Types of Air Conditioners
Whether you’re heating or cooling one room, multiple areas or the whole house, building a new home or renovating, there is a comprehensive range of air conditioners available in the market that can do the job. The challenge is to find the perfect solution for your home that ticks all the boxes when it comes to durability & reliability, energy efficiency, visual appeal, noise level and most importantly, your budget.
ROOM AIR CONDITIONER
The traditional Room Air Condition (RAC) is the box in the window or wall where the entire system is contained within one package. They are easily fitted to windows or openings made through the brick or timber walls to provide rapid low cost solution. By comparison now days the packaged room air conditioner tends to be noisy, unsightly and is rarely installed, for home applications. Known as an “RAC” they can be cooling-only or reverse cycle (heating and cooling).
SPLIT SYSTEMS
From the package Room Air Conditioner, the Split System evolved where simply the packaged system was cut in half with the indoor fan and coil being mounted on the wall inside. The compressor and outdoor condensing coil is mounted in a larger more slim-line housing that can be installed often many meters away from the indoor coil, therefore providing a split system solution.
Split air conditioning systems are ideal for heating or cooling one room or area of your home. They are compact in size, and are more energy efficient with the newer models being less noisy than ever. Split systems comes in a range of discreet wall-mounted or compact floor standing units designed to blend into your home. The advantage of Split Systems is they are a lot more flexible on their installation options, as well as being a lot more discreet to the aesthetic features of the outside of the home.
Most Split systems come in either ‘Cooling Only’ or ‘Reverse Cycle’ (Heating and Cooling), and offer many extra features, such as remote control options, timer, humidity control etc. allowing you to obtain the ideal conditions all year round.
Split Systems are the preferred choice for most room air conditioning solutions.
MULTI SPLIT SYSTEMS
Multi-Split Air Conditioning Systems can heat or cool 2 – 9 separate rooms yet allowing individual control of the air conditioning in each room. Multi-Split systems are ideal for houses with limited space for ducting, and this solution not only optimises comfort but saves on running costs by only heating or cooling rooms as required. However it’s worth bearing in mind that the cost of the Multi Split System is almost identical to providing separate solutions for each room. Most Multi-Split air conditioning systems are available in reverse cycle (heating and cooling) and cooling-only models.
DUCTED AIR CONDITIONING
A Ducted air conditioning system is the complete home solution providing climate-controlled comfort throughout your entire home all year round. It allows you to heat or cool your whole house 24 hours a day, or you can select the room you wish to air condition thereby saving on running costs e.g. living rooms during the day and bedrooms at night.
Ducted systems can be installed in a new home or tailored to suit an existing one. The indoor unit is located within the ceiling or under the floor, with flexible ducting distributing conditioned air through vents located in chosen areas throughout the house. The condensing unit is located outside the house so this solution is visually less intrusive compared to the Split or Multi-Split systems. Most of the leading air conditioning system manufacturers offer a range of MEPS compliant systems, meaning they comply with the Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MPES) stipulated by the government.
A fully ducted air conditioning system is perceived as more than an investment in your family’s comfort, it’s an investment in the value and prestige of your home.