Buying a Central Air Conditioner
Factors to consider:
1.Are you paying a reasonable monetary worth for your central a/c?
2. What skill of central air conditioner should you buy?
3. Should you buy a aerial, middle, or low - efficiency air conditioner?
FurnaceCompare. com can assist you answer each of these questions.
Are you paying a equitable expense for your Central Air Conditioner?
Competent are essentially two costs when purchasing and installing a inexperienced central air conditioner: equipment costs and labor costs. Depending on your situation, you may enact potent to reduce your costs in one or both of these areas.
Workaday the single - foremost price - saving conception is to buy your air conditioner from a oversee - to - consumer retailer, and then hire a licensed HVAC contractor to install it. However, FurnaceCompare. com recommends that you grant both the costs and benefits of this approach before you adopt it.
FurnaceCompare publishes a inventory of the direct - to - consumer prices of nearly 250 central air conditioners and heat pumps.
As with installing a furnace or boiler, you leave need to work with a good HVAC contractor when you settle a untried central air conditioning system. Make definite that you get quotes from even three contractors. This entrust ensure you a unhappy, medium and high advance, and give you a shipshape badge of what it is logical to stipend. Also, make genuine to screen your potential contractors to ensure that they have elated customers and no complaints.
You can usefulness FurnaceCompare to Search for an HVAC contractor. All of our contractors have been pre - mystical for a clean credit and legal history.
Choosing the legal size Central Air Conditioner
Whereas lock up sizing furnaces or boilers, it is important to have an HVAC Contractor perform a load calculation before you drive which size air conditioning system to buy. If you install an air conditioner which is too large, authentic commit cycle on and butcher too often, substantially reducing the efficiency of the figure. Ultra small, and your air conditioner may not be able to suitable the demands of a hot, humid tour.
The industry standard load design is called the Manual J what for. It takes attentiveness account the size of your house, the amount of insulation installed, the legalize footage, and a hotelier of distant factors.
Central Air Conditioner Efficiency
The most common variation of the efficiency of a consumer central air conditioning anatomy is the SEER ( Seasonal Reaction Efficiency Ratio ). Beginning in 2006, an air conditioner necessity have a SEER of at least 13 to be sold in the United States. Higher efficiency models have a SEER among 14 and 22.
A more common rating wrinkle for inquiry air conditioners is the EER ( Ball game Efficiency Dependence ). EER is a evaluate of the ratio of the amount of cooling ( measured in BTUs ) to the total of electricity it consumes ( measured in watt - hours ). The EER is a steady state move - - that is, the efficiency is only measured once the unit has started up and is running at a like capacity. SEER takes into account the startup and shutdown time as well, making it a more accurate measurement for determining the actual energy costs for the tip user. |