[mpoppins92]

Dp and I are building our first house and although we are at the earliest stages of construction, we are thinking about air con (so we can save for it), and have discussed with some friends, only to find their advice completely useless and sometimes just plain odd. (We were told to get a pool instead... in our tiny courtyard.. with our oodles of money? )

So I turn to EB where I am assuming many a member has advice to offer me on the air con issue.

Here is some information which you may or may not need..

-The area we are building in is pretty hot, although we are under 2kms from the beach so the sea breeze is nice.

-The house is smallish.. 3x2 with a theatre

-I was thinking of wall units in the master (front of house) family/kitchen area, and 2 smaller bedrooms

-People have told us not to worry about the smaller bedrooms as we wont sleep in them. However, this house will eventually be a rental and I think tenants would prefer aircon in those rooms, especially if they are kids bedrooms, which is highly likely in the area as it's very much families with young kids friendly

-DP thinks evap is useless without ceiling fans, I hate ceiling fans because they're ugly (to me)

-I'd like to be able to only operate air con in the room we are in, there's only two of us and if we're both asleep it seems silly for the rest of the house to be cooled aswell..

So sell me your air cons! And if you rent, how high do you rate air cons? In which parts of the house are they most important?

Also renters feel free to tell me other things you do or don't appreciate

TIA

[GoBack2Bed]

I personally have rented places with refrigerated air cons and these give me chest infections every time so we prefer evaporative. The downside is really humid days it's practically useless but our climate is generally fine. We love it as it cools the house without the noise or full on fans blowing.

[-Belinda-]

We have evaporative with no ceiling fans and it works just fine. In Melbourne though, so not many humid days. Is cheap to run and quiet, so able to leave on low all night when needed - great for the kids. Gets the house down to about 25 degrees, which is enough.

[sandy_1985]

We’re renters; DH won’t consider a house without one! Must have one in the living areas. Portable fans are good for night time sleeping and can be picked up from electrical places cheaply.
Are you in a humid location, I recall someone telling me that Evaps don’t work when it is humid?

[*LucyE*]

I'd get a zoned ducted system.

It may seem like over kill but it is fabulous. I'm in QLD where the humidity makes evaporative air con next to useless on the hot days where you really want it.

Ours is zoned so we only turn on the rooms we want. Also the rooms can be individually adjusted for temp. It can't be too great a difference, eg heating one room but cooling another, but it can be altered so one room is warmer and another not so warm but still with it on for airflow.

We have found it is cheaper to heat/cool our whole house with the inverter ducted than previously with our split systems that was only on in the living rooms.

[mpoppins92]

Sorry should have said, in WA so yes it is humid

[amabanana]

I have a few friends and family with evap cooling and TBH I really dislike it. I much prefer aircon. We rarely use it but when it's really hot I just find evap too humid and therefore sticky.

[Lyra]

If you are building could you look at making the cooling passive? ie verandahs, lots of insulation, windows facing in the right direction to take advantage of the sun in in winter but not in summer

My mind is going blank at the moment but I know there are lots of things that you can do as you build to minimise the need to have aircon later

[Shellby]

If I was building I would go for ducted as well with zones - really the price difference of that to putting in units in different rooms isn't really that different. I guess the downside is when ducted dies you have no A/C until repaired whereas different units means you still have a room cold.

Either way I would be putting A/C in all the rooms - I feel for my boys in summer as we have A/C and they don't and get really hot. I'm trying really hard to save for A/Cs for their rooms before next summer.

Evap cooling is no good with humid weather - that's why it does well in southern areas of Australia but not the rest of Australia. I find when I go somewhere with it I'm just as hot unless I sit right in front of the vent to get that tiny bit of cool air before it disappears into the heat of the room.

[Julie3Girls]

I'd go zoned ducted, and make sure the house was designed so you can close off areas.
I'd also make sure I did all the right things with insulation etc to minimise the NEED for the air con. And most of those sorts of things make the air con more efficient anyway, for both heating and cooling.i