Well, ours just carped out on Wednesday night. Warm air from the vents and I went in the attic and checked and there was ice on the evaporator. Tech came out next day and measured pressures and temps at the compressor and showed me it was about 3-4 pounds of freon low. Looked at the evaporator coils and said there is some oil residue at the far corner of the coils. So 11 years and it is finally shot I think. I rolled the dice and had him service with Freon $350 worth and it only lasted 2 days. Options: Change out just the evaporator coil $3450, and it may be a kluge to find one to fit, or invest in a new matched Compressor Unit and Evaporator coil set. It is an American Standard 16 SEER 4 ton unit.

JMO but I think you are better off with the full system upgrade. We have the same unit specs but Trane brand in our house you mention installed a few years back and the energy savings is significant. House is about 1600 square feet electric bill this past month was $88 but we also have gas that bill same period was $47 but overall still reasonable. When we upgraded ours we changed everything outside unit and attic AC and furnace. I think it was around $7k but that was a few years back probably higher now.

I agree. I will probably go with both compressor and evaporator unit. This is gonna hurt $$$$$$

11 years doesn't seem very old. I would think these units should last longer than that, especially for what you pay for them.

11 is slightly off but remember that a heat pump "works" year round. Also QC can vary by manufacturer and design changes can cause problems like in anything else (example would be the early SHO Yamahas, 1st gen Merc Optimax, etc.)

The AC went out in the shop. Trane was quoted 24 weeks for a 3 ton, Lennox was at 3-4 weeks. We took the Lennox. Better be ready to buy window units if your system goes out.

Oh yeah, it was 12k installed. Don’t even try to compare what someone paid 2 years ago.

Ouch!

If you are replacing major components of your HVAC with the hopes of improving efficiency, then you should also look at your duct work and plenum. Doesn’t really matter the seer rating of you new unit of the air is getting hung up in the ducts.

Any installers worth a hill of beans seals the components of the system on a change out at least to the duct outlets from the planum. But yes, go into the attic and feel around for air escaping. If not sealed get 'em back out there.

Give up Google.

Words to live by. Also "Don't take any wooden nickels", another great life hack!

It is more than leaking ducts, which as you stated should be easy to identify and correct. The routing of the duct work and configuration of the plenum is what I am talking about. Think of your ducts as a highway that moves air throughout your house. If a highway has a 90 turn in it, or if it constricts from 5 lanes down to 2, then traffic will pile up. Poor duct routing can decrease air flow and even cause backflow, which puts extra load on your compressor without adding more cool air.

And don't just assume your system was installed correctly either. My neighbor moved in to his house about the same time I did. House is about 5 years old, and he was ready to add a window unit to help with a section of his kitchen that stayed hot as a hamster in a wool sock. Turns out the sheet rock guy did not cut out a hole for one of the vents. Took a lot of head scratching and counting ducts in the attic compared with vents in the ceiling to figure it out, but previous owner had lived with it since the house was built.

Well, here is another FJB moment. Since our Coil went bad and is leaking, and our condenser unit is also at the 11 year mark, we told our AC company to go ahead and quote us a new Condenser and Coil unit matching American Standard (Trane) system.
Ok, will do. Guess what, they cannot find a new system in inventory at any of the major distributors across Texas. There is a waiting line of folks sitting with broken AC systems in their houses waiting for new systems to come in.

So we are without AC for God knows how long. We are turning into Venezuela. I am wanting to buy a new AC system and cannot. Isn't that just peachy?

a guy at work waited 10 days for a coil to come in.