When selecting an air conditioner for a home, one factor installers must give serious consideration is the system’s size. In this case, “size” doesn’t mean how much space the cooling system takes up (although that is, of course, something they must consider) but how powerful it is in term of cooling capacity.

Correctly sizing an AC is more important than you may realize. You need your air conditioner to have enough cooling power to keep your home at the right temperature, but an AC that is too powerful will also cause serious problems. This one of the reasons that it’s vital for only professionals to handle installation for an air conditioner—any mistake can lead to a poorly working system that will need to be replaced.

For skilled technicians to size and handle air conditioning installation, look to the experienced teams at Clean Air Act.

When An Air Conditioner Is Too Small…

An AC that cannot provide sufficient cooling capacity will fail to keep the temperature in a home at a comfortable level. It will also unevenly distribute cooling, so that more distant rooms will contain hot spots. The AC will run longer than it should, trying to make up for its lack of cooling power with constant operation, and this will cause the system to age rapidly. It will also significantly raise your utility bills. You may think that a smaller system will save your money, but in the long-run it will cost you money.

When An Air Conditioner Is Too Large…

It may seem odd that an oversized air conditioner can present problems. Why not just turn it down? But the problem with an air conditioner that is too large for the space it is required to cool is that the system will begin to “short-cycle”: it will lower the temperature in the nearest rooms so rapidly that the thermostat will register it has completed the cooling cycle and shut off the compressor early. The compressor will then turn back on shortly after, only to shut down again… and so on. This constant “stop-start” has the same damaging effect you would expect to occur with a car engine doing the same thing: it will wear down faster. Short-cycling also wastes energy, since air conditioners draw the most power when the compressor starts up. The system won’t provide even cooling, either, since the cooling will shut off too soon for the conditioned air to reach the rest of the home.

Have Your Air Conditioner Sized Professionally

In both cases, there is little that repairs can accomplish to fix these problems. You will need to replace the under- or oversized system and start over.

You can avoid this major hassle and expenditure by making sure to hire only experienced technicians to size an air conditioner. Trained installers will perform a heat load calculation for your home to determine exactly the amount of cooling load necessary to keep it comfortable. After that, the installers will have no trouble selecting the AC that will do the ideal job.

Make your first call for air conditioning installation in Beaverton, OR to Clean Air Act. We will make certain that you receive the right AC to keep you comfortable any time of the year.

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How large an air conditioning system should you have for your home? The right answer isn’t, “As large as will fit and that you can afford.” An AC that is too large for the house it is supposed to cool down will encounter as much trouble as one that is undersized. The undersized system will struggle to reach the right temperature and run wastefully, while an oversized system will constantly turn on and off before completing its cooling cycle (short-cycling), draining energy and quickly wearing down.

The process of finding the right size air conditioner for a home is called sizing. Although you can attempt to size an AC on your own, you shouldn’t: the amount of factors involved in determining how much heat a home traps and how much cooling is necessary to overcome it is detailed and intricate, and you should leave this job to HVAC professionals.

For your new air conditioning installation in Beaverton, OR, make sure you have the team at Clean Air Act helping you. We will make sure you have the best installation possible.

3 important factors in AC sizing

There are many factors in sizing, but here are three of the key ones.

1. Insulation: The insulation in a home prevents outside heat from moving inside. The better insulated a house is, especially the attic (which serves as a massive heat sink that can climb to 120°F during the summer), the less an AC will need to work to cool down a house. Older homes with less insulation often need larger ACs.
2. Windows: Radiant heat finds a way into your house through the sunlight coming through windows. When assessing windows for the purpose of sizing an air conditioner, installers take into account not only the number of windows, but also their shading and the directions they face. East- and west-facing windows will permit in large amounts of heat, while north and south windows will experience much less.
3. Appliances and lights: Basically, anything in your home that creates heat. (We won’t lump people in with appliances, but the number of bodies in a house will enter the calculation later.) Installers evaluate how much heat on average comes from your light fixtures, refrigerator, laundry machine, electronic devices, etc. and balance that against the amount of cooling power necessary from an air conditioner.

Once the installers have finished this process, which is known as a heat load calculation, they will have a strong idea of how large an air conditioner you need to keep you comfortable without causing trouble with short-cycling and energy drain.

It’s easy to get started: you only have to call Clean Air Act and talk to our specialists in air conditioning in Beaverton, OR. We strive to the highest levels of customer services and will dedicate ourselves to providing you quality comfort.

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