Installation of a GREE FREEMATCH R32 two-head heat pump in Candiac, on the South Shore

The room that changed trade

Candiac was founded on December 31, January 1957, when the government of Quebec accepted the application from a group of Canadian-European investors, the Candiac Development Corporation, which had purchased 2,500 acres of land agricultural. The city takes its name from the castle where Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. It was therefore designed around a table before anyone lived there — and it was designed for a way of life specifies: we leave in the morning and return in the evening. Today, 22,997 residents and 8,731 occupied dwellings over 17.27 km², connected to downtown by train suburb exo.

When this daily departure stops to occur three days a week, the house changes function. And the the room that changes the most is not the living room: it is the former ground-floor guest bedroom, became an office occupied for eight hours per day.

This is the room that received one head on this project, and it is the subject of the first half of this article. The second discusses the wall chosen for the outdoor unit — one an entirely blank gable end, with a only basement window as the only clue.

The configuration

GREE FREEMATCH R32 GWHD(30)ND6MO, two wall-mounted heads:

• 15,000 BTU/h in the open kitchen–dining–living area of the main floor;
• 9,000 BTU/h in the home office.

That is 24,000 BTU/h installed. Heating electric heating retained everywhere else. No ductwork. The baseboard upstairs bedrooms and the basement are not are not served, and it is written in the renovation file.

We we do not repeat here what happens to the unserved rooms: the subject is covered in full on our Delson, the other municipality of Roussillon RCM where we have documented a two-zone system — what a room what an untreated room actually does, why an open door tempers without air-condition, and why a larger compressor does not does not serve more rooms. The list of what we do not promise is published on our Baie-D'Urfé page, and the rule that a closed door cancels everything, in those of Saint-Amable and Saint-Cyprien-de-Napierville. This page addresses the reverse problem: how to properly treat the room we have chosen.

The model, in three hundred words

AHRI Certification 214931588 (non-ducted), 214931594 (ducted), 214931598 (mixed) depending on the combination declared.

The 24k was ruled out because of a the only line in the table: the routes developed make up 11 m and 21 m, for a total of 32 m, which exceeds its 30 m precharge and would remain under the 40 m of the 30k. Concrete result: no R32 added, and the minimal area calculation related to A2L refrigerant remains sitting on the factory charge of 2,200 g. The reasoning “precharge versus maximum total length” is published on our Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce; the operation of the permitted elevation difference, 15 m on the two smaller models and 25 m on the other three, in that of Sainte-Thérèse.

The number on the label is not the one you you think you are comparing

Here is how to read the data sheet X610068B that we are retaining for this page, and this is an anomaly that we we had never published before.

In within this family, a model's designation model corresponds normally to its capacity in cooling. The 18k advertises 18 000 in cooling and 18,000 in heating. The 24k, 24,000 and 24,000. The 36k, 36,000 and 36,000. The 42k advertises 42,000 in cooling—and 44,300 in heating, so its name follows the cooling capacity.

The GWHD(30) is the only model in the range whose name does not follow the cooling capacity. It advertises 28,400 BTU/h in cooling and 30,000 BTU/h in heating. In other words, the “30” in its name is its heating capacity heating, and its rated cooling capacity is approximately 5% below the number printed on the label.

This is not deceptive, it is a convention. But it has a very concrete consequence when it comes time to compare three quotes: if you line up “30,000 BTU” from one supplier against “30,000 BTU” from another, there is no guarantee that you are comparing the same quantity twice. The general reading rule is simple—we read the “min. – max.” line, not the line “rated” line is published in our Dorval page, and we are not redoing it not here. What we add is more simple: request the cooling AND heating capacity, in BTU/h, from the manufacturer's data sheet, and compare them line by line.

Our 24,000 BTU/h of the heads therefore represent 85% of the actual rated cooling capacity and 80% of the hot rated capacity, well below of the modulated maximum of 34,100 in air conditioning.

A home office is not a room with a computer

The series has covered kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, basements, a dwelling rented, a workshop garage. Never a room whose purpose is work. Yet today it is one of the most demanding rooms in a suburban house suburban, and for reasons that have nothing to do with its floor area.

The occupancy profile is the opposite of that of a bedroom

A a room is occupied at night, by bodies lying down, door closed, seven days out of seven. A home office is occupied eight to nine hours in a row, on weekdays only, by a single seated person, porte tantôt ouverte tantôt , sometimes open and sometimes

closed. Our page for Baie-D'Urfé publishes the selection method for rooms into five criteria, the first of which is first is. the hours of waking occupancy Remote work has shifted this criterion for an entire room, in thousands of homes, without anyone someone redo the calculation. A room that was used four hours a month in

now serves forty per week. Internal gains: between

A the house and the commercial office modern workstation, that is two screens, a docking station, a portable under load, sometimes a printer—plus one adult. It is not not enormous, and we will not claim the opposite. But in an enclosed volume of a few square metres,.

this is a continuous load where a bedroom has none during the day Two references frame this question and of we do not rewrite them: our page addresses the case of Sainte-Julie commercial, where internal gains dominate to the point that the building cools while a house is heating; our page addresses the case of Beaconsfield residential, where a kitchen received 12 000 BTU/h where a square-foot calculation gave 9,000, because of its

internal gains.A home office falls exactly between the two makes it tricky: too heavily loaded to be calculated like a bedroom, much too small to be calculated like a commercial office.

