Mini split air conditioners: cheap home cooling or waste of money?

Perhaps one of the best products ever invented was the air conditioner. There’s nothing better than the luxury of being able to sit inside on a scorching hot day while the air conditioner blows super-cold air to cool your home. For many years our only solution was window air conditioners. This loud and often fancy piece of equipment helped cool, but was often inefficient at cooling larger areas. You had to install multiple units or deal with part of your house being uncomfortably hot. The central air conditioners were a great improvement and do a pretty effective job of cooling the whole house. Today, they are quite standard in many new construction houses. But, there’s a new kid on the block in the world of air conditioners and it’s called a mini split.

A mini split represents a completely new concept in air conditioning technology in that they are ductless. The need for ductless air conditioning looms large as many homes do not have the space to accommodate the large and bulky duct systems required to implement a traditional central air conditioning system. Attempting to retrofit an existing home that does not have room for ductwork can be incredibly expensive and often results in a cumbersome final design. Mini splits require very little space and are much easier to install.

While traditional central air systems have an inside unit and an outside unit that work together to cool the air and force it through the duct system, mini splits feature multiple units throughout the home. Instead of relying on ductwork, mini splits have refrigerant lines that run from a single unit on the outside to each of the additional units on the inside. These refrigerant lines cool the air and the indoor unit distributes the cool air throughout the house. Some homes can do just fine with just one unit, while other larger homes can incorporate up to 3 and sometimes even more zones to fully cool the home.

So while the total cost can be much cheaper than central air systems, you have to be content with multiple indoor units. While they are small, this can be seen as a negative by some. However, when it comes to cheap cooling, you’re not likely to find any negatives here. You see, traditional duct systems can be incredibly inefficient because cooled air is forced through a massive duct system where much of the cooling is lost during its journey to the register in a particular room. With minimal splits, the refrigerant travels through extremely efficient refrigerant lines directly to the units that exhaust the cooled air. Your mini split will not only cost less to install, but your ongoing bills should be cheaper too.

If your home sadly doesn’t have air conditioning, then taking some time to do some more research on mini splits may just do the trick for your sweaty brow. In one day, and for less than the cost of a full central air system, you can relax in style with a newly installed mini split air conditioning system.