Air conditioning in the house ?

[DustyLee123]

Has anyone got it in their house ? I’m not sure I can stand another summer like the last one 🥵

We have reversible air con units, don’t understand the technical aspects, but they heat in winter and cool in summer

Oh could you link?

We have those portable units for 2 south facing bedrooms and 1 fixed unit downstairs, again, in the S facing lounge. I only use them on really hot days/evenings.

DP fitted some in our bedroom last summer. Cools in summer, heats in winter. It’s glorious. It’s Daikin, the actual unit sits outside the house and it’s almost silent.

No, sorry I don’t know how to link. We got them via a specialist air con company

My adult son bought one for his bedroom but the electricity bill skyrocketed.

Sorry, I meant proper fitted air conditioning. Not portable units.

I wouldn’t ordinarily consider for environmental reasons but we now have solar panels and we are generating way more than we use already. My bills have gone from £300 a month to £50 a month. So I might as well use it!

We bought one for last summer and it was wonderful. It vents out the window and we only used it in the bedroom to cool it before going to bed. Occasionally on v hot nights we'd run it again. We have solar panels so that absorbed the cost.

Yes we have it fitted in to all bedrooms. We didn’t bother getting it for downstairs as well as our house is quite cool downstairs anyway but also having it on upstairs tends to cool downstairs a bit too. Ours does also heat but we don’t really use it for that.

Its honestly amazing. Absolutely life changing to be able to go to sleep in a cool room in the middle of a heatwave. I highly recommend getting it fitted if you can. Seems like summers are only going to get hotter.

Daikin - you can use it to cool or heat. We don't have them downstairs but in the bedrooms upstairs. I can't sleep if it's hot and we've had them for 6 or 7 years. Best money we've ever spent!

Do you have to have large ducting pipes everywhere? Is installation disruptive?

We have 2 vents in the ceiling of each room. All the pipe work is up in the loft. Installation was fairly quick and not particularly disruptive.

Life changing. Technically a portable one, but we have built it into a screen for the window so the window is still sealed. Makes life livable and you can sleep. That and knowing when to open and shut windows and keeping an eye on temps inside and out.
for the cost of a cup of takeaway coffee per day or less I’m sold. I’d pay that to not live through a 40degree summer again.

Considering having it fitted now DH permanently WFH. He wants just his office done, but I reckon unless he wants us all sleeping on his office floor we need it elsewhere, too. Would only be used in crazy hot weather like last year. Environmental concerns off-set by solar panels and being generally environmentally virtuous in other ways.

Not internally - the internal unit is at ceiling height on the wall - one is the outside wall so they drilled a hole and ran the pipes etc in ducting (which looks like a drainpipe) down the outside wall to the outdoor unit. The one which isn't on an outside wall has been ducted up through the loft before exiting the house!

Yes we both work from home now and we have a highly glazed kitchen which does get very warm.

might make some calls tomorrow

We bought 2 portable ones for upstairs absolute life savers, couldn't cope without them during summer now.

We have one in our office, which is a large room (5mx5.5m) and is an absolute necessity as a result of the computer equipment. We can choose to open up the doors and let it flow to the rest of the house if we want.

If we could afford it, we'd definitely have it fitted to the rest of the house!

They are called split air systems I believe.

What's your electricity bill like?

No real difference. DP reckons it’s a cheaper way of heating the bedroom than the radiators (combo boiler) but we only have it running for 5 min to take the edge off if it’s cold. So occasionally over the winter. Will have to see how it is this summer for the air con, haven’t had to use it yet. It won’t be running continuously either, it gets the room down to temperature quickly then shuts off.

I'm amazed anyone needs ac in the uk. I had the heating on yesterday as it was ten degrees. Granted there are hot days but not that many.

Well yes I also had a fire going yesterday but just because we have cold days doesn’t mean that we don’t have hot days. And the number of hot days are expected to increase.

Omg yes! We brought a portable unit last year and I keep thinking it would be lovely to have proper AC in the whole house. It’s been added to the list if I win the lottery!