yeah, they look like a bunch of like hair slapped together. Um, Murf 8 is usually great. Okay. For your house. 2 to 16, eight is fine for a home in most applications. 8 to 10 cuz the tighter the w the weave is, the more air restriction, right? Taxing the system. Taxing the system trying to push the air and the quicker it'll get dirty. So, it seems great, but you can break your system. You overheat it. Okay. If you get like a six number of 16 and let it get a little dirty little because it's already restricting just right out of the box, right? Because it's so fine. Then you let it clog up and get worse. Then you're really almost a blockage to some degree. Then you're, you know, if you can't pull air in, you can't push air out, right? So you start overheating and that's when you start spending money on repairs, right? And so you're talking about this then is sort of a passive like the filter that you buy that you is just kind of the cardboard, you know, whatever with the woven thing, air blows through it. Passive deal. Now, what about electronic filters or these kind of things? I I see these out there. Where are you on those? I I know a lot of them seem to not work or they quit working or they're broken. We get to a house and they've got an electronic filter, but it's dead. It doesn't do anything. Nobody wants to clean them. Okay. You got to clean those things once a month. And they're a pain in the butt. Right. Right. Air scrubbers now, um, remy halos, uh, UV lights and a filter are really the easiest way. Okay. And and the best air quality. All right. So, big fan of air scrubbers. Uh, Remy Halos. There's other ones out there. They have a UV light in them and they do um they bond the uh the particulate. Yeah. Okay. So, it's like ionizing type thing. It sort of grabs it. It's not just totally passive where it just has to catch it on the screen, so to speak. Correct. It bonds them till they're too heavy. Okay. And they drop onto the filter. So, okay. Little technology, little electronic magic going on there. And a little ease of throwing away a filter. So pull it out, boom, replace it. It's not a cleany scrubby type situation, right? Yeah. Okay. So that's important to change those. Now, if you are if you don't have AC and you're really only heating in the winter, then obviously when it's running, you know, change it on the regular in the winter heat no AC now you're on a regular cycle. Yeah. Right. Every 30, 60, 90. How can you tell like what is it supposed to look like if it's dark or sort of like what's what would you say there? So that they're mostly white and if they start getting gray, just replace it, okay? You know, it's don't wait until it's black and stuff you can bang it and stuff just falls off like that's too long. You're going to hurt your filter or at the very least or hurt your furnace or at the very least you're going to just air is going to start moving around it through any crack and you're not going to filter anything anyway. Okay? It's going to find the path of least resistance. If it's not through, it's going somewhere else. Okay, sounds fair. Um, what about while we're on air quality, right? This is a big thing I think a lot more people, one of the things that I see and I'm sure you're aware of this, right, is that houses today are so much tighter than they used to be and they're required to be tighter. Yes. And so that's a downside. We'll get into this in a little bit in terms of the air recovery makeup air in and around uh kitchen hoods that you turn the hood on, the things got to open so you can bring some air in. So, air quality. Um, and this is something that I'm a big fan of is duct cleaning. Cleaning out my duct work, having someone come and clean out because if you see the goo that comes out of those after they've done it, it's like getting your carpet clean, right? They got the water, they pour it out, and it looks like a sludgy mud fest. Where are you on that? Like, what's that? How how frequently? What would you say there? If you have, you know, everything's relative, right? If you have, if you have duct work in the crawl space and it's leaky, you're going to need to get it done more often than more frequently. Okay. If it's a newer house and it's all in conditioned space and you have a good filter and you've changed your filter, right, you really shouldn't need to do it very often with reg on the regular. Yeah. Construction rodents, uh, moving into an old house, you know, who lived there before. Absolutely. Makes you feel Yeah. We we always talk about it and offer it after we've done a project because if it's in the winter time the I mean we put filtration over the ducks over the returns you know just an added extra filter but the furnace is still going to run and we're making sawdust and things like that in the house that sucking through the system is that we like to offer after we're all done and done is let's have the guy come in and clean out all the duct work you know from the work that we did because certainly we've put stuff into the system, you know. So, we offer that. Some people pass, but a lot take us up on it. It's not a tremendously expensive thing to do. No anymore. Um I I like to do it kind of once every two years or something like that. Yeah. If it makes you if it makes you feel better about your househ
