Need To Install Air Conditioning In An Older Home? Know Your Options
Are you tired of the hot temperatures of the summer and wish that you had air conditioning? If so, you may be looking for ways to retrofit an air conditioner into your older home. This is not as hard as it seems, with there being many options available that can work for you.
Central Air Conditioning
If you do not have a traditional furnace in your home already, you may be out of luck when it comes to installing central air conditioning. That is because central air conditioning requires ductwork to move air between all the rooms in your home. Retrofitting that ductwork into an older home can be extremely problematic and expensive.
However, if your home currently has a traditional forced-air furnace, you are in luck. It is possible to add a compressor to the outside of your home and the evaporator coil components to the blower to make the system blow cold air. This will be the easiest and best method if it is available to you.
Heat Pumps
You may not have thought of using a heat pump due to its name, which sounds like it can only be used for heating your home in the winter. However, heat pumps work for both heating and cooling a home. That's because a heat pump works by moving heat, not creating cold air. In the winter time, it can actually extract the heat from outside your home and move it inside. In the summer, the opposite happen,s where the system extracts the heat from inside your home and moves it outside.
You may be surprised at how effective this method is for cooling an entire home. While a heat pump may be problematic for heating a home in regions that have very cold temperatures in the winter, it can still work out fine for cooling purposes.
Ductless Air Conditioning
Another option is to place ductless air conditioning units throughout your home, which are installed in the wall of the room they are being used in. They can be retrofitted into any home and give you cold air only where you need it, which can help improve energy efficiency. For example, if you only want cool air at night when sleeping, you can install a ductless air conditioning in the bedroom and just cool down the smaller space.
For more information about residential air conditioning installation, speak to a local HVAC contractor.