Should You Install A Window Air Conditioner In Your New Home Addition?

Adding an addition to your home can be a great way to add a new bathroom, bedroom, or utility room to your home, or simply increase your usable floor space without having to relocate. however, for your new home addition to stay as cool and comfortable as the rest of your home during the summer months, it must be serviced by a suitable air conditioning system.

For many homeowners, a window-mounted air conditioner is an ideal way to efficiently and inexpensively cool a new home addition. These simple, compact units have a number of advantages over system expansions or other types of standalone systems. However, there are also some drawbacks to choosing a window air conditioner, so make sure you familiarize yourself with these pros and cons before you invest in one.

What are the advantages of choosing a window air conditioner for your new home addition?

Do Not Rely On Existing Infrastructure

In many cases, homeowners can expand their home's original air conditioning system to effectively cool a new addition to their homes. However, this is only feasible if your existing AC system is suitably powerful and can be easily expanded and/or upgraded to handle the extra load. Installing new ducts or refrigerant lines can also be prohibitively expensive, especially in older homes.

Window-mounted air conditioners are standalone units and do not need to be connected to an external condenser or any existing ducts or refrigerant lines. As such, they can be installed in any new home addition without having to worry about expanding your existing AC infrastructure, saving you time, money, and effort.

Compact

Window-mounted air conditioners contain all of the components of a full-blown air conditioning system, but despite this, most window-mounted AC units are very compact. This allows them to be fitted in relatively small windows or pre-cut wall cavities and minimizes any modifications you need to make to accommodate the new unit.

Cost-Effective

Window air conditioner units are also very inexpensive when compared with most other types of air conditioning systems. They are an excellent choice if you need to install air conditioning in a new home addition on a tight budget. They are also highly energy-efficient and cost very little to run.

What are the disadvantages of choosing a window air conditioner for your new home addition?

Limited Power

Unfortunately, the compact size of a window air conditioner also limits its power, and window air conditioners cannot provide nearly as much cooling power as most ducted or mini-split systems.

Window units are also only capable of cooling a single room at a time and are not powerful enough to cool particularly large spaces by themselves. While this isn't a problem in an average-sized bedroom or bathroom addition, larger home additions may require more cooling power than a window-mounted unit can provide.

Visual Impact

Window-mounted air conditioners aren't exactly elegant pieces of equipment, but they are unfortunately highly visible in any room they are installed in. If you want your new home addition to be as beautiful as it is useful, these utilitarian air conditioners may not be the most aesthetically pleasing choice.

Unless your addition was constructed with pre-cut wall cavities suitable for mounting, you will also have to sacrifice the light and view of one of your windows to install a window AC unit. This can present problems in smaller home additions that already receive limited amounts of natural light during the day.

To learn more, contact an air conditioning service near you.