Lennox air conditioners

Energy efficient – somewhat. But how about quality?

Lennox air conditioners range from extremely unambitious to excellent when it comes to energy efficiency. In my books, you don’t get full boasting rights for efficiency when the entry level central air conditioning system in your product line is at the absolute bottom of mandated efficiency levels.

Lennox International, a mid-sized HVAC manufacturer (roughly $16 billion market capitalization) starts its product line with the 13ACX Air Conditioner, which, as the product code suggests, has an SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) starting at 13. That’s exactly the new minimum standard the US DOE set in 2006, and one full point lower than the current standard, which took effect January 1, 2023 (the new standard does allow SEER 13 air conditioners to be installed in some northern regions, presumably because the demand on air conditioners is lower further north and therefore there’s less of a difference in energy use). The minimum for an ENERGY STAR rated central air conditioner is SEER 14, and Lennox air conditioners at the lowest efficiency in this class include the Lennox 14ACX Air Conditioner, rated at between SEER 13.6 and 16 depending on the outdoor unit model number. Fortunately, Lennox goes quite a bit further to models with up to SEER 28 – meaning they’re more than twice as efficient as the least efficient models.

Don’t be fooled by manufacturer descriptions of the 13ACX as ‘economical’. Unless you’re installing your air conditioner in the far north or in Tierra del Fuego, where sticker price is all that matters because you’ll almost never turn the dang thing on, the most economical air conditioners are the most efficient, because the energy use over the lifetime of a central air conditioner typically far outweighs the up-front costs.

For example, assuming a typical cooling season of 150 days, with 30 very hot days, 60 hot days, and 60 warm days, a total seasonal cooling output of 28.8 million BTU (equivalent to a 2 ton air conditioner running full blast for 1,200 hours/year), and a price of 20 cents per kilowatt hour, you’ll wind up paying about $10,000 in electricity costs over a 20 year period for an SEER 14 unit, while a SEER 28 unit (the best Lennox has to offer) will cost you about $5,000, or half as much. If the top of the line model (SL28XCV) is out of your financial reach, there are several other manufecturers such as Trane, Carrier, and Nordyne / Nortek, that offer highly efficient models. (Nordyne / Nortek sells their units under their own brand but also under familiar brands such as Maytag, Frigidaire, Broan and Gibson. For the Nortech brands, look for the units with iQ Drive technology.) So unless the higher SEER model costs a great deal more than the lower SEER model, you’re better to go with the most efficient.

How quiet are Lennox air conditioners?

Lennox air conditioners have a wide range of noise ratings. with the two most efficient units – the SL28XCV and EL23XCV – at a very low 59 decibels which is equivalent to normal conversation. They go all the way up to 76 decibels, which is louder than a vacuum cleaner and not quite as loud as heavy traffic. The noise rating on air conditioners applies to the noise of the outdoor unit. I confess that I don’t use whole house cooling very much in the summer – see my Summer energy saving tips for how my family survives muggy Toronto summers without running our air conditioning on all but the hottest days – and so I do get to hear the noise from many neighbors’ air conditioners from my open bedroom window as I try to get to sleep at night. Even if you plan to run your AC all summer long and so aren’t worried about how the neighbors will feel, bear in mind the fact that sometimes the AC will be running while you might be out and about in your yard, and the fact that some of that noise will make it inside your house. Personally I would stay away from any air conditioner of 70 decibels or higher – which eliminates 9 of the 13 Lennox air conditioner models available.

Model breakdown

The following table shows the models of Lennox air conditioner available as of December 23, with SEER, SEER2 and noise ratings. SEER2 is a newer specification for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio; in general, SEER2 ratings will be slightly lower than SEER ratings, but the ratio between the two will also differ between different units, since they are measuring a different combination of behaviors and conditions. As you can see from the chart, there are some very efficient and quiet units and a lot of loud and inefficient ones!

*N/A: Not available – this information is not listed on the Lennox website. Some older units may no longer be manufactured and may be below current minimum standards but can still be sold in northern regions.

How about quality?

Of course, the noise level of an air conditioner that isn’t working will be 0 dBA, and Lennox AC units may well score in this noise range for considerable parts of their lifetime. Unfortunately the frustrated Lennox owner screaming into the phone to their HVAC contractor may push the noise level back up to the mid 70’s or higher.

Consumer satisfaction with Lennox air conditioners is a mixed bag according to many online review websites. A few customers are very satisfied with their Lennox AC units – the ones who have not experienced any problems, or whose problems were quickly addressed at no cost to them, because of a warranty or service contract arrangement. But many customers report problems with breakdowns, malfunctioning thermostats, or refrigerant leakage, on Lennox central air conditioners. These problems often occur within the first few years of ownership. Typically people complain about failures after the warranty expires, although that doesn’t mean these units are designed to last exactly the length of the warranty period. After all, you’re much more likely to complain if you are the one who has to pay for repairs, or a new unit, than if the unit failed while the warranty still covered the costs.

