Air con

[Kindnesskindnesskindness]

We are having air con put in the loft extension. DH wants to put it in our bedroom too.
I’m not keen.

I’d much rather close the windows and blinds during the day when the sun is hot and then open them just as I go to bed.
Ans it’s not as if we get months and months of really hot weather in the UK is it?

Have you got air con?
Do you use it much? Is it worth it?

Supply and demand imagine. There isn’t as much demand here and therefore prices have to be higher to make up. In the Algarve I imagine it’s odd to find a property without AC and therefore more firms, more competition, lower prices.

the houses here can go below 12 degrees for a few months of the year at night and below 16 degrees for a further few months and we don’t generally have central heating. It’s warm during the day but at night time the aircon is used instead of central heating. My winter bills for hot water and Air con heating (no gas) are around £85-100 euros a month. It’s economical and you only heat the rooms you are using when you are using them.

We've just been quoted £3k for one unit in our bedroom

Get some more quotes. We had three quotes and opted for the middle price which was £1500 about five years ago. Doubt it would have doubled in that time.

Interesting. Four years ago we paid a little under £2k to have 3 upstairs internal units installed and one external unit. Yesterday we were quoted £3.7k (+VAT) for 2 internal units (one upstairs, one downstairs) and an external unit. I was really shocked by the jump in prices!

We will get some more quotes, but judging by the replies on here, the new quote actually doesn’t seem to be anomalous. Perhaps the prices really have shot up very rapidly?

Best investment ever!

We have an east/west dual aspect new build bedroom so the sun is on it practically all day apart from about 3 hours. Even in winter it never drops below 18 in there and in the summer it's gotten as high as 36! Great for heating bills in the winter but totally unbearable in the summer. Ive just looked now and our bedroom is a sticky 26.7 degrees 🥵

We spent about £2.5k for the bedroom and office (top floor of three storey house) and it has heating, fan, dehumidifier and air con options.

We had a portable one for a bit but we found it useless as the bedroom is too big for it and the tube got so hot it didnt actually do anything as it was trailing along the floor. If you get one go all in!

So yeah, kind of proves the point that the demand is much larger in the algarve than the UK, hence the prices are lower. I imagine the demand for gas fired combi boilers is practically zero in the Algarve, so if you wanted one installing it’d cost you a fortune versus the UK.

I would love a gas fired combi boiler but it is not a "thing" here. Also a power shower - again, not really a "thing". But there are plenty of houses in the UK that do not have central heating (my son had one, for example) and air con would have been the best way to deal with it.