First, we need to clear something up. When we talk about “sizing” an air conditioner, what we mean is finding out how powerful an air conditioner is necessary for your home to provide the specific amount of cooling for your space.
If you’re in the market for a new central cooling system for your living space, then the system has to be properly sized so that it provides the home with the comfort level your household needs during our hottest summer months.
But sizing is about so much more than the actual physical area of the air conditioner–it’s about how much power it outputs. And too powerful of a system can be just as detrimental to AC efficiency as a system that isn’t powerful enough. Read on to learn more!
You Need Trained Professionals to Size Your Air Conditioner
Sure, anyone can go online and search for tips on how to size an air conditioner themselves. After all, you can find DIY instructions for almost anything online, even how to do something as silly as crochet a hat for your cat.
This doesn’t mean that you should do these things though (seriously, we really discourage people from making their cats angry). Sizing your air conditioner is definitely one of those things you should forgo DIY attempts for in favor of professional services. Here’s why:
Too Much Can Go Wrong with the Wrong Sizing of Your Air Conditioner
Your AC efficiency and efficacy can really struggle if the system is incorrectly sized, to begin with. Ultimately, you’ll have to replace your air conditioner far sooner than you would have had to otherwise. This is true whether the system is undersized or oversized.
The Problem with an Undersized Air Conditioner
A cooling system that can’t provide enough cooling power for a home means that home won’t get cool enough. This is a pretty straightforward problem–your air conditioner will have to run practically continually as it attempts to cool your home down to the desired temperature setting on your thermostat.
Humidity can also become a serious problem. While an air conditioner doesn’t effectively dehumidify, it does have some dehumidification properties by the nature of its setup… but when it’s not powerful enough, it cannot dehumidify the home at all.
The Problem with an Oversized Air Conditioner
You might be wondering how an overpowered air conditioner can be a bad thing. Well, if your air conditioner is too powerful, or too big, it will reach the desired temperature setting on your thermostat too quickly, and go through a process called short-cycling.
Short-cycling occurs when a system shuts off and turns back on in rapid succession, never completing a full cooling cycle. This exacerbates wear and tear on the system, and will cause it to break down far sooner than it otherwise would have.
We Conduct a Cooling Load Calculation
Our professionals are highly experienced at properly sizing and installing air conditioners of all makes and models. We do something called a cooling load calculation before we even begin with your air conditioner installation.
We look at not only the square footage of your home, but also the type of insulation you have, the number of windows and doors in the space, and even how high the ceilings are.
All of this helps us make an accurate depiction of what sort of power your air conditioner needs.
For professional and reliable AC installation in Levelland, TX, contact JD’s Prompt Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning today!