if you have like allergies, we like we know we have dogs in my house and you know, animals. If you have someone who's allergy sensitive that maybe so that might help so you're not moving the stuff around you're sort of taking it out of the system because it just keeps going around and around better filtration systems more frequently changing those could help alleviate some of those kind of symptoms and that's that that's where the air scrubbers come in you know once those things you start getting those things in place you shouldn't need duck cleaning that often. Okay. So, like an air scrubber would be something that you could retrofit to an existing system and improve the the air quality and whatnot. That that's a sort of regular thing that you guys are doing. Yes. Okay. Yes. So, that would be in place of just the card filter that you get at the big box store. Oh, you have that and the other. So, you add it. Okay. What kind of money are you talking about? What is this? A $500 bill? Is this a $2,000 bill? Like on average, if someone wanted to do something like that, they're normally between probably 1,000 and,500. Okay. Installed and warrantied. Okay. Yeah. Retrofitted the whole thing up and running. Yeah. All right. That doesn't seem like a change. Particularly if you don't have to do the duct cleaning to the tune of five, six, seven, $800,000 every couple years. That's going to pay for itself pretty quick. Okay. So let's talk then about sizing or capacity of an HVAC system, right? How does one determine what's an appropriate size? How much capacity do I need? How many BTUs? I hear this term, right? In terms of heat measure, how many BTUs is my furnace? And then AC's, which I don't necessarily clearly understand that they use different units of measure that AC is tons. Yes. which I don't I don't understand that really but BTUs I get British thermal unit I've been around that one long enough to know so that's how the heat component is measured but what is that from a sizing standpoint how much is too much how close do you get like what is that and who does that and that kind of thing talk a bit about that so you're you're whoever you have whoever you're buying a furnace from or a heat pump from should be doing a heat load heat load calculation or anal houses. Yes. All right. There's they're getting easier all the time now. You can go online and do one yourself. Almost do your own. Yes. So, what's kind of the information that they need to do a heat load? So, uh square footage, how big is the house? How big? Insulation levels. All right. What if you don't know? What are you assuming? I assume on the year it's built. Okay. If if I was coming in, ask you. Mhm. Have you done any upgrades? You haven't. you know the house pretty well. I'm assuming if it was born it was built 1968 R1 in the walls or something like that and most of the programs now are going to have that built in. It asks you what year it is. Okay. Right. And then simple stupid easy. Right. So square footage, how well it's insulated. Windows. Windows. You can get into a lot of those things. Uhhuh. The reality is furnaces now and heat pumps, they don't come in a multitude of sizes, right? So, I can do a room by room analysis and I can do a what's called a block load as the whole house, right? They're close enough where it's not going to matter because you only have either a three and a half ton or a four. There's no 3.62 ton. Right. Okay. Right. So, and the same thing with BTUs on a furnace, right? like I don't know 60,000 80 100 120. Yeah. So you're not you can only do so much. More important is the um your duct work you have. Okay. So if you if you have a 5,000T house, but the duct work that's in your house is only rated for three tons of air. I can't I can't put anything bigger in there. All right. And that is that the that's the how big they are. How much air can move through there? Correct. Right. So, what is the ton thing? How is that? What is What are you measuring there? So, that's a 12,000 BTUs is one ton. 12,000 BTUs is one ton. Yes. All right. So, and so if I have a 60,000 BTU furnace, that would be five tons. 60 divided by 12 is five in in the refrigerant side. Okay. So, yes. So, tons also is CFM on your fans. How your tons of your fans or your tons of refrigerant? Okay. So different measure. So yeah, they like to throw lots of different things at you. Make it really confusing. Very. Okay, that's why you got to call Carl, right? You don't know. I don't know. I've been around this a long time. I tons I don't know BTUs somewhat, but All right. So that gets confusing. So the proper sizing is you want to you don't want to go right to the edge, right? I mean, if like you're doing the math and it's like, oh, it's 39,000 BTU or three, you know, point4 ton, like you're going to round up, right? Would that be the normal? Yeah. Okay. Now, one