Thanks Bruce! I will look up the HVACR breakers for my panel. That’s good to know. The breaker is “upsized” and yeah the overload protection allows the upsized short circuit protection.
I have a $7 Thermistor on the way and will use it. It’s a 1 ohm which will reduce the startup current to about half and heat up enough quickly to go to a negligible resistance.
It’s relatively small and I have some terminals that will fit in the subpanel for it. So it looks to be the best solution for me.