[jeff5may]

Awesome rundown and results. With most high efficiency devices, a couple of percent translates to a higher sticker price, sometimes a lot higher. With the air handler on low, you gained something, this is good. Every little bit of water you collect is 10 times the equal volume of air the evaporator can cool, plus you can always speed up the fan to move more dry air once the room temperatures pull down to comfortable levels. Or you can "coast", turning off the compressor while still running the fan on low speed and pumping water through the precool coil. The balance points where which mode is less expensive to run when can be calculated without much effort.