Air Conditioners

The best way to determine the perfect HVAC unit size is to have a Manual J Calculation done for your house. The maximum size unit you should buy would be 15% over the BTUs you need for cooling and 40% of the BTUs for heating. Your local HVAC dealer can do this for you.

Factors like location, home size and even your local climate all factor into the cost of an air conditioner. Some air conditioners even qualify for local rebates. The best place to get a true cost of an air conditioner is to contact a dealer for an in-home estimate.

An air conditioner makes your home cooler by drawing warm air out of your home and replacing it with cooler air. Warm air is also blown over a cooling coil, then cooled and distributed throughout your home.

Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER) is a rating that measures the cooling efficiency of a heat pump or air conditioner. The higher the number, the more efficient the unit.

ENERGY STAR is a voluntary program launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and now managed by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy that certifies buildings and products which meet certain standards of energy efficiency. ENERGY STAR qualified air conditioners must have at least a 15 SEER rating.

Freon, or R-22, the most common refrigerant in residential air conditioners over the past several decades, will be illegal to import or manufacture starting January 1, 2020. In 2010, the EPA banned the production of any new systems that used R-22 due to its harmful effects on the ozone layer.

First, you need to know if your current system uses R-22 or not. If it does, you can continue to service your system but at some point, replacement Freon will be increasingly hard to get and more expensive - so an upgrade to a newer model may make sense rather than expensive repairs.