Here’s my question from the “near the ocean” thread. We live in a two story house with a large living room with a high ceiling. No AC, but we budgeted for that when we upgraded our electrical panel.
I’m thinking central air will cool unneeded areas. Anyone have thoughts/suggestions on mini splits?
My parents lived in a 250 year old colonial, had the mini downstairs. We looked into it for our smaller 120 year old home, but was quoted $45,000 for just 2 units. My husband is not an a/c fan so we are surviving with a downstairs wall unit, window units for the 2nd floor 4 bedrooms, a wall unit and window unit for the attic bedrooms.
Can you price out a ceiling fan for the high ceiling part and then just a conventional unit? My neighbors with cathedral ceilings have done that-- it pushes the cool air downwards when the AC is on, pushes the heated air downwards when the furnace is on so it doesn’t all float up and out through the attic. Many of them have solar panels as well so they claim the added electricity for the fan is a negligible cost (unlike running the AC constantly which you feel in your pocketbook immediately).
We are in high desert. Since we built this house 24 years ago it has become hotter. Our evaporative coolers (two) work very well in the summer. But, there is about a month both spring and fall where we cannot run the evaporative cooler because it might freeze the water lines. We added to our master bedroom suite a minisplit for cooling only. Works very well.
Our neighbor redid the whole house in mini splits for cooling. We both have baseboard heating that is just fine.
Our D who lives in the PNW put in 3 mini splits in the new build detached accessory dwelling unit for heat and cooling. They work very well. And, they just added a 2 unit with ability to add 2 more in their own home for heating and cooling. Their older home did not have central heat or cooling. It also works very well.
Mostly a boarding school thread lurker on CC, but I am so in love with my heat pumps (in a house on the ocean in Maine) that I have to jump in! They’re so quiet compared to window A/Cs, and they don’t block a window - two huge benefits. We set them on “dry” in the summer humidity, and they work amazingly well. Even if you only have 1 on each floor (what we have because that is what worked restrictions on where they could be installed and the lines could be run), with some fan placement you can get the cool air everywhere. We no longer need a de-humidifer in the basement because we just leave the door to be basement open and the cool dry air flows downstairs. They are a higher up front cost, but they’ve greatly exceeded my expectations! (And they’re just as amazing in the winter as in the summer.)
A neighbor of mine put in a mini split in their 3 season porch because it was the room they like to sit in the most.
I think they paid $5000 for it including installation.
My in laws put in ductless air conditioning in their home with hot water heat. Works good but they have had issues with the tubing in the attic leaking or condensation. Not sure exactly. My mil is quite picky though. Makes for some problems with the ceiling.
I thought heat pumps weren’t great for areas where it gets quite cold.
My parents had a heat pump in their home that worked great but they were in Tennessee.
Glad to hear that it works well for you.
Our cabin is not ducted. It was built with baseboard heating units which are inefficient and expensive to run. We also had two ugly, view-obstructing window AC units until we installed three mini-split units (master bedroom, high-ceiling front room/kitchen, lower level) powered by one outdoor controller last year which was more cost effective than retrofitting with whole-house duct work.
That seems outrageous, but maybe due to location? We’re in Maine. Our three-inverter Mitsubishi system was around $12K. It’s basically silent, and we’ve found that we just need to run it occasionally on “dehumidify” to keep the whole cabin comfortable in the summer; otherwise it’s off. We just turned it to “heat” for the first time two weeks ago when the nights went into the 30s. Usually, we’d be closing the cabin down in preparation for returning to AZ before Halloween but, this year, our son and DIL want to come up for Thanksgiving, so we’ll be here until the first week of December and glad to have an efficient heat source.
We have a house in our neighborhood with baseboard heat and no AC that has been on the market for more than a year, I’m sure the lack of AC and the baseboard heat is one of the biggest factors.
Not a cabin, in a normal neighborhood with houses built in the 1990’s.
It was an interesting choice for the original owners. I suspect they didn’t think they needed AC and may not have had to when the house was originally built. But when every other house in the neighborhood has AC, it seems to be a necessity.
My house has really good insulating windows. Really great in the winter but I have to run the dehumidifier or the AC because this house retains heat and moisture!
We used a Costco contractor to install 3 Lennox minisplits last spring because we got tired of having to camp in the basement when the weather gets hot. I think we paid close to $20k and got some money back as a Costco rebate. The contractor had great reviews and did a great work for us. Our project was complicated, hence the high price. We installed 2 units upstairs in the bedrooms that are inhabited, and 1 unit downstairs in the living room where we hang out the most. All 3 run from the same outdoor unit. The downside is that all 3 have to be used in the same mode, can’t have one cooling and the other heating, but that is not an issue here. I’m surprised how efficient the system really is! The downstairs unit cools an area close to 1,000 sft! Heat is great, too, but we are in the PNW so relatively mild climate.
The new heat pumps work to about -10. We notice they use more electricity when it’s 20 degrees or below, but other than that the heat still works just fine. Maine has made a huge push for heat pumps in the past decade or so, and I’ve noticed a lot of them in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia too. That said, unless they’re in new construction, there’s probably another source of heat as a supplemental/back up option. We have a propane furnace.
Re heat pumps
Heat pumps were supposed to help save the planet. But they’ve run into a bump.
Heat pump sales, critical to the transition to clean energy, have slowed in the U.S. and stalled in Europe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/10/21/heat-pump-sales-slump-us-europe/
Paywall.
Maybe someone else has a gift link. I only get 10 per month.
I have mini splits for our house. It’s 1200 square feet and has 7’ ceilings and keeps our house at a comfortable temp year round. Fortunately our electric bill hasn’t even changed much with them running 24/7 except when we travel we turn them all off.
We had H and S insulate the crawl space between the roof and ceiling with aluminum bubblewrap and installed a ridge vent. Those factors also helped a lot.
I believe we paid under $20k for 3 bedroom units and 1 larger great room unit and 2 compressors. We had them installed in November.
I live in New England and my DH is a design engineer. The whole heat pump industry has changed a lot. These used to not be very good in very cold temperatures, but now they can work better in temps even hovering around zero degrees.
For folks who want to do ductless AC/Heat…a mini split is a great option. We have a couple of neighbors who have these and are very satisfied with the results. We all built our homes in the ‘90s and really AC wasn’t essential then because evenings always cooled down. In the summer, that is no longer the case.
I don’t know if this would be an alternative but our century home has something called SpacePak. It’s a small duct system that originates in the attic so our upper floor is the coolest in the summer and the cold air “drops down” to the lower floors. We don’t need any ducts at all on the main level and the house is really comfortable.
I can’t comment though on the cost compared to a mini split system as we inherited this system when we bought the house.
Our last house was nearly 100 years old and had hot water heat. We heard mixed reviews years ago on installing AC via putting a unit in the attic and having to add vent holes in all the ceilings to spread the AC. We never did it. Considered a mini split or two but just was never sure about placement - and then not having the units look too obtrusive in the rooms we decided to put them (not that they look any worse than window units - they look better!) But do consider if you go with the kind that “hang” on the wall where placement might be in a room and how you can make it blend in.
We live in Maine and have a heat pump in our bedroom. We love it. It means we can turn off the oil heat in all the zones upstairs since the kids are grown, and just heat/cool our bedroom. We couldn’t get a window unit because we have casement windows. It works fine in the winter since it’s our bedroom and we like it cool, but it might not work as well in the rest of the house.
So most of our winter temps are above zero. But we definitely can get night temps below zero. And sometimes we have a long stretch where it stays frigid, though not every year. Our 1993 gas furnace is going to need replacement someday, so I’m starting to ask around to see what others are doing around here.