of the axioms that I use around here and that we all talk about when we're when people are talking about an addition, right, we're going to make our house bigger. So, we're going to need to heat and cool this new space. Um, and I was told a long time ago that typically in our climate, um, if you have a reasonably new system, not something that's 50 years old, but 10, 12, 15 even kind of, but that's starting to get out to the edge that up to around 5 6 700 square ft of new space most systems can handle as a very vague rule of thumb, but if you're talking about 900 or a thousand more square feet, you're going to need to do something different. You can't expect this current system to handle that many new square feet. Would you say that that's relatively fair and accurate or no? No, Charlie, don't tell people that. That's not true. With the caveat of the duct work. Okay. What the duct work is. What the delivery system is. Okay. So, if you don't have the right delivery system, it really doesn't matter how big or small your furnace is. If it can't get there, it can't get there, right? And I have done I am I am aware of that like because you've got like you got your big trunk line, right? That's moving a lot of air and then that capillaries down to smaller and smaller to the final end of the run is maybe a little 6-in line that's going out and feeding up a vent in the bedroom. Something like that. That's kind of the end of the run. And then I and I know enough to know that I've had people that like, "Oh, we're just we're going to add on to the end of the house." And they're like, "Well, we're just going to extend that." And I'm like, nah, that's we got to go back to the trunk line and say it stops here. We may have to add 20 ft of bigger duct to then be able to get enough air flow out there. So I am aware of that. So that so the air flow is a big part of it and capacity. Yes. Right. So but so assuming duct work's okay or you are accommodating the duct work is the four, five, six, 700 square foot. Yes. Okay. for most original systems if they're not 100 years old. Yes. Then you start talking 7 plus 8 n a thousand it's a separate system. Yes. So our or additional capacity or a duckless and so that and that's the then that we start to get to the point of then we get into this trick bag right where I call you up and I'm like okay so here's what we got. And the question is, do we replace the existing system, put in a new larger system so that there's one that handles the now larger home or leave alone what's there, don't touch it, and then do something new for the new space, mini split, separate furnace, whatever the case may be. Right. So, you're doing that analysis. I know we do it a lot. So, that's a regular thing. Yes. Right. So, where do you come down on that? What makes typical? How do they typically land? Is it split even or a lot more of this, a lot less that? It It depends on the pocketbook. Mhm. Um, fair. I If if it was up to me, I would push people more towards doing a mini split. Keep what you got. Keep what you got. Go with another new separate, smaller mini split type system. You're you're extending your house. The only place it reads the temperature is at your thermostat. Mhm. So, even if you have good duct work, you can't zone it. That's a whole big deal. The retrofit zoning, I know, is a massive investment. We've all been down that road. So, okay. So, you you know, you've got your thermostat here and now this room is further away. Further away. It's not going to get the same kind of comfort. It'll get condition, but fair. Okay, that's a good point. I didn't think about that. So, more times than not, add on to it. All right.
So, what would you say is the the the future of heating and cooling? What are they cooking up in the lab? What's going to be the new thing? What is out there that you're aware of? Or is it just continuing to turn to tighten the screws down on efficiency? Or is there going to be some new whole new thing around the bend that we're not even aware of? There's nothing new around the bend. Nothing new. They're just going to keep getting more and more efficient. just tightening the screws, improving the efficiency, making them better, use less energy, get more out of it, that kind of thing. Yeah. Um, refrigerants will change. Okay. Right. You know, that makes sense. Um, to a more greenhouse friendly if it leaks, gets into the atmosphere, it's not going to be as damaging. That's what drove the big change this last time. Okay. Was it getting out into the atmosphere into the air? Yeah. the the old refrigerant was a a GWP uh global warming potential. Oh, right. Of about 2700 I think. Don't for the new ones are 454 I think is 600. Dramatically 2,00 80% less, you know, 75% less. Okay. Big reduction in the potential damage to the environment by switching this refrigerant. Correct. Okay. And I'm assuming it's more expensive. Maybe not. Not a little bit, but not. Okay. Not substantial. All right. Well, that's great. That's great. Yeah. Um All right. Here's one that don't run into a ton, but we do some is radiant