It’s a busy week here at the mansion, with folks coming every day (except Friday—so far?) so they can give me their quotes. Today turned out to be air conditioning day, with visits from two different companies. The second of three expensive possible changes to my house.
This morning’s first appointment was with the first company to contact me after the Home Show, and the second was actually the last, oddly enough. I asked both to quote on a whole-house ducted system, and also on split systems for the two bedrooms that currently have no heating or cooling (I’d leave my bedroom and the living area with their own units). This means that each bedroom would have its own wall mounted unit, but the two newly added ones might share one exterior heat pump—or not, because sometimes it’s cheaper to have two outdoor units.
The advantages of adding split units is that it’s cheaper (obviously), but also that the two bedrooms could be individually controlled, so if someone’s staying in the guest room, they can set the temperature to what they like, not necessarily what I like (for example, they might feel cold or hot when I’m feeling the opposite).
The disadvantage of adding wall units is that I’d have to remember to run the one in the guest room from time to time (the room’s seldom used), and that could even be true for my office. More importantly, despite how efficient heat pumps are, running maybe four separate split systems at once would most likely use more power than a ducted system.
The advantage of a ducted system is that the entire house would be comfortable, and it uses one outdoor unit, and even though it’d be quite powerful, it would probably still use less power than four separate smaller units would—possibly (there are a LOT of variables).
The only real disadvantage to a ducted system (in my opinion) is that it may not add value at resale. However, rising house prices should still cover whatever I spend. Even so, as climate change gives us hotter summers and colder winters, having whole-house comfort could actually become a selling point.
If I go with ducted, I’d have the two existing heat pumps removed (they wouldn’t be used anymore, obviously), and the companies can take care of that for me as part of the deal.
And that’s where things are at the moment with that particular change on my list. This is the first thing on my list where I’ve had more than one quote, mainly because there weren’t as many exhibitors at the Home Show this year. That means I have to find and contact providers on my own.
One thing I’m asking people giving me quotes is, “do you do the installation yourself, or do you use contractors?” The reason this matters is that if anything goes wrong, the company and the contractor might get bogged down in a fight over who’s responsible for fixing the problem, but if the company installs it themselves, it’s up to them to fix the problem. Not a guarantee of a perfect outcome, obviously, but the odds are better.
Tomorrow is “screens day”, with a company coming to measure to quote on installing fly screens (also known as “window screens”) on most—all?—of the windows in the house, something that’s extremely unusual for houses in New Zealand. I’ll see what they say tomorrow.
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