Updated Sept. 2021: One of the impacts of the climate crisis is year round temperatures in our area are increasing. The summers are getting hotter and temperatures, even in the spring and fall also call for using your air conditioner more days of the year than before.
If increased heat proves to be too much for your home’s air conditioning system this year and you need to replace it, or if you’re planning a remodeling project that will involve a new heating and cooling system, don’t buy a new air conditioner or heat pump that is larger than you actually need. Installing units that are bigger than necessary can actually result in higher energy bills and make your home less comfortable.
Bigger air conditioning is not always better air conditioning
Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it?
You’d think that a bigger unit would have to work less to heat or cool the house. Turns out just the opposite is true: when a unit is too large, it cycles on and off more frequently than a right-sized unit. This creates more wear and tear so the unit may wear out sooner than expected. All that cycling also creates higher energy bills compared to a right-sized unit that just comes on, runs steadily, and then cuts off. Plus, a home with an over-sized unit will feel less comfortable because the frequent on/off cycling of air conditioning creates short, cold bursts of air rather than a cool, steady temperature. The humidity is also less comfortable because the cycling means that less moisture is removed from the home.
So, what’s the right size for your home?
Some contractors simply use square footage or “rules of thumb” to size units. At Merrill Contracting, we know it takes more thinking than that to do the accurate load calculations needed to come up with the right-sized unit.
We understand how two remodeling projects in our area with identical square footage – even the same number of windows and doors – can have wildly different heating and cooling challenges. For example, an addition that faces south is likely to require more cooling power than an identical addition that faces north. So, when it comes to right-sizing the new heating and cooling system, here are the factors that we take into account for you:
- The space itself: the direction it faces, square footage, ceiling height, layout, etc.
- The size, type and number of windows and the direction they face
- Shading (e.g., trees, overhangs, etc.)
- The overall energy efficiency of the home (e.g., how well windows, doors and ducts are sealed, how the home is insulated, etc.)
If you are thinking about remodeling, we’d be happy to share more ideas for making your space not only beautiful and functional, but comfortable and energy-efficient as well. Just give us a call.
