Not every home in our area was built with central cooling in mind, and that means plenty of homes lack the ductwork necessary for a standard air conditioning system.
If you live in one of these homes, you do have choices for providing cooling during the summers. You can even arrange to have a central AC put in, although it will require adding ductwork. This isn’t convenient (or even possible) for all homes, however. What are the other choices?
First, Options That Are Best to Avoid
Before we talk about the ductless mini split system, which is what we recommend for homes that don’t have ducts, we’ll go over some choices you might be tempted to pick and explain why these aren’t the best way to go.
Window AC units
You may already have window air conditioning systems to cool down your house. They’ve been the “go-to” for many homes since they were first put on the market in the 1950s. Window units have many drawbacks, however. They’re noisy, they don’t come in powerful enough models to cool down larger spaces (unless you put more than one in the room), they block up windows, they look ugly both inside and outside, and they can make your home less secure. A window AC may do fine for a small apartment, but your home deserves a better answer.
Portable AC units
Similar to window units, except these sit inside the room and can be rolled to different parts of the house. They exhaust heat through a hose that can be attached to a window. Although portable air conditioners can be much more powerful than window units, and portability is a nice feature, they have a staggeringly large drawback: they put out so much heat when they operate that they can effectively cancel out their cooling benefits! They’re also expensive—you have a better choice at a lower cost.
Through-the-wall units
Basically a big window AC, except instead of set in a window it is set through the wall. These are powerful units without many of the drawbacks of a window unit or the heat generation problem of a portable AC. But a wall unit requires extra construction work and still only affects a single room at a time.
Go With a Ductless Mini Splits
Here’s the best answer for your older home cooling! A ductless mini split is a type of heat pump that works using several wall-mounted air handlers placed in different rooms, and each one connected through a small hole in the wall behind them to an outdoor cabinet that resembles the standard compressor cabinet of an air conditioner or heat pump. The air handlers send the cooled air straight into the rooms.
Ductless systems are flexible, unobtrusive, energy saving, and can be shut down in different parts of the house. Because they are heat pumps, they also offer cost-effective heating during the winters as well.
Our technicians would love to help you find the best air conditioning in Haughton, LA to meet all your needs. Schedule an appointment with us and we’ll examine your choices with you.
Call the Doctor of Home Comfort: Hall’s Heating, Air Conditioning & Refrigeration serves Shreveport and the surrounding areas.
