If you’ve ever stood in your living room on a sweltering hot day and wondered why your air conditioning wasn’t keeping you cool, there’s a good chance you have the wrong size for the space of your home. For a number of important reasons, the right sized unit is vitally important when installing air conditioning in Melbourne.
If your system is too small, it will be running too much and struggling to reach your ideal coolness, and possibly wear itself out. Too large, and you’ll have short cycles, inconsistent temperatures and high running costs. Either way, you’ll be paying a premium for a system that can’t do its job properly.
When considering air conditioning for your home, be it a single bedroom apartment or a two-story brick veneer, you need to know if a ducted reverse cycle air conditioner in Melbourne is the best choice, or a multi-head split system is the way to go.
At Templestowe Heating & Cooling, we’ve been helping Melbourne homeowners get this decision right for over 60 years. In this guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how to do the same.
What Types of Air Conditioning Systems Do We Sell?
Templestowe Heating & Cooling sells and installs five different styles of air conditioning which are suitable for different types of home. We’ll walk you through each type.
Split System
A single head split system air conditioner is a fine option to cool one room. They are convenient for both cooling and heating, saving you money and space when it comes to temperature control.
A single unit is good for a single room, but would not be so good for cooling a large house.
Multi-head Split Systems
With the convenience and efficiency of a split system, you can add multiple units all connected to the single outdoor unit. You can place units in different rooms of the house to cover more area.
As with a single unit, you can cool one room with one split system, but with a multi-head setup, you can cover multiple rooms. So rather than cooling an entire house, you’re cooling multiple rooms in an entire house. Cool all the bedrooms, but not so much the corridor or bathroom in the same area of the house.
Evaporative Cooling
Evaporative cooling is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way to cool your whole home. Using the natural cooling effect of evaporation, with strategically placed roofing vents, you can cool your entire home.
Evaporative cooling doesn’t rely on refrigerants and has a small carbon footprint. You get cool air, that is filtered of dust and allergens, and can feel good about the environment.
Unlike split systems, evaporative cooling is best for larger homes, with three or four bedrooms, or even multi-story homes. You can pump cold air through multiple vents in the roof to cool down large spaces.
Bulkhead Air Conditioning
This air conditioning system is concealed in your ceiling space, with grills installed in your ceiling. Much like evaporative, this style of air conditioning is perfect for large family homes. Vents can be installed in living rooms, bedrooms or passageways, to spread cooling air throughout your house.
It can also be used for heating during winter, saving you the need of having separate heating and cooling systems in your home.
Ducted Refrigerated
Ducted refrigerated systems are good for heating and cooling and are perfect for large homes, offices and workspaces. An indoor unit in your ceiling space distributes cool or warm air through ducts to anywhere in your home.
What Sized Air Conditioning Unit to Suit My Home?
As we said in the introduction, you want the right sized air conditioning system for your home. Too small and it will struggle and you won’t feel cool. Too large and you will be overpaying for power and cooling that you don’t need.
One and Two Bedroom Units
For small places you wouldn’t need much more than a split system mounted on your wall. If you mainly spend time in the living room, one unit on the wall would be sufficient. You could have a second mounted in the main bedroom to help keep temperatures perfect while trying to sleep. With a timer set, you don’t have to have your air conditioner blowing all night.
The split system being a heater unit as well helps save on appliances and on electricity bills.
Three or Four Bedroom House
As the area of your home gets larger you can start thinking of bigger systems to cool it. A single split system unit will not do much more than cool just one room. Often with larger houses the living area is much bigger too, so it’s possible a single split system on the wall would struggle to cool anyway.
You could install a multi-headed split system and have units in more than one room. This could help cool bedrooms down, allowing you to cool only the areas you need. However, if you have a larger family area it might not pack enough power to bring the heat down, especially if you’re all in there together.
An evaporative system or ducted air conditioning would work well in a larger home, with vents in the living areas and in the hallways near bedrooms. You can set zones in your home, saving you on energy bills. This means you can just cool your living areas during the day, and then the bedrooms at night before you go to sleep.
Double Story Home
Two storeys in your home means more rooms and more area you need to cool. This means you’ll be needing a bigger system to keep your whole home cool.
Another factor that can influence the size of the cooling unit for your two-story home is understanding that heat rises, so your upper storeys will be warmer in summer than your ground floor rooms.
Ducted cooling would seem the most obvious choice for a two-story home, as it can easily cool bigger areas. However, if you don’t have enough room between floors for the ducting, you will run into some troubles.
A multi-headed split-system could be the solution you’re looking for. One outdoor unit feeding many indoor split systems mounted in bedrooms and family rooms. Easy to zone off the upstairs and downstairs so you’re not cooling rooms not in use.
You can see that split systems are perfect for smaller homes and rooms, or for more specific areas you want to cool, while bulkhead or ducted refrigerated cooling is best for larger spaces, such as four bedroom homes or offices. The more area you want cooled the bigger the system you will need.
While this may seem simple logic, it is also about efficiency. It makes sense having a bigger unit to cover more space as trying to cool the same area with split systems would cost you more money.
As a Melbourne-based company, Templestowe Heating and Cooling understand the rigours of Melbourne weather and what works to keep you comfortable. During Autumn it can be cold and rainy on the weekends and then into the high twenties and sunny by Monday, or even the same day. You need a system that will keep your whole home at the right temperature for you, no matter what’s going on in the big wide world.
If you want to discuss what air conditioning system will work best for your personal circumstances, contact us today for a conversation, a free quote, and more.
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