Air con question

[Sundaynightterrors]

Has anyone had air con installed? We have a small old cottage which holds the heat upstairs so that it is unbearable during hot spells. Just wondered how you have found it, what you paid for a bedroom and what ongoing costs there are

£1,200 for a bedroom unit for us. Genuinely the best thing we've ever done. Currently estimated costs are £10 a day but we have two units (one in a bedroom one downstairs) running constantly to cool the south facing rooms. Our house is 60's with giant windows so it was just unbearable and the south facing bedroom was almost unusable. I really do recommend going for it, you genuinely won't regret it in my opinion.

DPs grandparents had it installed in their 2 up 2 down 1990s build. Cost them roughly £1400 and apart from one room, it didn’t make much difference, they’re very disappointed.

A colleague had it put in 2 bedrooms in their new build, hasn’t shut up raving about it since 2022. Best money ever spent supposedly.

I guess it depends on your property and who installs it.

I’ve had two units recently installed. Our bedroom and kitchen /diner face south with big windows and bifolds and is unbearable in these heatwaves. It’s been a godsend this week. Installation was quite pricey but they really don’t cost much to run, especially as we have solar panels and battery. Don’t regret it at all. They do also heat very efficiently in the winter.

We spent about 6k all in. We have 2 units on the outside of the house, 1 for upstairs and 1 for downstairs. We have aircon in the 2 upstairs bedrooms and just in the hallway downstairs. Our downstairs is much bigger than upstairs but everything is fairly open to the hallway so that 1 unit cools the whole downstairs. Its the outside units that cost a lot of money. If we had more rooms it wouldn't have cost much more, just the venting and ducting.

It is so worth it. No idea how much it costs to run but I use it to heat in the winter as much more effective than central heating so dont need to use it for nearly as long.

Two units, one upstairs and one down - £4k ish. We went for larger higher wattage units to try and blast the cool air though each bedroom. Like anything there are different brands - some with more reliability/reputation than others - just do your research.

Havent had our first yearly service yet but think that will be £200 ish. Don’t think our running costs are as high as £10 a day though. We did have two of those portable units where you put the pipe out of the window - the running costs of those were higher.

Its nice and cool in the house but as soon as you step outside its unbearable- takes a while for me to acclimatise and gives no incentive to leave the house - I hate the heat though, not into being outside in the blazing sun

We've recently had a multi split system installed as part of a large home extension. There's one outdoor unit and four indoor units. There's still a spare connector for a fifth indoor unit, which we'll get when our finances have recovered a bit.

Our system is a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries heat pump, so it's very economical to run and you don't currently pay VAT because it can also provide heat. I think that might be changing later this year.

We've now got a very large kitchen/diner/living room at the rear of the house. That room has a 6kW wall unit and it's only cost us £6.50 for the past seven days (just running in the evenings last week, but all day since Sunday).

The system was £7,500 including installation, which is obviously quite a lot, but it's been fantastic during this heatwave. I've been working from home and it's been bliss.

You can get smaller multi split systems for less. For example, this unit supports up to 3 indoor units and costs £995. You'd also need to buy the internal units. We've got the Diamond models that are the most efficient. You'd be looking at around £2300 + installation for the external unit and three internal units.

https://www.airconditioningworld.co.uk/mitsubishi-heavy-industries-scm50zs-w-5-0kw-

If you just want a single unit for a bedroom, tyou can get that for a lot less - but it's generally cheaper to buy a multi split if you need more than one internal unit.

I'd suggest giving them a call to discuss your requirements. We used a local installer that was recommended by our builder, but the website states that they can put you in touch with installers.

My main advice would be to get a heat pump model for lower running costs and no VAT. Also use something like Google AI to calculate the cooling requirements for the rooms (size of rooms, size and type of windows, insulation, wall construction type, South facing, etc). There's also a tendency for installers to use a default calculation of 150w/m² which would result in a system that's suitable for a greenhouse, but will probably be overpowered for your home.

I've just paid 7.5k for four units in our bedrooms that can be used for heating as well. In Kent