There is never a time of year when your air conditioning unit is not important within the home. Regardless of whether it’s winter and you have cranked the furnace up to full, or a cooling breeze is all you want after a long run on a hot summer day, your air conditioning unit is as necessary to your living space as the bricks, windows or lighting fixtures are.
But as a homeowner, whether new or experienced, the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) unit requires maintenance to go on delivering the warm or cool air that is needed in every season of the year. It is a good idea to schedule regular checks and is a great way to ensure that your HVAC system is doing what it should be, all of the time. A broken AC unit will affect the entire house in the long run. From helping bacteria turn into mold and damp due to increased humidity, to health problems resulting from allergies or conditions exasperated by a lack of good ventilation, the air conditioner is a key player in keeping you and your family members healthy.
Furthermore, your energy savings will simply disappear. As you can’t have a house without heating, but find the system is working overtime to heat both the air and the water in the air, the energy requirements will increase significantly. Therefore, another downside to having a broken HVAC system is the hole it will burn into your pocket. More recently, households in the U.S. have employed contractors to install split air conditioner services into the home. In fact, many a new home has this type of AC system as standard already. But if your HVAC set up is due for a repair, a maintenance check, or a modernization, then split air conditioning services might be worth consideration.
What is a split air conditioning system?
As the name suggests, a split air conditioning system is composed of units that are split into parts, to provide more results. The way it works is this: after fans draw in normal air, a compressor unit will add water or gas-based coolant, and send this blended air through the air handler. A condenser unit then vaporizes it all into liquid form. Then, the unit forces the liquid to travel over an evaporator coil, turning it back into a gas, which is then released into the room. As the process and the reaction both release heat, the air that is expelled from the unit is cooler. Also, the air that has been released is recycled back through the system at the evaporator stage, and the coils will once again ensure that the liquid form is released only as a gas.
Why should I have one installed?
The benefits of this are that, as the unit is removing moisture and replacing it with gas, the air that is then released is not only less humid, but is also cleaner. Whilst split AC systems are hugely beneficial to those who do not have good ventilation within the home, they are also very popular amongst homeowners in warmer climates. They are more efficient through their use of refrigerants and cover a larger area. However, whilst AC units do tend to be used primarily as a cooling device, they can be used as a heating appliance too, through the addition of a heat pump. The heat pump is added to the unit to help regulate and warm the air at the compressor stage and is an easy way to avoid relying on the thermostat. Plus, as the evaporator is still turning the liquid into gas, the warm air that is released will also be devoid of moisture, which means that if you do still use your furnace, it won’t be using so much energy to heat the water in the air.
A split air conditioning service, a particular one with a heat pump installed encourages you to use less energy in keeping the air less humid and relying on the furnace to generate heat within the home. They are also much quieter than a standard AC appliance tends to be, as the fans and the condenser tend to form the outdoor unit, and only the quieter air handler parts including the evaporator, are inside the home.
When should I get one installed?
The best time to install any new system is either as part of renovations or if the home is due for a remodel anyway. If the house is going to be worked on, then the best way to ensure that all home improvements are taken care of is to do everything at the same time. One of the top tips for home renovations is to try and do as much as you can at once and use a general contractor instead of splitting the house into multiple sections and scheduling work on one room after another is completed. This will simply prevent home renovation projects from taking a long time to complete.
Contrary to many other repairs or installation jobs, there isn’t a lot of work for a contractor to do when installing a split AC system. In fact, Plunkett has developed a new system that doesn’t rely on the existing ductwork in the home, if it has any at all. Instead, they install the outdoor unit to connect with individual units through ductless mini designs. One benefit of these ductless mini-split systems is that each AC ventilation unit can be operated individually, meaning that, for example, the master bedroom can be at a different temperature than the other bedrooms. The other helpful aspect of this ductless air conditioner is that it can be installed in any type of bathroom, and is compatible with almost every bathroom design. There is no real minimum square footage, and the tech is not very obstructive.
Healthier, quieter, and more cost-effective, split air conditioning systems are a great way to both cool and heat the home.