central a/c with forced hot air
hi there, i am thinking about installing centeral air in my 4 story brownstone. currently i have a forced hot air heating system which i love. i have been told that i can use the same vents for central a/c. i have also been told that i can’t. any comments? or suggestions as to who…
hi there,
i am thinking about installing centeral air in my 4 story brownstone. currently i have a forced hot air heating system which i love. i have been told that i can use the same vents for central a/c. i have also been told that i can’t. any comments? or suggestions as to who would do this?
thanks
I have a house upstate and same vents for the a/c and heating. (and the registers are on the floor). Works quite well. If need more circulation with either heat or a/c just use ceiling fan.
I have a separate roof unit too. Most of the summer I can use just it for the whole house. I turn on the unit for the bottom floor only when we’re really having dog days or if I have a lot of people over.
thank you all for your suggestions. hc your solution sounds like it might work well for me. where is phils a/c?
We adopted a slightly modified approach after much consideration. We utilized the existing heating ductwork for the bottom two floors and installed high velocity ductwork in the top two floors. It gets less effective to push the A/C through the heating ductwork the further you are away from the unit if the ducts are not effectivey sized for A/C, and we were advised that it would not serve the top floors efficiently. So this hybrid approach gave us a solution that for us was the best of both worlds, because the demo is not as considerable as a completly new system, the number of zones is increased and 1/2 the existing system is utilized for A/C. We are very happy with our result and we used Phils Air Conditioning.
I’ve been here 24 years & left chase walls as I did other projects so that it would be less disruptive when I could afford it. Also it was all 15 years ago so my figures would make no sense. I do know that the same guys did 3 houses for neighbors more recently & cost depends on what kind of house it is – layout, floors, detail to be saved & so on.
great question noplacelikehome. I am thinking about doing the same thing…
thanks for your comments. it makes perfect sense. can you tell me how much demo would be involved in having different vents? when i first moved in i did a lot of reno, and the dust was awful. i never want to go through that again!
By the way, I had my work done by NorthEastern Air Conditioning. They’re excellent & have lots of experience w/ houses – as opposed to commercial specialists. Phone is 718 499 5566. Jimmy Fitz or Joey.
I agree with Arkady. We have same set-up, but they used the same vents for heat & A/C, and it’s very difficult to cool the house, as the vents are close to the floor. It would have been MUCH better to have the cooling vents high up (hot air rises, cool air falls, etc.)