Old House Air Conditioning
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 6:46 pm
It's that time at last. A couple years back I was looking at having traditional duct work and a four ton A/C air handler setup installed in the downstairs half of the Big Pile O' Bricks. We have hot water heat and want to keep the radiators so A/C only was the order of the day. We have a four ton unit with air handler cooling the upstairs already. The best quote we got at the time was around $15K. Then the roof started to show some signs of failure and we shelved the project.
In the mean time the technology has moved ahead quite a bit. And local acceptance of new technology has improved. A very dear friend put a system of mini-splits in his historic hotel that has been converted to corporate apartments. When he was over for Christmas he sold me on doing the same in our downstairs. The savings on install labor and energy efficiency seemed too good to be true. After spending some time crawling around in the guts of the system he installed I decided to give it a go.
It's a great house. Lots of room and huge windows with lots of natural light. But it can get a wee bit on the hot and stuffy side in the summer. We did use window shakers downstairs but they are noisy, don't really cool all that well, cost a fortune to run, and leak water down the walls. The guys down at my dojo are really going to enjoy the hand me down AC.
Now as we all know mini-splits have those hideous wall mounted air handlers. That just wasn't acceptable at all to the Building Inspector also known as the Countess Von Jeepnstein. Fortunately for me I had already kicked the tires on a mini-split system that is hidden and utilizes very short runs of conventional duct work for the one return and several supplies. After letting my HVAC contractor kick it around he concurred that I was on to something. He proposed a system with two concealed duct work mini-splits and two two-ton outside units. We won't get maximum efficiency in this configuration but life is full of compromises. The lower half of the house will be divided East and West with each having their own thermostat zone. The cost? Around $8,000 with the good buddy discount.
The units we're installing are also heat pumps which should eliminate the energy wasting oil filled electric space heaters the Countess Von Jeepnstein is so fond of in the winter. We will keep the boiler for our main heat source
So this is Day One. The day I hand a monster check over to my HVAC pro so he can order the equipment. He'll have a couple of days of bending duct work for either end of the units before the install. I am assuming I'll have to so some site prep and will probably be the one cutting the three inch holes for the line sets and power to pass through to the outside units.
The goal of this exercise is to keep the house cool while not wrecking it's appearance. The fact that it is roughly half the cost of our original conventional install estimate is also a big factor.
In the mean time the technology has moved ahead quite a bit. And local acceptance of new technology has improved. A very dear friend put a system of mini-splits in his historic hotel that has been converted to corporate apartments. When he was over for Christmas he sold me on doing the same in our downstairs. The savings on install labor and energy efficiency seemed too good to be true. After spending some time crawling around in the guts of the system he installed I decided to give it a go.
It's a great house. Lots of room and huge windows with lots of natural light. But it can get a wee bit on the hot and stuffy side in the summer. We did use window shakers downstairs but they are noisy, don't really cool all that well, cost a fortune to run, and leak water down the walls. The guys down at my dojo are really going to enjoy the hand me down AC.
Now as we all know mini-splits have those hideous wall mounted air handlers. That just wasn't acceptable at all to the Building Inspector also known as the Countess Von Jeepnstein. Fortunately for me I had already kicked the tires on a mini-split system that is hidden and utilizes very short runs of conventional duct work for the one return and several supplies. After letting my HVAC contractor kick it around he concurred that I was on to something. He proposed a system with two concealed duct work mini-splits and two two-ton outside units. We won't get maximum efficiency in this configuration but life is full of compromises. The lower half of the house will be divided East and West with each having their own thermostat zone. The cost? Around $8,000 with the good buddy discount.
The units we're installing are also heat pumps which should eliminate the energy wasting oil filled electric space heaters the Countess Von Jeepnstein is so fond of in the winter. We will keep the boiler for our main heat source
So this is Day One. The day I hand a monster check over to my HVAC pro so he can order the equipment. He'll have a couple of days of bending duct work for either end of the units before the install. I am assuming I'll have to so some site prep and will probably be the one cutting the three inch holes for the line sets and power to pass through to the outside units.
The goal of this exercise is to keep the house cool while not wrecking it's appearance. The fact that it is roughly half the cost of our original conventional install estimate is also a big factor.