heat. Do you do much in the radiant heat world? How does that where are you on that? Is that common? I know it's I know it's costly, right? And what we're talking about with radiant heat, there's two variants, right? Everybody like, I want a heated floor in my bathroom. That's typically electric matte heating very small isolated spaces specifically. But whole house we're talking about hydronic radiant heat, right? So this is tubes with water or some kind of gel or something flowing through it that gets hot, heats the whole place up. A lot of people talk about how great of an even heat it is. Even worse than a heat pump about raising temperature up and down, right? Very long, very long turn. But is that something that you do? Is it just like a little slice of the market that's kind of always been there? Is it decreasing? Is it increasing? It goes through cycles. Goes through cycles. It goes through cycles where it gets really popular for a while and then it kind of goes away, right? Then it comes back again. Okay. And I think that has to do with finding out that certain products they were using before didn't work that well. All right. Cuz there's nothing like trying to repair a tube that's in concrete in the center of your house. Yeah. Even even a little bit of electronic heat in a bathroom. Yeah. You got to chop the floor up, right? That's a problem for sure. We Yeah. So, anytime you put something in like that that's that permanently embedded and it has an issue, it's an issue. It's a big issue. Might even be better off just abandoning it and putting in a ducting system. We've done that more than once, right? Like we're not fixing it. It's beyond repair. It's going to cost a gajillion dollars. Forget it. Turn it off. Cap it. We're putting in a ducted system. Yep. Okay. Exactly. All right. That's all right. That's interesting. Um what was it? So the radiant, you got to have air. You got to blow that around. That's a thing obviously. Um venting. Let's talk a little bit about the venting site. So HVAC, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, right? So venting, you got to vent bathroom fans. You got to vent the dryer. You talked a little bit about that. Um, we have to vent the kitchen exhaust hood. What other kind of venting? Whole house venting. Whole house venting. HRVs. Hat recovery. Ventilation. Yep. All right. And ERV energy. All right. Same thing basically. Basically. All right. Let's go there a little bit. Tell me what's the difference. What are we getting? What what's the story there? These are becoming more code required. What What's happening with those? HRV and ERV. Yes. So, energy recovery ventilation, heat recovery ventilation. We don't do a lot of ERVs anymore. Okay. They don't have any extra heating in them. That's really the two differences between them. Okay. Um ERVs are normally smaller or big commercial. Okay. In between. HRVs are becoming pretty popular. I think they're going to code probably in the next two years or so. going to require them in new houses. All right. So, what is it? What am I I have a pretty good understanding of the furnace and the duct work and all that. So, what what is this? A box is where is this added? What is this thing do? There's different ways to do it. There's you the simplest way is to tie it in. It's a separate component tie into your ducted system. Okay. You have one exhaust. Is it in line like with a plenum? Is a main duct thing. Okay. So, you you pipe one side into your return, one side into your supply. All right. And then the other two lines go outside. pull in fresh air, exhaust out the old air, and as it cross streams, it heats up the air coming into your house. Oh, tempers it. That's it. That's really That's in a nutshell. Yeah. Okay. So, this is So, it's about air quality and while I'm at it, I'm going to not lose all the heat or all the AC. Yes. Right. Is that essentially what I'm hearing you say? Yeah. So, the houses that were 2000s, um, on the furnaces, you'd usually have those like durine boxes on the side. Mhm. And open a damper, suck in cold air. Nobody liked it in the winter. No. So, HRV took the place of it to to temper the air before it comes into your house as an energy savings. All right. So, you're bringing in fresh air, making it up because the house is so tight to code now. Yeah. And so, it's starve for air. So, it's a way to bring in air, satisfy the starved air situation. And while we're doing that, we don't just bring in the coldest air or the hottest air. We're trading some of the heat I've already paid for or the cooling I've already paid for. So, I don't have to then reheat or cool that air coming in. Correct. Okay. And you the houses are built this tight now that you you have to get air movement in there or you can get like sick house syndrome. You can you can get mold those kinds. So it really does help. Okay. So it's a plus. Yes. All right. You see this as a Are they automatic? Do they run all the time? How is this thing measured or managed or tempered? What's that all about? Both ways. All right. There are ones that are just wired in and