Spring is the time of the year for replacing an old air conditioner with a new one. Doing so allows you to take advantage of the benefits of the new system – such as improved efficiency and the presence of new features – as well as ensuring that your old system doesn’t decide to give up the ghost during the hottest day of summer.
Most air conditioners in the Portland area are traditional centralized models, which do their jobs easily and effectively. But they’re not the only system out there, nor do they make an ideal fit for every home. If you don’t think a centralized system is quite right for your home – or worse you have a home that can’t support the ductwork required for a centralized system – you might look into the possibilities of a ductless air conditioning system instead. What can ductless air conditioning do for you? Read on for the answers.
How It Works
As you may have guessed, ductless air conditioning systems do their jobs without ducts. Instead, they set up multiple smaller units throughout your home. Each unit is charged with cooling a single section of the home – often a given room, though not always – and each can be controlled independently of the others. Depending upon the system, most forms of ductless air conditioning systems have a main control unit that allows you to operate all of the units from one location.
The Advantages
Besides the obvious advantage of no ducts (which allow households unable to support central air conditioning a reasonable means of comprehensive cooling power), ductless systems offer two distinct advantages, both connected very closely to each other.
- The big benefit of a ductless system is the way it lets you control the costs of cooling your home. There’s nothing to prevent you from running all of the units at the same time, but why should you do so in a part of the home that isn’t being occupied? Bedrooms, for instance, rarely see much activity during the day. You can simply leave the air conditioning off in those parts of the home while still running the air in the living room or some other section of the house that is occupied. That can save you a great deal on monthly energy expenses, as well as reducing wear and tear on the system.
- On a more luxurious note, you can use the same ability – running different temperatures in different parts of the house – to eliminate squabbles over the thermostat and ensure that every family member is comfortable. For example, suppose you’re cooking dinner and the heat of the stove is raising the temperature in the kitchen. You want to turn up the air conditioner to compensate, but doing so would cause another family member watching television in the living room to be unnecessarily chilly. Ductless systems allow you both to set the temperature you want without having to compromise.
If you like the sound of a ductless air conditioning system for your Portland, OR home, call The Clean Air Act today!