This is one of the inherent biases of online customer AC review sites. A good thing to watch for is how old the air conditioners are of people who are raving about the unit versus griping about it. In the case of Lennox air conditioners, it seems many of the complainers have owned their units for 1-5 years, while those who are very satisfied either bought the unit within the last year (perhaps before it had a chance to fail), or 10 or 20 years ago. Anyone who is still running a 20-year-old central air conditioner should seriously consider replacing it, since it is probably running at an SEER of 8 or less, a third of what you can get from the most efficient Lennox air conditioner today.

Again the newer units receiving more complaints is a somewhat distorted view from the review sites, because the group of people who have had the units longer excludes those who bought Lennox air conditioners 5+ years ago and then got rid of them because of failures (and didn’t bother to write a review five or ten years after ditching the unit). So it is not clear whether Lennox quality has gone down over the years, or whether it has been consistently bad enough that few people stick with a Lennox air conditioner for very long.

One thing to bear in mind is that many of the problems that plague any central heating or air conditioning system are due to substandard installation rather than to the quality of the products themselves. And customer complaints about the timeliness of service on Lennox air conditioners do seem to be quite prevalent, which suggests that the companies that choose to sell Lennox products are not as focused on good customer service as some others. This seems odd, given that Lennox air conditioners tend to be on the pricier side.

Whatever air conditioner brand you choose, make sure you do some thorough research on the HVAC dealer you are buying from: the dealer should have a solid reputation, be a member of the local Better Business Bureau, provide you with a number of references (both people you can call, and letters from satisfied customers), and preferably be rated highly in local community newspapers (for instance, “Reader’s Choice” awards for the best HVAC dealer).

Finally, whatever air conditioner manufacturer you provide, I strongly recommend going for a renewable annual maintenance contract that covers all parts and labor, and given the spotty record of Lennox units, especially regarding refrigerant leakage, a maintenance contract is essential. You should ask your HVAC dealer to tell you what price they are currently charging on maintenance contracts for older equipment as well, as service contracts often go up in price once the unit is past a certain age.

A new twist: solar powered air conditioning

Lennox is apparently trying to score more environmental points by marketing ‘solar power ready’ air conditioners and heat pumps. The idea is that your Lennox dealer will install both the air conditioner system and a modest number of solar electric panels to help generate electricity that will offset the electricity use of the air conditioner. They even provide a solar powered air conditioning calculator that lets you figure out how much of your annual air conditioning energy costs you can eliminate by installing one or more solar panels.

I’m not sure an HVAC contractor is the right company to be doing solar electric installations, unless that’s a major separate part of their business. (It’s a very different set of technical skills than those of the HVAC technician, after all.)

And it is a bit of a gimmick. If you’re thinking of going for solar electricity generation, you want a system that takes into consideration your whole house energy consumption, not just heating and cooling.

And as I point out in Solar powered air conditioning, you are far better off to invest your extra cash in energy efficiency upgrades (such as increased insulation, better windows, energy saving window coverings, additional deciduous trees on southern and eastern exposures to reduce sun exposure to your house, and of course the most energy efficient air conditioner you can afford) than to buy solar panels to generate the electricity to power your air conditioner. (As I also point out, there are actually much more efficient solar powered air conditioning systems that use solar heat, rather than solar photovoltaics, to run an evaporative or absorption based cooling system.) And if you are really serious about saving electricity, you’ll also want to work hard to minimize your need to run a cooling system at all, rather than find one you can run on solar panels.

In brief: reasonable efficiency and noise levels; quality problems

I can’t in good faith recommend a Lennox air conditioner given their fairly unambitious entry level units in terms of energy efficiency, the fact that their top of the line models, while highly efficient, are also among the most expensive; and the large number of Lennox customers who have experienced major problems such as compressor breakdown, refrigerant leakage, coil failure, system board failure, or substandard performance. I should also point out that many customers report problems getting units serviced in a timely manner, either because parts aren’t available or because the dealer doesn’t have the staff to service the units promptly. (Lennox systems tend to have more proprietary parts than other manufacturer systems, making servicing them more expensive and obtaining parts more challenging.)

If you are tempted to consider Lennox air conditioners one by the ‘economical’ argument, remember to include in your assessment of ‘economy’ not just the sticker price (and any promised rebates) but the operating costs (efficiency, as I pointed out early, has a direct bearing on what you’ll pay to run the unit), and maintenance costs (either for an annual maintenance costs, or the cost of the service call, parts and labor when things go wrong and you don’t have a service contract).

Remember, your objective is to stay comfortable at the lowest possible cost to you and the environment. The low sticker price you can pay for the less efficient Lennox air conditioners, followed by leaking refrigerant, frequent maintenance calls, or a compressor that won’t run is not the way to achieve that goal. And throwing solar panels on your roof won’t do much good if the coils are busted. Go for a quality system with ultra high efficiency, and you can relax in comfort knowing the extra up-front cost will be more than offset in long-term savings and far fewer headaches.

A better choice than any air conditioner

You might want to consider an alternative to an air conditioner, if you live in an area where you both heat and cool the home. A high efficiency heat pump operates like an air conditioner in hot weather, and is installed in the same way as a standard whole-house air conditioner, but not only does it pump the heat out of your house and into the outdoor air in hot weather, it can pump heat into the house in cold weather. I have a Carrier Infinity heat pump that works like a charm and heats my house during the long Toronto heating season, while cooling it on the rare days when muggy Toronto summers get the better of us.