Why 9,000 and not 6,000—the honest question

Our pages for Saint-Urbain-Premier and Les Cèdres publish the same warning: a 9,000 BTU/h unit in a small, enclosed office exceeds the load, short-cycles, and dehumidifies poorly. That is true, and that is precisely why the 6,000 is available.

Here, three factors have justified 9,000: the room is a an old, good-sized bedroom, it faces west with windows, and it has internal gains described higher. In a smaller office or facing north, we would have proposed 6,000 and written it. The full reasoning on stepping down one size to 6,000 page is on our Saint-Étienne-de-Beauharnois.

A an additional check applies to this type of room, and it is not optional: the minimum room area associated with the A2L refrigerant charge. A small office—especially in a condo or a converted corner bedroom—it can actually fall below the threshold. We verify it before propose a location; the mechanism is published on our Dundee page and of Très-Saint-Rédempteur.

The someone is sitting, and that changes the air trajectory

Someone who crossing a living room does not notice a air stream. Someone sitting in the same place for eight hours, the notices after twenty minutes, and experiences it as a draft even if the room temperature is perfect trajectory.

The airflow, the Coanda effect, and obstacles on the ceiling belong on our page about of Sainte-Martine, and we do not we do not return to it. What we what we add for this type of room can be summed up in a sentence: the workstation and the unit head are decided together, before drilling.

Concretely, during the technical visit:

• We asks where the desk will be, not just where is the window.
• We direct the air jet along the ceiling toward the room volume, never toward the chair.
• We adjusts the vertical louvers during commissioning with the person seated in their usual place, not standing in the doorway.
• And we records the selected position in the file, because the vertical louvers move shift move by hand and never return to their original position on their own — the finding is published in our Repentigny page.

The microphone is not an ear

This is the point that we have not seen written nowhere else, and that is the one that comes back most often in service call for this type of room.

The indoor acoustics of a unit head wall-mounted unit — the modulation floor, five noise sources, the paradox of the oversized unit head that is larger quiet because it runs slowly — belongs on our page about Saint-Chrysostome. The attenuation of external noise in dB(A) belongs to that of Huntingdon. We do not we redo neither one nor the other.

What is specific to the home office home, this is: an ear gets used to it, a microphone never does. After two weeks, the occupant can no longer hear the unit wall-mounted unit. Its callers, meanwhile, they hear it on every call — and they hear it all the better because the microphone of a laptop or headset is one metre away of the face and captures everything coming from above.

Three steps that resolve almost all of cases:

1. Set a fan speed during working hours instead of leaving it on AUTO. It is not the level sound that is distracting on a call, it is the variation : a noise-reducing microphone of noise learns a background noise stable and erases it, but it makes every change audible of operation.
2. Do not place the workstation directly in line with the air outlet, for the same reason we do not place not a microphone in front of a fan.
3. Check night or silent mode during commissioning — it is frequently delivered disabled, a finding published on our page about Dollard-des-Ormeaux — and knowing that it exists, even if it is used only for important meetings.

The door closes for a call, not for the temperature

A bedroom door closes in the evening and reopens in the morning. An office door closes three times a day, for forty minutes, with no set schedule.

For a two-zone system, the difference is real. The room alternates between “connected zone” and “isolated zone” several times a day, and the comfort the feeling changes with it. We let us draw two written conclusions from the file:

• The office unit head is sized for the door closed, not for the door open. This is the unfavorable case, and it is the alone honest.
• We never rely on the ground-floor head to help the office. One head does not serve a closed room: the demonstration, with the measured door undercut and the transfer grille options, is published on our page of Saint-Cyprien-de-Napierville.

A word finally on mode conflict, because that it particularly affects this room: a west-facing glazed office can call for cooling in October while one room calls for heat, and another dual-zone system has only one mode at a time. The case is addressed in our pages of Saint-Stanislas-de-Kostka and Beaconsfield; here, the two zones face the same facade and the no conflict arises not.

The blank wall: what we wins and what we pay

The unit exterior is mounted on wall brackets on a entirely blank gable — a large wall of horizontal siding beige, without a single opening on the ground floor, with as its only clue a basement window fitted with a window well and a downspout in the other end. The disconnect is immediately to the right of the appliance, the bundle descends as a white ribbon.

It'is a location we choose often, and that we had never explained.

Why a wall without opening wins almost every time

Our page of the Plateau-Mont-Royal publishes the complete elimination sequence for a exterior location, and our page of Côte Saint-Luc addresses the case of conversely—an appliance placed beside a window, with everything that entails: the glazing as the main acoustic element weakest point of the wall, the travel of the sash, the emergency exit. We do not we do not redo them.

