Buying air conditioning for your home is a significant investment, so you want to make sure you get it right. One of the most important things to consider is the size of air conditioning unit you need.
Air conditioners come in lots of different shapes and sizes. There are portable units, wall mounted units and ceiling cassette and suspended units, so it can be difficult to know which one is suitable for your home or business. But one thing that they should all tell you is their BTU (British Thermal Unit) output. We’ll explain how you can work out what size air conditioning unit you need here.
Work out what BTU is right for you
The size of your room will dictate what size of air con unit you need. Air conditioners are often described in terms of their BTU output – the higher the BTU, the more efficiently you can cool a room. Generally, 5000 to 8000 BTUs is right for most living rooms or bedrooms.
But you might not need a very high BTU if your room is small. You can do a rough calculation to work out what BTU is right for you.
Measure your room in feet, then multiply the dimensions by 5.
So for a room that measures 7H x 12W x 18D x 5 = an air conditioner of 7560 BTUs.
Remember, this calculation is just a ready reckoner – an installer will be able to tell you the best size air conditioner for you. But these figures help you to work out a budget for your air conditioning installation.
What kind of air conditioner should I get for my room size?
There are a few different kinds of air conditioning unit you could get based on how big your room is. An air conditioning installer will be able to recommend the best type for you, but these are the main units you’ll have seen:
Wall mounted air conditioning units
There are two types of wall mounted air conditioning units – central and split systems. Wall mounted units are perfect for medium to large rooms in your home.
Central air conditioning involves one indoor heat exchanger which distributes cool or warm air throughout the whole house. It’s a large unit so it’s best if you’ve got space to install this in a loft or basement. The outdoor component connects to the heat exchanger and pushes refrigerant around the system – you can find out more about how air conditioning works in our blog post.
Split systems consist of 1 external and between 1 and 5 internal units. When there’s more than 1 internal unit, they’re called multi-split systems. The parts work in much the same way, but each internal unit is smaller because it’s not designed to service the whole house. Split systems are ideal if you don’t have room for a large unit in your loft or basement.
Ceiling cassette air conditioners
Ceiling cassette units are perfect for cooling large, open-plan rooms like offices or shops. They’re quite powerful as they blow wide streams of air in four directions, so can cover large areas. You’ll need a room with false or suspended ceilings as ceiling cassette air conditioning units recess into the ceiling, so they’re not really used in homes very often. However, it’s always best to know what’s available.
Portable air conditioners
There’s always the option of buying a portable air conditioning unit for your home. They’re the cheapest option, but they’re also the least powerful and you’ll probably need to keep a window open to feed a hose through to outside.
Portable air conditioners are also much less efficient than split systems and will often get hot, so you won’t cool your room as much as you want to. They can also get pretty noisy, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to work from home or entertain guests.
We don’t recommend portable air conditioning units, but it might be worth trying one to see if air conditioning is something you think you’ll benefit from.
Use our price calculator to work out what size air conditioning unit you need
If all of this seems a bit too complicated, don’t worry. Our all-new price calculator will recommend the right size air conditioning unit for your home and give you a few options so you can find the right system for your budget.
Simply tell us where you want your air conditioning and roughly how big the room is, and we’ll do the rest. Get a price using our calculator now.
