New split AC System impact on sound.

@emergingsoul 

A couple of years ago, I bought a Mitsubishi mini split for our  “TV room” and Mud room.  The outside unit is maybe five feet from my left speaker and the ceiling air mover is maybe ten feet away. Maybe because it’s only a one ton unit, it doesn’t affect anything. While I can sometimes hear the outside unit when it’s on, I can never hear the blower part and I do most of my listening at lower levels.

I recently had a 2 ton Bosch heat pump/propane furnace combo installed and it is much better at removing humidity over the previous furnace/ac combo. Quite superior for humidity. 

Installing anything but an heat pump, except in the most extreme climates, given the performance of modern heat pump technology, is simply wasteful. Our combined gas and electric bills in our new house, annualized, are almost half our previous house. December and January are higher, due to low temps requiring the use of the inline electric booster, but the rest of the year far lower and we have cooling, which our previous house in the Searrle area lacked.

As for noise, the heat pump is located outside and away from both the living room and theater as well as being mounted on a resilient base and ducted with a flexible coupling, is minimal. By avoiding flex tubing and hard coupling the ductwork to the structure, air handler noise is minimized. 

Older heat pumps were quite noisy. A previous neighbor located their heat pump about 30 ft from our master bedroom, and it sounded like a box of rocks in a washing machine. Just not the case anymore. Heat pumps have to meet strict noise requirements. Our new one is unobjectionable even when I'm standing next to it. 

The final advantage is up-front cost. Our heat pump total cost, installed was only 75% of the cost of a conventional furnace and A/C. No regrets, none. 

Yes, overall in most areas I'm on team Heat Pump for the win!

Now I have yo worry if a heat pump will ruin my music while I'm listening with the heat pump on....lol.