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Air Conditioning Options For Your Home Or Business

Air Conditioning Options For Your Home or Business

Air conditioning options for your home or business are similar depending on how what HVAC systems are currently available and how your home, office, or facility is constructed.

Central Air and Boiler Systems

The obvious choice for AC is central air, which uses the duct work running through your home or building. This is your conventional air conditioning system.

Chances are you would already have a forced air furnace with existing duct work. If by chance you had a boiler system, and you had no duct work in your house, depending on the set of circumstances and where it needed to go, we could always run duct work in the basement or in the attic and put what’s called an air handler in. Basically all that an air handler does is it — it’s a furnace without the furnace parts and it just moves air throughout the duct work.

In short, we can put central air in a house with a boiler.

High Velocity Air Conditioning

Another option is high velocity air conditioning where basically instead of having a register that’s 4″ x 10″ or 2.25″ x 12″, you have little two inch round holes that are diffusers placed throughout your house. Instead of moving a small amount of air through a large hole, you’re moving a large amount of air through a small hole. That’s called a high velocity system.

High velocity AC is used more so for a space constraint than anything else.

Mini Splits Heating and Cooling

You also have mini splits. Mini splits have, what we call, a head which is an evaporator that hangs on the wall.  You then have a smaller condensing unit that sits outside. Mini splits are a DC inverter air conditioning system which means that you’re converting AC voltage to DC voltage and you are gaining efficiency and saving money through the way that it runs because it’s always varying it’s load capacity.

It may have a maximum of, for example, two tons of air conditioning, that’s it’s maximum output. But if you are not requiring two tons or you’re just maintaining temperature at that point in time, it can only be running at say a half a ton where you’re not using any more electricity than you need to air condition that area.

Another nice thing about mini splits is that they also work as a heat pump during the winter time.

In summer time for comparison, how air conditioning works is that you’re basically pulling air in to the evaporator or the head, and you’re blowing that air across the evaporator through heat exchange you’re getting cool air off of the evaporator and your refrigeration lines. In theory you are taking that heat from the house and bringing it to the outside unit. That’s why if you ever go to an outside condensing unit that’s running, you can feel warm air coming off the top of it, air that’s warmer than the ambient air. In theory the heat from your house is being taken out.

Well in the wintertime, what a heat pump does is it’s basically backwards. You still have heat energy in the air believe it or not in the 30 degree range. So during the winter time, a heat pump runs 100% backwards. So you’re taking the heat energy out of the air and you’re injecting it in to the house to heat it. So a mini split comes standard with the ability to heat and cool a particular area. And depending on the size of the system, you could run up to four heads (the units hanging from the wall inside your house) from one external condensing unit.

Why Choose One AC System Over Another?

It really depends on the application that you’re using it for. With mini splits, you would use those more so for somebody who doesn’t have the ability to run duct work in their home or building.

Mini splits are used more for spot cooling to achieve the same thing as what you would get out of a true air conditioning system with duct work, whether it was high velocity or conventional central air conditioning.

Typically, the mini split is cheaper versus a full central air conditioning system. However, you are also not gaining central air conditioning at the same point in time. So that’s really a solution that we have to use for a specific application unless you are requesting it for a particular reason.

Proper Example of a Mini Split

I have a home with a 50-something year old boiler system in it. I ripped the boiler system out and I put forced air in the house – forced air heat and central air conditioning.

There is a sun room on the back of the house that we’re turning into a play room for the kids. Well, there’s no way for me to get duct work into that playroom so I’m putting in a mini split there so that there’s air conditioning ande heating.

What’s Your Budget (Everyone’s Favorite Question)

Budget is such a hard number to say because it really depends on what you have existing, what the circumstances are and what you’re looking to do with it.

A good rule of thumb, if you’re really pressing me for a ballpark figure, is that you really can’t touch air conditioning installation for any less than $3,000. And that would be strictly a replacement job, not adding to an existing system.

There are too many variables, you just need to call and get your home or business looked at because we typically try our best not give pricing over the phone.

We’ll come out and give you an estimate for free. You’re not committed to anything for us to come out and do it.

Brands and Manufacturers

We like Rheem equipment.

Rheem equipment is a good piece of equipment and it’s what I put in my house. There are three things that you have to consider when you’re having the equipment installed:

#1 The Company Doing the Installation

Number one, and most importantly is the company that’s putting it in. Whether or not they actually know what they’re doing and when it’s all said and done they can set that equipment up to run at an optimal performance level in your house, that’s first and foremost.

#2 The Equipment Itself

Second is going to be the equipment itself. How much is the equipment? Are we looking at Mercedes equipment or are we looking at Honda Civic equipment?

Along with that equipment, you have to consider the warranty that comes along with it. It comes out of the box with a five year warranty. When we register the equipment (we as the contractor will register the equipment for you so that it doesn’t get forgotten about) it doubles to 10 years.

That is a 10 year warranty on your equipment.

#3 Affordable Repairs

What a lot of people don’t tell you and what a lot of people don’t think about is that down the road, that equipment is going to break.

Whether it’s taken care of whether it’s not, something is going to happen at some point in time. It’s inevitable.

When that happens, do you want to be subject to a line of equipment that is going to cost you an arm and a leg to repair? Especially in the case of emergency HVAC repairs. Or do you want equipment that is going to:

  1. Easily get parts for it.
  2. Affordably repair it.

We take that into consideration when we choose a line of equipment to install which is why we like Rheem equipment.

The support that we get from them is a big factor in that decision as well. Because if I have a problem, I know that there’s a laundry list of people standing behind me that I can go to for help with your air conditioner repairs.

Installation Time

Typically for just the air conditioning, an installation can be done in one day or less.

For furnace and air conditioning replacement, depending on the job and the situation, usually that’s under two days.

Fo the most part everything can be done in either a day or two unless you’re talking about a bigger job where we’ve got to do all of the duct work and other custom additions.

However, duct work we can get pretty regularly. We actually stock but if I don’t have it in our building I can get it either that same day or the worst case scenario, the next day.

Why Choose AG Roehrig

When it comes to the systems that we install, you’re paying for the equipment but, you’re also paying for me at the same point in time.

Just as important as the equipment, if not more so, is the company that’s putting it in and the people that are putting it in.

Do you want a company that’s going to come out and slap air conditioning in your house and do a poor job with it? Or do you want a company that you’re going to pay maybe a couple of extra bucks for in the beginning but one that offers a superbly operating system and know that years down the road, that company will be there to take care of you? A.G. Roehrig has been around for over 100 years.

We stand behind our workmanship for the first two years. You can somebody who is a friend of a friend of a friend who installs an AC system for you on the side but you’ll probably never be able to get ahold of them again if you have a problem.

When you call me, this is our business, it’s what we do day in, day out and we stand behind our work.  We guarantee our workmanship on a new install for two years and that’s not including the manufacturer warranty. That’s strictly what we do when we’re working on your home or business.

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