Our’s is 19 years old. The upstairs unit has died. I have narrowed it down to either Trane or Lenox. We live in Georgia so the Air is used more than the furnace. I don’t want to go over board on the cost so we are sticking with a SEER 16. Does anyone have any recent experience buying either brand?
I’ve heard many times from professionals that the installer is more important than the brand. Be sure to pick someone you trust first, then listen to their advice on what they carry to decide on a particular unit.
That said, both Trane and Lenox are good brands and I don’t think you can go wrong with either. For a humid environment like GA, be sure not to oversize as longer run cycles will be better for controlling humidity. SEER 16 will probably be a variable-speed unit, which is also a good thing for humid environments.
We replaced ours a year ago. My experience was in line with what @anomader suggests. I got bids from the company that had been doing the normal servicing on the old one and from a general contractor I have used since I know he has great contacts including HVAC people. They both suggested different brands, one liking Lenox and the other said he’d not had good experience with the brand recently. We went with an American Standard, variable speed. Very happy after one year. Such fun - so many more exciting things to spend money on, but I guess our comfort is important!
We installed Lenox about 1 1/2 years ago. It’s been fine. We had some plaster work done and the unit completely clogged with dust because we trusted the workers to leave it off (hint- remove the thermostat unless you’re there to supervise). Our HVAC installer came back and cleaned it out and it’s still fine.
We had Trane in our last house for 10+ years and it was fine too.