How To Choose the Best HVAC Unit for Your Home

What’s the Best HVAC Unit? Keep a Cool Head When Choosing Your Heating and Cooling Upgrade with Our Simple Guide

You notice your air conditioner can’t quite keep up anymore during the summer or your heating bill seems to inexplicably be rising every winter. After calling your local HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning specialist) specialist to your home, you find out it’s not just a simple repair – you need to either upgrade or completely replace your unit. The tech starts talking about split systems, SEER ratings, and load calculations, which may all sound like Greek to you. To help you decode the process of choosing the best HVAC unit for your home, we break it down in today’s article.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Heating or Cooling System

More than just choosing the best unit, it’s about choosing the right sized unit. If you oversize your cooling system, the air conditioner may cool the temperature very quickly but it won’t run long enough to wring out the humidity from the air. You may end up feeling cool, yet clammy. And that humidity won’t do your health or your house any favors. Humidity can affect indoor air quality and break down the structural integrity of walls, wooden frames, pipes, toilet tanks, and your HVAC unit.

The right sized air conditioner, on the other hand, removes humidity from the air. It is better to have a system that supplies a little less than the tonnage of cooling your home requires, still keeping you comfortable with the thermostat set slightly higher.

Calculating Load

How is the correct sized unit determined? HVAC technicians use a complicated equation to calculate “load.” Required to determine how much cooling and heating capacity a unit must emit to keep a home comfortable, load is one of the first things a technician does in the HVAC upgrade process.

An equation that should only performed by an HVAC specialist, load takes into consideration multiple factors such as the home’s square footage; building construction; orientation to the sun; number, size, and placement of rooms and windows; climate; and more. Load should never be simply estimated because this manner of loose equation almost always leads to the wrong size unit, which increases installation costs, utility bills, and maintenance.

Looking at Types of Units

You may decide to get split or packaged unit systems. Also, keep in mind that air conditioners are rated by their SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) number, with 13 as the minimum allowed. The higher the number, the more efficient the unit is, but also the costlier it will be to install and maintain.

A split system is where there are two “split” parts: an outdoor metal cabinet and an indoor cabinet. The outdoor cabinet contains the condenser and compressor that releases the hot air from within the house. This cabinet often sits on a concrete slab outside the home. Usually located in an attic or closet is the indoor cabinet, which houses the evaporator that draws in the warm interior air to be cooled. This inside cabinet also usually contains a furnace or the inside part of a heat pump. One refrigerant line tends to connect these two units.

A packaged unit contains the evaporator, condenser, and compressor all in one cabinet, which is often placed on a roof. Some packaged units contain electric heating coils or a natural gas furnace so you don’t need a separate inside furnace.

You’ll want a split system if you already have a heater and you are just replacing an air-conditioning unit or replacing an older one. Typically, split systems cost more money, although they do yield greater efficiency, yielding a SEER rating from between 13 to 23.

Choose a packaged system if you value space efficiency and cheaper installation. However, keep in mind that many packaged units only have a SEER rating from 10 to 18, making them more affordable but less efficient. Packaged systems are the most ideal when indoor space is limited.

Gorman Is Here for You

Now that you better understand what’s included in choosing an HVAC unit, you can make an informed decision when a technician comes to your door. At Gorman Mechanical, we offer split systems, packaged systems, and duct-free units from Trane and other leading brands for your residential heating and cooling needs. For more information today on choosing the best HVAC unit, call us at 817-238-1616 or check out our website.