replace outdoor heat pump unit only?

[Blackhawk]

I have a 3 ton Carrier heat pump system manufactured in 1992. My heating bills over the winter were pretty high and the outdoor unit just died today at the peak of the AC season. The service technician said that the capacitor and a contactor were bad and I also have a bad defrost board. I trust the technician as I have used his company many times and the company is highly respected in my town. The repairs were estimated at about $600. I have been prepping myself for replacing the whole system. Option 1) I can only replace the outdoor unit for about $2500 with a 13 seer model. The technician said that I would probably only get about 12 seer in combination with my old indoor unit. Option 2) is to replace the entire 15 year old system. Rough estimate was $5 to $6K. Most everything I have looked up on the web says to replace both units, not just one. Does anyone have opinions or experience on this?

[autocad_junkie]

I'm no heat/air guy, but I can tell you my wife and I just went through the same situation a few months back. Our AC unit (condenser and A-coil) were over 30 years old. I kept replacing contactors and capacitors and I finally decided to get the AC unit replaced. Our furnace is about 5 years old and I was told that it would make sense to replace the complete AC side of the system, this being the outside condenser (compressor) and A-coil that is connected to the furnace. Comparing Energy bills from this summer, I can tell you we are saving money. I have a 13 SEER Rheem unit. Our existing blower and furnace were in perfect working order, so there was no need to replace that stuff. Anyway, hope this helps.