If you’re thinking of replacing your air conditioner this year, it’s important to take a few factors into consideration. A common misconception about air conditioning is that a bigger unit will run less and cost less. Think of your AC system like a car: the more you drive your car in stop-and-go traffic rather than the highway, the faster it wears down. Your air conditioner must continuously shut on and off to compensate for its size if it is too big, a process known as short-cycling. This makes your system inefficient.
Why Is Short-Cycling Bad?
In addition to wearing down your system faster, short-cycling doesn’t allow your system to properly dehumidify your indoor air. This is because AC units typically don’t start dehumidifying until they’ve been running for 8-10 minutes. Excess moisture from humidity could cause numerous problems within your home. You could start to notice warped furniture and wallpaper throughout your home, or worse you could find mold. Additionally, excess moisture makes your indoor air uncomfortable.
How Are Systems Sized?
When HVAC professionals size an AC unit they look at many factors. They’ll look at your home’s square footage, but also the ceiling height, location and number of windows and doors, your insulation, how many occupants are in the home, and more. If you’ve made any energy-efficient upgrades such as extra insulation or weather-stripping, this could decrease the size of air conditioner needed to cool your home.
Whether you are getting an air conditioner installed in a new home or replacing an existing unit, you should ask your HVAC contractor how they plan to size the air conditioner. A professional HVAC contractor will understand that there is a lot more to sizing the unit than simply measuring the square footage of conditioned floor area.
Call Envirotech Air Quality Services to install your new air conditioning system in West Palm Beach, FL.
