"therefore could have purchased a smaller unit for thousands less"

How much of the "thousands less" would be just the packaged unit itself?

Reason I ask is my installer sold me a 5-ton unit, then reduced it to a 4-ton but never changed the invoice, my copy still says 5-ton.

The unit still has to have all the same components, just a lttle different size.

ChrisJ RI

In my AO, horizontal ground loops are about $1650/ton and verticals 1 thousand more. Incremental price difference for the next larger heat pump maybe as much as $500.
So loosley two to three thousand.

I don't know what the conversations were with your installer, sometimes I discuss one thing and write another etc. (honest mistakes are made), but you clearly didn't need a 5 ton if you don't run auxiliary on the 4 ton. Frankly it would very likely cost more to run than the 4 ton.

Thanks Joe,

Figured it was mostly loop costs. In my case the loop was on a seperate invoice, they reduced from 6 trenches to 5, 200' ea w/ 1" pipe, my excavation guy. Returned the cost of 1 HDPE pipe. Honest mistake maybe, or $500 on almost $28,000., peanuts.

If the house was just water to air we could have done 2 tons, but with radiant and DHW 4 tons is good maybe still a little oversized.

ChrisJ

Posted By joe.ami on 29 May 2012 12:01 PM
"We leave the resistance breakers off all the time. could have gone with 3 or 3.5 ton, but Man. J said 4T...."

To be clear, manual J didn't say 4T, the system designer did. That you never employ auxiliary would suggest you are significantly oversized if you are in a northern climate and therefore could have purchased a smaller unit for thousands less.
All designs are compromises, inst vs op cost, heating vs cooling driven etc. Many designs are okay when informed choices are made. Simply wanted to remind that aux is not always the antichrist it is made out to be.
j

Joe,
Agreed.  My system is oversized.  I did not intend to imply that Aux heat is such a bad thing on a properly sized system.  All of the vendors figured our house would need Aux with the 4 ton.  Balance point was somewhere from 22 -28 deg F (IIRC) depending on the contractor.  I guess our house just is a little tighter than their calcs showed.  I could have saved a few bucks going to a smaller unit, but I am more than happy where we ended up. 

I do burn some wood on cold nights in our catalyst insert, but not all the time.  I have a TED monitor so I can see all stage run times.  On some single digit nights, second stage ran for 2+ hours straight (no wood burning) so I think my balance point is close to that.   KwH consumption very closely tracks HDD's unless there is tons of solar gain on the day or very windy.  Neat to plot and see.  I can tell which days we burned some wood from the plot.   I rough calced that its a tad cheaper to run the geo at 0.15/Kw, than burn wood at $200/cord.  Great system.

Chris

yikes .15kw would make you wanna keep the balance point low.