What a wall a blank wall provides, in four points:

1. No frame travel to check, therefore no conflict with a sash that opens outward.
2. No room behind the glazing to receive the noise and vibrations.
3. A continuous anchoring strip : without opening, the wall structure is not not interrupted and the choice of height becomes clear again.
4. Often the shortest path toward the electrical entrance and toward the basement through which the bundle passes.

What it costs, and no one said: no one passes there anymore

Here is the real price, and it does not appear on no quotation.

A device mounted on the facade that the household never uses is a device that no one looks at. A courtyard rear is crossed every day. A entrance is cleared of snow. A side gable without a door or window, between two houses the suburbs, can only be crossed by lawn mower—eight times each summer, in walking quickly.

But almost everything that that we have documented over the course of this series has the same profile: nothing is visible, nothing sounds, and no error code exists. The buildup of dirt on the coil, loss of level, the base of frozen water, plastic fasteners that break, the shrub that moves closer, the screen that becomes a box. In a lived-in yard, these things eventually by catching someone's eye. On a blind wall, no.

Our rule, applied since this project and written in the handover file:

• On a blind façade, the annual maintenance visit is not a commercial option; it is the only inspection the equipment will receive.
• And we ask the owner to walk along this side twice a year — once in November and once in April — with only three questions:
  1. The clearance around the equipment and underneath has the equipment remained unobstructed?
  2. Has something been leaning against it, stored or been placed to grow beside it?
  3. Is there water, a mark, or ice where wasn't there one?

Two minutes, twice a year. That is the trade-off of a blind wall.

A large blank wall is a trap, because that it constrains nothing

On a wall punctured by windows, the location is almost decided in advance. On a gable blank, everything is possible — and “everything is possible” very quickly becomes “we put it there because the pipe was shorter.”

Two published rules apply elsewhere with particular force particularly relevant here:

• The mounting dictates; aesthetics adapt, and the usable strip of wall is measured between the actual obstacles — our page from Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Tremblesthem.
• We read the interior plan before choosing the wall, because a bracket sends its vibrations into the structure and a poured foundation the conduit directly into the room that lies behind it — our page on Saint-Eustache.

This is where the only basement window in the gable becomes useful: it is the only information this façade provides about what lies behind it. On a blind wall, the constraint is invisible from outside; it read from inside, a plan in hand.

The neighbor, orientation, and downspout downspout

Three elements, one sentence each one, because each one belongs already on another page.

• A gable blind wall is almost always a side façade, therefore the one facing the neighbor : the limits of property line, the noise measured at the lot setbacks and architectural integration are governed by municipal bylaws, and check with the City — our Huntingdon page.
• We do not install against a dark wall facing south or west, which returns its energy at the end of the day — our page on Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, complemented by the one for Lorraine for solar radiation on the equipment.
• The building's water and the equipment's water never share a path, and a downspout extends beyond the equipment's footprint before installation, not afterward — our page from Ville-Marie.

Mistakes to avoid

• Compare “30,000 BTU” between two compare quotes without checking whether they concern of cooling or heating capacity.
• Calculate a home office as a bedroom because it is the size of a bedroom.
• Size the head of an office with the door open.
• Count on the main-floor head to temper a room whose door closes.
• Place the workstation along the discharge axis, then conclude that the unit “blows too much ».
• Leave the fan on AUTO during calling hours. call.
• Choose a location on a blank wall based on the pipe length. pipe.
• Install on a façade that no one walks past without putting in an inspection, even a minimal one.
• Install a console without having checked which room is on the other side on the other side of the foundation.

Grants and eligibility

A wall-mounted heat pump dual-zone system added to a home already heated with electricity is not covered by conversion programs from fossil fuel: Chauffez vert does not apply. LogisVert and Rénoclimat have their own conditions, performance requirements, and supporting documents, including the AHRI code of the combination actually installed. We verify eligibility at the opening of the file, and we do not enter any amount in a quote: the figures published by third parties contradict one another from one page to the next.

Why entrust this project to AirGreen

Because because the right question for a dual-zone system is, is never “how many BTUs” but “ which two rooms, and at what hours.” A home office that is occupied forty hours a week does not have the same same needs as the bedroom that was five years ago, and a façade that no one walks past does not have the same future as a yard experience. We document both in the file.

We design systems HVAC in Candiac and throughout the South Shore — La Prairie, Delson, Saint-Constant, Sainte-Catherine, Brossard, Longueuil, Saint-Lambert — as well as well as Montreal, Laval, and the North Shore. Each HVAC installation is documented: models, serial numbers by room, developed lengths, supplemental weighed, commissioning readings, retained louver position. Our RBQ licence 5645-9605-01 can be verified at line.

For a heat pump with two heads, a home office in to handle properly, a project multi-zone system or a service contractHVAC maintenance in Candiac and in the Roussillon RCM, write to us at sales@airgreen.ca or call (514) 316-2973. Tell us what time the room is occupied; it is this that particular answer which decide on the head.