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COMPLETE GUIDE TO ROOM AND CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONERS The right air conditioner c

COMPLETE GUIDE TO ROOM AND CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONERS The right air conditioner can keep costs down as the mercury rises Last updated: July 2015 Window air conditioners | Portable air conditioners | Central air conditioning | The split ductless solution | Keep cool and save Air Conditioners With temperatures rising, one thing’s for certain: your utility bill will, too. Now’s a good time, before the thermometer hits triple digits, to assess your cooling needs for the summer. At the very least you should check and clean your equipment, whether you cool your home with central air, room air conditioners, or good, old-fashioned ceiling fans. If you’re replacing an old room or central air conditioner, the choices on the market today are likely to be more energy efficient than what you have. But don’t buy too little or too much—getting a cooling system that is the wrong size is the most common mistake people make, regardless of the type. Underestimate your cooling needs and you could be hot and sticky and still increase your electric bills. Buy more capacity than you need and you may wind up with a cool, damp space. To keep your cool, get the best performing and most reliable equipment. Consumer Reports has new Ratings of window air conditioners, and this year we talked to 34,000 readers about the reliability of their central air conditioning systems. We learned what made readers hot under the collar and which systems cooled when called upon. During our research and testing, we discovered which units to buy and which to avoid. Top-rated window air conditioners Although more and more homes have central air conditioning, about 6.5 million window units are sold each year. Our latest tests of small, medium, and large window air conditioners found that all were excellent at cooling. What distinguished the best from the rest was quiet operation, convenient controls, and whether they kept working under brownout conditions. All of our top picks exceed federal Energy Star standards and use at least 10 percent less energy than conventional models. Those energy-savers often include other features, such as timers, digital displays, remote controls, and directional vents, which coax the most comfort from the machine. How to choose a room A/C Before going to the store, determine the size of the space you need to cool and where you’ll place the unit. An air conditioner that's too small won't cool the room. One that's too big will cool so quickly that it won’t have time to remove enough moisture, leaving your room cold and clammy. Get the right size. When calculating the size of the air conditioner you'll need, take into account not only the size of the room to be cooled but whether the unit will be placed in a window that gets shade or direct sunlight, the height of the ceilings, and even the part of the country where you live. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers has a worksheet on its website that will help you make the right determination. All you need to get started is a tape measure, a scratch pad, and a calculator. Assess the airflow. Air conditioners generally do a better job blowing air in one direction than the other. To uniformly cool a room, you'll need to ensure that air is distributed throughout. When the window air conditioner is located near a corner, it must be able to direct air to the center, so check whether your air conditioner needs to blow air to the right or to the left. How quiet? If the unit is going to be placed in a bedroom or another quiet area, check our Ratings for noise. Models that scored excellent or very good in our noise tests are so quiet that the only sound you might hear is the fan running. But air conditioners that scored fair or worse for noise could disturb light sleepers when set on low and are distracting on high. Our latest tests of almost three dozen room air conditioners include an $580 model that cools superbly and quietly, and even comes in colors that match the drapes. But you don’t have to spend a lot to cool down as the mercury climbs; other top performers start at $160. Installation If you’re planning to install the air conditioner yourself, consider buying one with a slide-out chassis. That way you can attach the cabinet and adjustable side curtains to the window before sliding in the heavy working parts of the machine. One person can do it, but it’s easier with two. Check the electricity. Before installing an air conditioner, be sure that the electrical circuit to the room can handle the electrical load of the unit. Read the owner's manual; larger models usually need a dedicated circuit. Never use an extension cord with an air conditioner. Secure the unit. Always use the manufacturer's safety hardware, such as sash locks and mounting brackets. Unless the manufacturer's directions say otherwise, the window air conditioner should be level from left to right and pitched slightly toward the outdoors so water that condenses on the evaporator drains properly to the rear of the unit and doesn't leak into the home. Seal around the perimeter of the unit with new weatherstripping. Maintenance A clean machine will keep you cool and cost less to run. Plan on a thorough cleaning before and after the cooling season and regular filter checks during the season. Clean or replace dirty filters. You’ll need to clean the filter regularly. Depending on how much time the unit is actually operating and how clean the air is, cleaning may be needed every few weeks to monthly during the cooling season. With that in mind, make sure you determine how easy it is to remove the filter when selecting a new unit—some are trickier than others. Remove debris with a vacuum then wash the filter in warm, soapy water; be sure filters are dry before you reinstall them. Replace damaged filters. Vacuum coils and fins. When the filter is removed for cleaning, it's also a good time to check the surface of the evaporator coil, which will now be visible. If there is dust or debris on the surface, gently remove it. Taking care not to deform the soft fins, use an upholstery-brush attachment to vacuum the coils. If your unit has a slide-out chassis, you will usually have good access to the condenser coil when the chassis is removed from the cabinet. That's a good time to inspect and clean any debris off that coil. Seal the perimeter. Be sure to seal any air leaks around the unit. Avoid "short cycling.” Though most models with electronic controls now have built-in timers to prevent the unit from restarting immediately after shut-down, those with the ―old-style‖ mechanical controls may not. Wait 5 minutes after shutting off the unit to restart it. That allows pressure in the refrigeration system to equalize, avoiding stress on the compressor. The pros and cons of portable air conditioners If your room has only one window or if window units aren’t allowed in your building, a portable air conditioner might seem like an ideal solution. But our latest tests found that portables aren’t as good at cooling as manufacturers claim. Plus they’re pricey and use more energy than similarly sized window units. And because all the mechanical parts are sitting in the room, they can be noisy. Even portable models with dual hoses, which vent through a window, didn’t impress in our tests. One hose brings air in from the outside to cool the condenser, and the other hose directs heated and moisture-laden air back outside. Dual-hose units did a slightly better job cooling off our test chamber than the single-hose models we tested, but their performance fell far short of similarly sized window units. If a portable is your only option, choose a dual-hose model. But in our tests, even those models produced less cooling than they claimed and didn’t cool the room to our required temperature. And rolling 85-pound ―portables‖ around on carpeting isn’t for weaklings. The most reliable central air conditioning Consumer Reports asked 34,000 readers about central air conditioning systems purchased between 2007 and mid-2013. Based on their experiences, you may want to give three brands the cold shoulder. All logged the most repairs in our latest reliability surveys. The good news: Choosing one of the more reliable brands can boost the odds that you’ll keep comfortable. How to choose central air Adding a central cooling system to your home can be relatively straightforward if you already have ductwork. But not all ductwork is equal, and duct systems that were originally designed for a heating system may not be able to handle the air volume required by a cooling system. Another obstacle can be the placement of supply registers. Systems originally designed only for heating might have registers placed in the floor or located low on the walls—good locations for heating but not the best choice for cooling. The uploads/Geographie/ ac-guide.pdf