The Importance of Proper Sizing for a New AC

You may need to have a new air conditioning system installed in your home before the major summer weather arrives. Now is a great time to arrange with the Peak Home Performance team for an air conditioning installation in Colorado Springs, CO.

You definitely want experts like ours to handle this installation. There are many reasons for this, and one of the most important is that only pros can correctly size a new air conditioning system. This doesn’t mean finding the right physical size of unit for a home, but rather finding the right cooling power. It’s an essential step, since the wrong-size AC will create numerous problems and require an early replacement.

Understanding AC Cooling Power

The amount of cooling an air conditioner can deliver is known as its cooling capacity. This is measured as the amount of heat that an AC can pump out of a house within an hour. The basic unit used to measure heat for AC cooling capacity is the British Thermal Unit (BTU). Every 12,000 BTU is called a ton (it’s the amount of heat necessary to melt one ton of ice over 24 hours), and most home air conditioning systems will have cooling capacities between 2 to 8 tons.

The Oversized AC Trap

At this point, you might think that the best route is to simply purchase the most powerful AC you can afford for your home. That way you’ll always have enough cooling no matter how hot it gets, and it’s better to err on the side of too powerful. But this isn’t how air conditioners work, and an oversized AC is a serious problem.

If an AC is too powerful for a home, it will lower the indoor temperature of the house too rapidly, causing the thermostat to incorrectly register that the AC has completed its cooling cycle. The AC will shut off early, which doesn’t give it enough time to distribute cooling through the house. Worse, the AC will become stuck in a rapid start-stop pattern known as short-cycling. Normally, an air conditioner will cycle on and off less than four times an hour, but when short-cycling it can double that amount. This places immense strain on the air conditioner, leading to repairs and an early replacement, and the extra work will create steep energy bills.

You want your air conditioner’s size to be in the “Goldilocks Zone,” neither too small nor too large.

How Proper Sizing Is Done

To size an air conditioner, professionals perform a load calculation based on various factors about the home. The calculation includes the square footage of the home, the number of windows and their facing, the amount of heat generated by lights and appliances, the insulation levels, the number of people in the home, etc. The final result of the calculation will be the amount of heat per hour that an AC must pump out of the house to provide comfort. The installers can then match this with a specific tonnage of air conditioner.

Just contact the team at Peak Home Performance today to get started!