If you have a home without ductwork, adding central air could be a large and expensive job. Installing ductwork costs $10 to $20 per linear foot, depending on how complex the job is and how large your home is. If you don’t have forced air heating, the job could get even more costly and complicated.
But central air isn’t the only way to air condition your home. Window air conditioners offer some interesting benefits and can be surprisingly energy-efficient. Ductless mini-split systems allow you to add efficient air conditioning to your home without adding ductwork. Here are your options.
Use Window Air Conditioners
If you’re thinking about adding air conditioning to your home, you probably want to move away from using window air conditioners. Window units can be inefficient, especially if you’re not very good at sealing up the gaps around them. But keep in mind that central air systems aren’t without their inefficiencies. Duct losses, where air warms up as it passes through the duct or leaks out around the fittings, are real, and they can account for the loss of up to 30 percent of the cooled air that comes out of a central air condenser.
On the other hand, window air conditioners can be very effective – even small window air conditioners can cool a large space. The better you plug the gaps around your window unit, the less cool air will leak into the great outdoors. And modern, energy-efficient air conditioners use 20 to 50 percent less electricity than older models.
The biggest perk of window air conditioners is their portability and flexibility. You can take them with you if you move. You can use them to cool just the rooms where you spend the most time or even just the rooms that get the hottest. You can keep some rooms cool and other rooms warm. And you won’t forget to turn the unit off when you leave the room, so you’ll only use air conditioning when you need it – unlike with a central air conditioner, where you’re liable to just set the thermostat and forget it, using a lot of climate control when you’re not even home to appreciate it. Window units can also be really cheap, especially if you’re buying small window air conditioners. You could set up your entire home with air conditioning for less than $1,000.
Install a Ductless Mini-Split System
Your second option for putting air conditioning into a house without ductwork is to install a mini-split or ductless system. A mini-split system consists of an outdoor condenser and one or more indoor units. The indoor units provide thermostats and cooling. The outdoor condenser performs the heat exchange and produces cold air. Alternatively, you could hook your mini-split system up to a heat pump for both ductless heating and cooling.
A mini-split system offers some of the same flexibility as window units, although you can’t move around the indoor units once you’ve placed them like you can with a window air conditioner. However, you can place units only in rooms that you want to keep cool. You can completely customize the placement of your indoor units to maximize airflow and keep your family comfortable in the parts of the home that see the most use. Because each area has its own unit and each unit has its own controls, you can save on cooling costs by only cooling areas as you’re using them. If your home has a weird layout, you can place your indoor units accordingly. The cost of a mini-split system can vary, depending on how many indoor units you want to install and whether you want to add heating as well as cooling.
Install Ductwork for Central Air
Of course, you could always just go ahead and install ductwork for central air. This may be the most expensive option, especially if you have a large older home. You might consider installing a high-velocity system, which uses very strong blowers to distribute cool air through two-inch-wide ducts. Because the ducts are so small, this kind of system is easy to retrofit into an older home, and it doesn’t even matter if there’s not much room inside your walls.
The cost of adding ductwork to your home can be a couple of thousand dollars, and you’ll also have to buy an outdoor condenser unit, which can cost $2,000 to $5,000. The total cost for installing central air can be $3,800 to $7,300.
Adding air conditioning to a home without ductwork can be a big deal. It’s easiest to use a mini-split system or even just buy some window air conditioners. Installing central air is a big upgrade, and traditional central air may not be the right choice for your ductless home.
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