How Do You Know What Central Air Unit Will Hookup to Your Furnace

Whether summers are really getting hotter or we've lost our tolerance for heat as we grow older, lots of united states are tempted to yank out noisy, dripping window air conditioners and supplant them with quiet, efficient whole-firm fundamental-air-workout systems.

Merely nosotros don't take the idea whatever further. Those of you with forced-air furnace ducts in place worry that modifying the heating system will exist costly and result in inefficiency. And if you don't have ducts, you can't imagine how they're going to exist added without destroying the house and costing a bundle. But adding central air is easier and less plush than you might think.

How Much Does it Cost to Install Central Air?

When added to an existing forced-air heating system, central air for a 2,000-square-foot home costs $iii,500 to $4,000 and tin be washed by 2 technicians in two to iii days, often with little or no change to the ducting.

For a business firm that needs ducts, the costs and work time double. But a contractor experienced in retrofitting can cleverly hide ductwork backside walls, in the back of closets and up in the attic with minimal cuts into walls and the ceiling and very little mess.

How to Select the Best Central Air Unit

The kickoff order of business — and peradventure the nearly of import conclusion in having primal air conditioner installed in your habitation — is selecting the right equipment.

Heat-gain adding

All cooling contractors should starting time their evaluation of your business firm by performing an Air Conditioning Contractors of America Manual J load adding. This determines the heat gain your home is subject to. The calculation is relatively easy to perform and will reveal what size unit you need. Move on to another contractor if the one you're considering wants to determine the right unit for your house solely on experience. Though strongly influenced by where yous live, several factors bear on the size unit required, including the amount of wall and attic insulation you have; the types and placement of windows and doors; and the orientation of your domicile to the sun. The calculation can also alarm you lot to the possible benefits of upgrading the insulation in your firm. By making your home more than free energy efficient, you may be able to reduce the size of the air conditioner you need.

How Large of a Key Air Unit Is Needed?

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Have these steps when determining how big of a central air unit is needed for your home'due south size.

Sizing the unit

Using the oestrus-gain calculation, your contractor will recommend an air conditioner size, expressed either in tonnage or Btu per hour (Btu/h). One ton equals 12,000 Btu per 60 minutes. Why is getting the proper size unit and then important?

An undersize unit of measurement won't be able to cool rooms downwardly completely on the hottest days and volition cost more than to operate because information technology has to run longer than a correctly sized unit of measurement. An oversize compressor also costs more to operate because it but takes more electricity to run a bigger unit of measurement. And an oversize unit doesn't lower humidity finer. That'south because it cools the air so apace that it shuts off before it has a chance to broadcast the proper volume of air past the coils to extract the necessary moisture. The result is a room that doesn't seem as absurd as the temperature indicates. In fact, the room tin feel clammy and damp.

Unit of measurement efficiency

Later determining the size of the unit of measurement, your contractor should talk to you nearly efficiency, which is expressed by the seasonal energy-efficiency rating (SEER). The SEER rates how many Btu an air conditioner will remove for each watt of electricity information technology consumes. The college the SEER, the less it costs to operate.

Federal law requires that new A/C units accept a SEER of at to the lowest degree thirteen. These units take lower operating costs, tend to be higher quality, have more safety features, better sound shields and lower voltage requirements. In general, the higher the SEER, the higher the initial cost for the unit of measurement.

Unit types

Next, you must make up one's mind what type of arrangement to buy. There are 2 kinds. A "package system" gangs the condenser, which cools the refrigerant and exhausts warm air, with the fan-and-curlicue system, which cools and blows the air. The ducting connects straight to the unit of measurement. This is essentially a large wall air conditioner with ducts. Simply package systems are rare.

With a "split organization," the condenser is outside the house and the fan-and-whorl system are within; they're connected to each other by pipes that deport refrigerant. If you lot have a forced-air furnace, the refrigerant pipes are connected to a cooling coil system fitted into the furnace air handler.

