Air Conditioner Life Expectantcy Thru wall Type Re: Air Conditioner Life Expectantcy Thru wall Type FLIR (ITC) CERTIFIED BS THERMOGRAPHERFLIR (ITC) CERTIFIED LEVEL 1 THERMOGRAPHER Thank's for the quick response David. I was also thinking around the 10 year time frame. Luckily window units are not covered by the SOP in the states I serve. That information in my Agreement and I disclaim them in my reports like so: "The house air conditioning was partially provided by window air conditioners. In accordance with state Standards of Practice and our contract, these units were not tested and you may wish to do so yourself prior to close of escrow." �The things that will destroy America are peace at any price, prosperity at any cost, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.� Joe Funderburk, CBO, CMI Alpha & Omega Home Inspections, LLC Inspecting Upstate SC & Charlotte Metro, NC

Angie's List Super Service Award Winner 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. Yes and you can buy new one ton window unit for about 25% on a split unit. Window unit is cheaper in the long run.. gree split air conditioner owner manual Please Visit the InterNACHI Awards pagepricing for ac units for homes I recommend all Ontario NACHI members read this and form their own opinion on OntarioACHI .how long should a central ac unit last Cyberbullying is the act of harming or harassing via information technology networks in a repeated and deliberate manner. This fits a very unprofessional group From OntarioACHI You're talking about window units versus splits, and I'm talking about window units versus PTAC's (motel units).

I agree with your particular assessment, however. Yes Sorry Have never inspected Motel units. I guess They are used for heating too, am I correct?They're basically a fancy window shaker, designed in standardized sizes as through wall units. They also incorporate resistance heating elements or they may operate as a heat pump in heating mode. They're mostly only used in hotels, motels, hospitals, nursing homes, high-rise apartment homes, and dormitories. Should I be stating the life expectantcy of these units as being the same as the central units? IMHO, I don't think that you should ever state a life expectancy. 2. Standards of Practice II. The inspector is not required to: B. Predict the service life expectancy. Do not start putting life expectancies in reports - your asking for it2012 was a hot one. We’ve had at least 31 days over 90F, something which hasn’t happened since 1988, and July 2012 was the second warmest July on record in the Twin Cities.

This is a departure from the norm; for example the average number of 90F days is 13 – we almost tripled it this year.  The 1930’s homes in our neighborhood weren’t built with AC, and retrofitting ductwork is tough.  And although I obsess over our energy use like some people obsess over Kim Kardashian, we do have to be able to function on those sweltering days.   Last year we struggled through the hot week with a single 8,000 BTU window unit upstairs, which was cumbersome, noisy, ineffective, and inefficient. This year we decided to give in and install something more efficient, permanent, attractive, and convenient – a Fujitsu ductless mini-split AC (our model is here). These units come in various configurations, but simple ones like ours have an outdoor compressor/condenser similar to central AC and a single indoor air handler that hangs on the wall.  Refrigerant, power, and control lines run back to the outdoor unit.  Because it’s a matched set, and because there are no ducts to blow through a hot attic and leak air, they can be very efficient – ours is 25 SEER, 13.8 EER for cooling. 

For comparison, Energy Star standards for central AC require >=14 SEER/ >=11 EER. We weren’t going for perfect comfort, just something to keep it tolerable, and keep the upstairs cooler at night for sleeping.  One consideration with these units is that they are a single point of conditioning, and distribution can be an issue*.  We installed only one unit at the top of the stairs, figuring some cold air could fall and hot air could rise.  If we’d been going for more consistent whole-house comfort, at least one more head would have made sense, and we may still do that in the future. In the end, we selected a single 12,000BTU (1 ton) unit after doing a whole-house heat gain analysis to determine the necessary cooling capacity.  I contacted the fine folks at The Neighborhood Energy Connection in Saint Paul to do the analysis. Overall, it’s been pretty good.  We put it in just before a perfect storm of hot:  103F days, both sides of the family visiting, and a birthday requiring use of the oven to bake a cake. 

That was a struggle, but it kept things reasonable – around 80F downstairs – and much drier, which makes a huge difference.  Distribution was a bit of an issue; it’s hard to cool a hot kitchen with a unit on the 2nd floor. Here might be a more representative day: Sept 11 2012 had a high of 93F.  We closed the house and set the unit to 74F at about 11:00AM, and turned it back off around 7pm.  The bigger spikes are likely the espresso machine.  Stuff later in the evening is cooking & running the dishwasher. The graph shows indoor & outdoor temperatures, solar PV power production, and household power use.  Outdoor temp peaked at 93F at 4pm, and indoor temps on the first floor peaked at about 76.5F around 1pm.  On the energy side, we used 13kWh and produced about 13.5kWh.  If we’d anticipated a string of hot days, we would have just left it on 24/7 to keep things cool and dried out. In July 2011, with the window unit struggling to keep up, we used 33kWh-38kWh per day for the hot days. 

In July 2012, with the mini-split running 24/7 on the hottest days, we used between 19kWh and 28kWh per day – quite an improvement. The unit can also work in reverse, as an air-source heat pump, with an HSPF of 12.0, meaning for every BTU watt-hour it consumes, it moves 12 BTUs of heat into the house.  Converted to Coefficient of Performance, this indicates that it transfers about 3.5 units of energy into the house for every unit of energy it consumes – or 3.5x more efficient than a resistance space heater.  It maintains rated heating capacity down to 20F outside, and continues to function even in -5F weather. I haven’t yet decided if we’ll use it much for heating, but it might make sense in the “shoulder seasons” when our 83 AFUE boiler would be operating infrequently and at lower efficiency.  Because these electric units can heat and cool so efficiently, they are often used in the design of well-insulated net-zero or near-net-zero homes with PV installed. Overall I’m pleased with this thing.