When selecting an air conditioner for a home, one factor installers must give serious consideration is the system’s size. In this case, “size” doesn’t mean how much space the cooling system takes up (although that is, of course, something they must consider) but how powerful it is in term of cooling capacity.

Correctly sizing an AC is more important than you may realize. You need your air conditioner to have enough cooling power to keep your home at the right temperature, but an AC that is too powerful will also cause serious problems. This one of the reasons that it’s vital for only professionals to handle installation for an air conditioner—any mistake can lead to a poorly working system that will need to be replaced.

For skilled technicians to size and handle air conditioning installation, look to the experienced teams at Clean Air Act.

An AC that cannot provide sufficient cooling capacity will fail to keep the temperature in a home at a comfortable level. It will also unevenly distribute cooling, so that more distant rooms will contain hot spots. The AC will run longer than it should, trying to make up for its lack of cooling power with constant operation, and this will cause the system to age rapidly. It will also significantly raise your utility bills. You may think that a smaller system will save your money, but in the long-run it will cost you money.

It may seem odd that an oversized air conditioner can present problems. Why not just turn it down? But the problem with an air conditioner that is too large for the space it is required to cool is that the system will begin to “short-cycle”: it will lower the temperature in the nearest rooms so rapidly that the thermostat will register it has completed the cooling cycle and shut off the compressor early. The compressor will then turn back on shortly after, only to shut down again… and so on. This constant “stop-start” has the same damaging effect you would expect to occur with a car engine doing the same thing: it will wear down faster. Short-cycling also wastes energy, since air conditioners draw the most power when the compressor starts up. The system won’t provide even cooling, either, since the cooling will shut off too soon for the conditioned air to reach the rest of the home.

In both cases, there is little that repairs can accomplish to fix these problems. You will need to replace the under- or oversized system and start over.

You can avoid this major hassle and expenditure by making sure to hire only experienced technicians to size an air conditioner. Trained installers will perform a heat load calculation for your home to determine exactly the amount of cooling load necessary to keep it comfortable. After that, the installers will have no trouble selecting the AC that will do the ideal job.

Make your first call for air conditioning installation in Beaverton, OR to Clean Air Act. We will make certain that you receive the right AC to keep you comfortable any time of the year.

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