Sometimes it goes right into the existing plenum. If that won't work because of space limitations, the contractor will fabricate a split sheet-metal plenum. If y'all don't take forced air, the fan-and-coil organisation is typically placed in the cranium, where it will deliver cool air through ducts. The twenty- to 30-human foot-long pipes that carry the refrigerant are bearded to look like a downspout.

Proper placement

Even the quietest condensers brand noise, and so work with your contractor to find a location that's not near a bedchamber or home-part window. Don't place the condenser under a deck or completely enclose it because it exhausts warm air out the superlative. Any airflow restriction volition lower the unit's efficiency. Y'all tin can, however, hide the condenser in the landscaping, as long every bit air can freely circulate around it.

No Ducts? No Trouble

Most fundamental air conditioners are split systems: The condenser is outside and the fan-and-coil system is inside, connected to the condenser past pipes that sew the outside of the house. The pipes can be disguised as part of the gutter-and-downspout system. Ductwork services second-floor rooms through ceiling registers. Ducts run through closets on their way to commencement-flooring rooms.

Delivering the Air

Furnace ducts that deliver hot air in cold months tin can be used for air-conditioning.

If you have ducts

You should have your ducts inspected. Many times, modifications are required to accommodate the greater book of air produced by air-conditioning. Ironically, older duct systems, which tend to be larger, work best when retrofitting central air-conditioning. (Every bit the heating industry has learned more virtually the dynamics of airflow and sizing furnaces and delivery systems, ducting has gotten smaller.)

Here'southward a list of typical modifications that existing ducts require:

• Upsizing the furnace blower (rated in cubic feet per minute, or cfm) to move the cubic anxiety of cool air required for your house. An undersize blower won't move enough air through the coils, and they tin freeze.
• Sealing the ducts to boost efficiency. This is a job all-time left to a pro, as an imbalanced system can lead to hazardous backdrafting during the heating flavor or pockets of warm air during the cooling season.
• Swapping out older supply registers for ones that let a greater volume of air to pass. Erstwhile register grilles with slits only 1/4 inch broad offer as well much resistance to airflow; new grilles can improve airflow past 15 to 25 percent.

If You Need to Install Ducts

Because the fan-and-whorl unit is mounted in the cranium in most retrofit air-conditioning systems, the challenge is to get supply and return ducts to ceiling registers in the starting time- and second-floor rooms below.

Ducts that feed second-floor rooms are typically run across the cranium floor and plunge down between the attic floor joists, where they are connected to ceiling registers. Ducts that feed beginning-flooring rooms run down through second-floor closets wherever possible.

The first step your contractor will take to decide the position of ducts is to draw a flooring plan of the second floor and lay it over a floor plan of the kickoff flooring. "In 99 pct of homes," says Frank Scarangello, of Staten Island, New York-based Scaran Heating and Air-conditioning, "second-floor closets will requite you access to locations for first-floor ceiling registers."

Ducts running in closets take up less space than you might retrieve. Because most ducts are 12x6 inches or 10x8 inches, even in a relatively small 2x4-pes closet, they accept up just 4 of the 64 bachelor cubic feet. Some cooling contractors might advise using "flex duct" (a small, inexpensive flexible hose) instead of rigid square ducts. But avoid flex duct in active closet spaces — it doesn't stand up upwards well to article of clothing and tear and is easily punctured.

What kind of mess tin you expect if you accept to have ducts installed? In virtually cases, wall and ceiling surfaces are left largely untouched. Holes do have to be cut in first- and second-floor ceilings for registers, and some second-floor closet floors will undergo surgery to accommodate the new ducts. But these holes are relatively pocket-size, and the mess is hands contained.

Even if in that location's no ductwork in your home, if air-conditioning will brand your house more pleasant in the summer months, contact HVAC contractors to review the toll of adding A/C and the methods they would use. Choosing the right pro and equipment will ensure you years of comfort, and it's frequently less expensive and less intrusive than you might imagine.

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• All-time domicile warranty companies
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Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/heating-cooling/21015106/adding-central-air-unit

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