Hi all,

I am thinking of putting an airconditioner in our house before summer. Just wanted some help/ideas on what airconditioning system any of you have in your homes and your thoughts on what the best ones are.

Thankyou

We have a good EER rating so can get by with ordinary portable fans. I have a portable evaporative cooler, but it's not much better than using a fan so wouldn't recommend spending the extra money on it. My sister has ducted reverse cycle air con and it's fantastic - I think ActewAGL currently have an interest free deal on getting it installed, it costs about $3,500+ for an average sized house and took one day to install.

Last summer we had ACTEW install ducted evaporative airconditioning. ACTEW were great and I love the evaporative system.

Di

Hi Di,

Would it be rude to ask how much evaporative cooling cost you to buy and get installed??

Thanks

Hi, I think is was around $3,800 with seven outlets. The cost will depend on the size of your house and how many rooms. We got three qoutes and were surprised to find ACTEW slightly cheaper and more proffessional. We have been impressed with the after sales service.

Di

I can second the evap cooling. We got it installed last
summer by ACTEW and we adore it. Can't wait for summer
so we can turn it on again. Our unit (with 6 outlets) cost in the
low $4000's...but we got a unit slightly too big for our house
cause we were thinking of extending at the time.

ACTEW gave great service and came back and fixed a small
issue we had, quickly.

We put evap cooling in last year. We had 7 outlets put in (lots of large ones) and it cost around $5000. We used ACTEW as well as after sales service is important to us. I love it and it didnt add too much to our bills either. I am excited about summer this year LOL

Carol 34 DH Milton 41
DD Taylor 6/9/93
DS Ethan 30/6/02
DD Brielle 31/12/04 Mosaic Down Syndrome <ahref="http://www.snugglepie.com"><img border="0" src="http://www.snugglepie.com/ezb/122702.png"></a>

We thought about getting evaporative cooling, but then spoke to a friend (air con engineer) and brother (electrician) who recommended reverse cycle a/c. We don't need the heating component though as we have ducted heating. We ended up getting a Daikon r/c a/c (ie. one unit on the wall), as I just wanted to be able to have one 'cold' room in the house to go to during the hot summer days. I can tolerate the heat quite well at night.
As it turns out, we got the biggest unit you can get for our house (approx. 14sq) and it actually 'cools' the whole house if all the internal doors are left open. It all depends on what you want it for and how big your house is.

We bought our unit from ACTEWAGL (about $2100) but got it installed privately (about $300) - cheaper but a lot more hassles dealing with tradesman directly and takes longer to get it installed.

Our bills are also no different than before.

Go the a/c or the evap. cooling, you won't regret it, I was soooo uncomfortable in summer I would go to shopping centres just to cool down, but this is now absolute heaven. Try to get it done quickly rather than later though (before summer hits).

Kafs
Me: 26
DH: 26

<a href="http://www.tickercentral.com"><img border="0" src="http://www.tickercentral.com/view/2kaw/1"></a>

Thankyou very much ladies, your advice has helped alot....

I think the biggest difference between reverse cycle (which I have) and evaporative (which my parents have) is that the evaporative feels more 'natural' iykwim. You can leave the windows and doors open, and it's not icy cold inside, so you don't get that shock when you go out.
Either way, it's definately worth it, as it gets BLOODY hot here in summer!
Good luck with it.
Mel

Me: 31
DP: 33
DS Samuel 5/3/96
DS Oliver 14/10/03

Interesting to read all of this from last year ... I just had my house quoted for both central R/C electric and ducted gas heating and the gas quote was $4700 wheras R/C was $8800 and I have a TINY house!

I'm now wondering if I should just get a few split systems installed?

Hmm...

Alice - FREEZING here in June

We had a breezair system installed earlier this year. It is evaporative cooling and costs approximately $1 a day to run (we didnt notice our bill go up dramatically). It cost $4,500 and we only have a 16sq home and had 7 outlets installed.
We had ours done through a company called Scandia . My dad actual bought it for us as a "house warming" gift and researched alot of different systems and decided this was the best - we love it and it works really well.
Most companies will send out brouchures.
My piece of advice is that it is worth to pay extra for something that is more energy efficient as it will cost less in the long run IYKWIM

I agree with Shelly to investigate and maybe pay more now/less in the long run

We just moved in here about 3 months ago and we have one reverse cycle unit in the main bedroom. Beats me why only one but whilst it does a good job, its stupid to have it working in only one room!

We are investigating our options too, the front of our house (which includes lounge/dining room, kitchen, tiny family room and the main bedroom) is kept toasty with the r/c and a Rinnai gas heater but the rest of the house is totally freezing. Our bill has so far been very reasonable but its only June after all!

I have a 10sq home (well smaller actually), brick veneer, raised timber floors, pitched tile roof. North & east facing windows have lined curtains, south facing are all bare or thin cotton curtains (but who has curtains in the bathroom???). Flooring is tiles and carpet.

I have every intention of buying a 5* appliance, I just wasn't prepared for the $8000 cost (all of my research had pointed to $2000-$3000 installed!!!).

Our place has Refrigerative A/C. Except for the first split system we had fitted in the lounge, I did all the rest as they're the "old-fashioned" window-box-jobs. These only cost $400-00 to $500-00 each (3/4 hp & 1 hp) plus $50-00 for a Glazier to cut the glass for us. I made up the mounts out of scrap building timber, painted to match the window-frames. For a grand total of $3700-00 (including $1000-00 for the split-sys.) we have the whole house A/C. Works beautifully, even on the 40 deg. days & we can choose which rooms we cool or not. We don't notice much difference in our elec. bill as we use electric fan-heaters in Winter in the B/Rms - Gas heating out the front.
The only thing about Evaporative is as they work on water cooling the air-flow, on a very humid day such as Western Sydney gets they don't work that well. This isn't such a problem here, though. Good luck.