they're set on a timer to go off so many times per day. And some of the nicer ones that are still not very expensive, you have a thermostat. You can control it. It's the same as a thermostat. You can how many minutes. They only really need to run when your furnace is running, right? They're not doing you any good to run when it's not running because they're going through No, they can run you can run them all day long if you want. Okay. So, you're just bringing in fresh air, but you're not really getting much exchange. I mean, I guess you have the the ambient temp of the air that's in the house that you're pushing out. Correct. Okay. So, you're not necessarily the heated or the cooled, but it's sort of what temperature it is in the house. Right. So, if you've got it heated to 68 and you're bringing in 35° air, even if your furnace isn't running, this system's running. So, then the 35 degree air doesn't really hit the house. It might get heated to 45 or 50 or something like that, right? You're going to close the gap some. Yes. Okay. All right. Uh let's see what else. Duct cleaning. We talked about that. Dryer venting. Um are they dryer clean? Are they as dangerous as I mean like this dryer vent or there fires? Is this a big thing? Is this a problem? It is if you're not getting them cleaned. Okay. Absolutely. You're pushing a bunch of heat through there with a bunch of lint that's flammable. Right. So, I was talking I had a guy in we did a thing um podcast with an appliance guy and he was telling me about um which I didn't know anything about was heat pump dryers. Yes. Don't need a duct. They need a drain. Yes. Right. Do you see these are these becoming popular? Are you finding I mean it doesn't sound like that's much that you're doing that more plumbing and electrical but is that a thing that you've experienced? The only thing I've experienced with them now is if you the big thing here is the energy credits when you're doing a remodel or building a house. Mhm. You can choose a ventless uh drier. Get more points. You get more points, but you you can't put a drier vent in then. Now they're not allowing you to. Oh, as a maybe for later. Yes. As a if you hate it, right? Okay. So, you have to retro that thing way later kind of a deal. Okay. All right. Make sure you want it. That's the one thing I would say. All right. Let's see. Insulation balance. All right. We're run. So, what would you say? There's just so many things to talk about and we didn't get to so many of them, but thank you for your knowledge and your information, but what would you say is kind of the thing we didn't talk about that you would want people to be aware of if they're talking to someone about either doing a project, renovation, remodeling, or they just need a new furnace or they think they need a furnace or they think about upgrading to to heat pump or going new furnace AC. What? Do this homework. Be aware of this. What what would that be? Get more than one bid. Okay, if you're a homeowner, right? Have multiple professionals out. At least two. Okay. Don't. And if they're 12 miles apart, maybe a third to see if you could find the middle. All right. If they're kind of flat, then all right, you're probably getting the straight poop than you would think. Okay. Um idea. I mean, because we've clearly talked about there's a lot of different ways you can skin a cat here, right? There's not only just one way to do this. So, somebody might be pushing heat pumps or somebody might be more comfortable with those. Somebody might be more comfortable with this and that's kind of where they go. So, you know, yeah, hear the hear the differences. All right. Get more than get multiple inputs. Yes. All right. And and compare apples to apples. Okay. Make sure you know you you see, oh, this furnace is $5,000 installed and this one's eight. It's not always somebody's trying to make $3,000 more. The equipment difference is real. Yes. All right. Now, let me ask you that. So, then I hear, you know, there are brand names out there that people are aware of. You know, Linux, Carrier, Train, I would say maybe those are the the most prominent big three kind of thing. But then you have introduced me to Coleman. Yeah. Right. And then American Standard and Rude and a number of others. I is that more expensive care train like the big three are they always worth it when compared to some of the other stuff again it's like what's in it right it's it's what's in it okay well so you got different stages different efficiencies um most of the parts nowadays are only made by a couple the critical parts yes right the electronic brains the sending units and some of that like seammens and Johnson controls right those Yeah. Whites Rogers Emerson. Yeah. Half a dozen few that are making and they're all buying them and putting them in there. Yeah. They may have some different specs to them, but they're fair. You know, they're the compressor still the compressor, the inverter. So, when you're saying comparing apples to apples, so that this is a a 95% efficient 4tonon 80,000 BTU that it's kind of that single