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That’s true, though interestingly how those places such as Latin America with considerably lower per capita income seem to have much more penetration of these units which costs a few times more than window A/Cs.
Interestingly I notice there are quite a number of high rise condos i.e Capri by the sea in San Diego which have no air ducts nor any built in provisions for heating or cooling. It is not possible to install window A/C units in this building as all outside “windows” of this building are essentially floor to ceiling sliding glass doors in front of balconies. Therefore the only practical option to get a/c and heat to these kind of buildings would be to install such mini split systems. Currently residents and folks staying there depend on electric fan space heaters.
Last edited by citizensadvocate; 08-14-2018 at 12:10 AM..
I have really been impressed with ours, not gonna lie. So this house, I guess par for the course in my market, $500K home (I was the 2nd owner just 9 months after construction; family had to relocate for a job), we love the layout and it was the perfect house for us at the time, contemporary and all of that, but I perpetually joke about how mediocre their construction standards were. Everything they could cheap out on, they did, from plastic toilet handles that don't even match the faucets (I replaced them all with matching ones for $2.97 each at Home Depot, seriously...) to not painting the garage white and leaving it this ugly drywall ("oh that's just the norm now" -- don't care, it's not the norm when you're charging a half-mil for a house, sorry, that's ridiculous). So in their amazing attempt to save as much money as possible and cheap out wherever they could, they only ducted the top 2 floors and left the daylight basement without anything but a cadet heater. They even put a stupid cadet heater in the bathroom near the entrance to the house, because apparently that's code for each room to have heating or something, and they couldn't duct the room (pretty stupid since that bathroom will just be whatever temperature the rest of the house is, anyway).
So in the basement, I wanted temperature control for all seasons and ducting it wasn't much of an option. Not enough ceiling height, for one, and running ducts along the side of the house or some weird thing like that wouldn't be a good option for efficiency or even aesthetics. We went with a mini-split, I think it was around $5,000 but it was part of a much larger bid for the whole house's HVAC systems, and it has been fantastic. It's extremely quiet, it does a fantastic job keeping the temperature where I want it, and that's also our workout room partially, so I can cool it quickly when I'm working out. I was a bit skeptical at first because of the look of the unit on the wall, but that side, it's the most energy efficient thing you can buy, about a 30 SEER rating, even our top-of-the-line Trane XVi system is 22 SEER I believe, so it's great but not competitive with the ductless unit.
Our next house will be a lot higher quality, and all central or I won't buy it, but if I ever was talking to a friend about this kind of situation I would strongly recommend a ductless mini-split any day!
Interesting conversation! We just had an energy audit done on our 2000 sqft 2 bd house. It has 2 Heat Pump package units on the roof 4 and 2 ton. The first thing the guy said was that the package units were old and not as efficient as they should/could be.
He suggested going to 2 Mini Splits with I/R capability. He said if we just replaced the 2 ton with one Mini with I/R it'd reduce our electric bill quite a bit and is really efficient as it constantly scans the area looking for hot spots and then aims the fins toward those spots.
Food for thought, gotta look into those units to see if they're actually worth it and if they really perform...
I don't have AC. It's not worth the money for such a short term solution. Fossil fuels deplete and energy prices rise.
They've been saying that for at least 50 years that within 10-20 years we'd be out of oil. How's that been working out?????
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