Panzerboy:

I like redundency in my A/C (Easy for me since I am in the business.) options.

I have an undersized (18,000 btu in a house that requires at least 30,000 btu.) central A/C, a 5,000 btu bedroom window unit, and an 8,000 btu standby window unit sitting in the basement.

I purposely undersized the central air unit so that it would run for longer periods of time and remove humidity first and foremost and cool the air. On a 92 degree F. day in Wisconsin (We are not as humid as Florida.), the indoor temperature in the house will be 82 degrees F.and the central air will be running continuosly. If you walk into the house from the outside, the immediate sensation you will feel is the sweat literally flashing off of your skin as the dry house interior looks for moisture.

The fewer on-off cycles of your compressor motor, the less wear on your system, and the lower your electricity bills. Something a lot of people don't know is that power companies have to be capable for the peaks caused when electric devices initially start up which can be as high as 30% more than their constant speed usage. They have a way of figuring this into your bill, and you will pay more for an oversized unit that starts and stops often than you will for smaller sized unit that runs all the time.

The other thing that people don't realize is that in A/C cooling, BIGGER IS NOT BETTER. It is sold this way because the average contractor does not want an unhappy customer who does not feel cool enough with an A/C installation. A/C of today respond to temperature, not humidity. With energy concerns and smart home technology, that is changing although way too slowly. Stop and consider this easy to administer test. Go out on a hot day where you are uncomfortable and have someone throw a pail of cold water on you; feels great. As you stand there, your body heats up the water and you start to feel clammy. You may still feel somewhat cool, but you will feel clammy. Another pail of water and you are cool again, but you get back to clammy real fast. If you were able to go into a moisture free room after being out in hot humidity and the room was the same temperature as the outdoors, you would still feel cooler because your perspiration would be evaporating and your body would be cooling itself more efficiently.

Turning on an oversized A/C cooling unit is like the above example. The room gets cooled in a hurry, the thermostat shuts off and the humidity is still in the house. Because the house gets cooled down in a hurry and cold air holds less moisture than hot air, and the A/C unit did not run long enough to condense the water at the coils, you end up having the water condensing in the house itself. Now you have liquid water, usually at junctions where warm moist air is coming into the house and you end up with mold, "A/C colds", that preceived "A/C smell", and you wait for that next cold blast of air that you think will make you be more comfortable.

If you can afford it, the next time you install an A/C unit, either get a school educated (A real school, not some of these quicky education camps whose only purpose is to supply low paid quicky installers who couldn't figure heat gain or load if their life depended on it.) technician who will charge you for a detailed analysis of your needs, give you his computations when you pay him and explain how he arrived at those computations so that you can check them out with a second opinion. Then install a dual A/C system with each unit running seperately or together depending on wet bulb (Humidity) temperature, or one with a dehumidifier built into the total system. With a dual system you can have one of the condensors running continuosly to remove moisture and if the temperature is too high, the other one kicks in to help. Have them made odd (Example: For a 36,000 btu home requirement, one should be 12,000 btu and the other 24,000 btu.) with computer controls determining based on humidity and temperature which one should run or if both should run. The beauty of this is on a cold clammy night you could have the small one running to remove the humidity, but it would be too small to cool the house. Another advantage is that if one unit breaks down, you will have partial A/C until the broken one is repaired.

In the meantime, buy a window unit that your generator can operate for the main living area in your house and isolate that area with closed doors or hanging blankets so you can be comfortable in at least one room of the house.

My brother wants me to come to Florida as he thinks I could make a fortume in A/C by being the contractor (Bad knees don't allow me to install much.) and consultant, but I have caregiver responsibilities up here that come first.

Good luck!

Bountyhunter