When Central Air Conditioning and Heating Systems Are Just Right

The most efficient heating and cooling systems today, are the central air conditioning and heating systems. The reason this is so is because they have the entire house ducted for the efficient flow of heated (or cooled) air and they do it with the precision of a computer controlled device, which they actually are.

When you have a self-standing heating or cooling unit, it has the tendency to heat, or cool, just the area around it and cause hot or cold spots that are very frustrating when you live in the whole house, not just that little area. The central air conditioning and heating systems that are commercially available have the flexibility to heat, and/or cool the whole house or you can select just the particular areas you want conditioned and at what temperature.

As you are looking to put one of these very efficient systems into your home, you will need to ask yourself and your contractor a few very important questions. What size are the rooms that you are going to need this unit to deal with? What is the total volume of air in your home? How much insulation is in your home and is it in the walls, flooring, and ceiling? What area of the world do you live in? Is it mostly cold, is it mostly hot?

Do you have the room under your floors to install all of the ducting or will it need to be placed above the ceiling? Do you have cement or concrete walls or are they wallboard? What is the composition of your floor? Do you want/need floor vents or vents mounted in the walls or ceiling? Do you have small children and/or pets?

All of these questions are very important before you talk to any central air conditioning and heating systems company you contract to do the job. They will ask some of these same questions and will help you find the answers on some as well.

You will also want to check out the efficiency ratings on the central air conditioning and heating systems units you are thinking of installing. There are several different ratings that are important for achieving the best electrical usage and for some of the tax benefits that are available for helping to make your home a little bit more Green. The ratings, depending on where you live are:

The Energy Star rating: This is a government-sponsored certification that is applied to many of the electrical units, regardless of what they are and it will indicate to you what type of energy efficiency this particular unit will provide. The Energy Star certification calls for the testing of equipment and given a letter rating to tell how "hungry" it is. Your electric bill will reflect a poor decision, here.

There are also other ratings, such as the number of BTUs it will use as well as the SEER rating which is an efficiency rating. The central air conditioning and heating systems that are currently on the market have all the benefits and have minimized the drawbacks that they used to have.