stage fan, variable speed fan. Yeah, that kind of stuff that what you're comparing and then see who's and then if you're like okay so this company is saying everything's the same all the marks are the same but it's brand A and this is brand B now you could start to see that difference potentially right correct yeah that's what you're looking for the stages the efficiencies the I always look at how well is the box built like because that's what they're building are they using really like metal and they're flimsy and loud. Rattly. Rattly. There's some brands out there that are like that. They're most of the better brands. Little tighter insulated boxes. Insulated boxes. Thicker metal. Mhm. Quieter. Yeah. All the little places you can cut corners or spend a little more for a better product. Correct. All right. So, anything else that we missed that we didn't cover that you would say is important? So, get a couple different pieces of feedback. talk to different people. Um, you know, compare apples to apples. What else? What are people forget? Change your filter. That sound like a change your filter, right? You cannot change it enough. Okay, so that's important. Change your filter. If you don't know, maybe we should do a video on changing a filter, how that works, and you know, help people out. Maybe you have something like YouTube. I guarantee you there's plenty of things out there right now about changing your filter. Oh, yes. Right. So, go look, figure it out. Amazon has them all at a pretty What else inexpensive would you say? You know, if you're if you're a homeowner and you have someone in your house, don't get don't get pushed into buying that day. That's a big one. Okay. Don't succumb to the pressure. Don't Yeah. All right. Do your homework and figure out what's best for you. Don't get it Don't get a heat pump just because you think it's environmentally better like we talked about. Yes. If you're doing this, then not a great solution. Yeah. And if Yeah. Here's one for you, a little bit out of left field. Um, what about cleaning the outdoor unit where the pollen and the stuff gets on the grill and the fan's blowing through it? Power wash that is like what is that? I mean, it breathes better, right? It's going to be more efficient. Definitely annual basis. Don't power wash it. Don't power wash it. Those fins are pretty just a hose light pressure. brush, scrub, goo, hose, soap, just hose, just water. If you want to, if you're that worried about it, have a licensed technician come out. Come take take it apart and clean it. Okay. Right. It's But just a little hose down. No power wash. It'll cuz I see the videos, they put the stuff, it foams up like crazy. Not necessarily always required. Just get the stuff off so it can breathe better. Yeah. I mean, you can't see a lot of the particulates in there, but they do restrict it. So the cleaner it is, the better it's going to work, right? All right. So, all right. What else? Last thing. Is there anything else? So, Carl, Legacy One Heating and Cooling, we'll have all the information down there. Call us if you want to talk about a project. You need a new furnace, you want to talk about a heat pump, you want to talk about duct cleaning, ventilation, HRVs, whatever the case may be, reach out. We can find out. One last thing, parting shot. This is the right way to go. Don't do this. Don't do that. Or do you think we kind of covered it? I think we covered the basics. All right. Okay. Yeah, we didn't get we didn't get super deep. It's like I wanted to get into how they work and the energy code and all this stuff. Energy code's a big deal. If you're remodeling, if you're building new, doing stuff like that, it is a big deal and it's got to be done and decided early. Yes. Cuz it's part of your permit application. You have to decide then what level of efficiency of said unit you're putting in. And once it's on the permit and you have it, you can't now then go easily change your mind. Yeah, you can, but it's you can, but it's a big now I'm reshuffling and all that kind of thing. So, big deal when you're doing additions, remodeling, particularly here in in Washington with our energy code thing. If you're thinking about that, talk to us. And that should be something if you're working with an architect, make sure that discussion's been had before they submit so you know what they've put you on the hook for. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I you'd be amazed how many people like, "Oh, did you know they made they picked like the most expensive thing on the planet to get the most points?" And what? Yeah. No idea. All right. Well, don't let that happen to you, Carl. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. You guys I appreciate you your time coming in Let's Build with Armada podcast. I'm Charlie, Armada Design and Build here in Belleview, Washington. Hope you learned something. Hope you got something out of this. Leave a comment, subscribe, like, come into the showroom, give us a call, send us an email, all Carl stuff down in the notes, and we will see you in the next one.