The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

First Aid For The Ailing Houses

While hot air rises, and ducts for a furnace should terminate at the floor level, cool air descends, and the best positions for registers is at the ceiling level. This is true of the intake registers as well as the outlets. An intake register located at ceiling level across the room from an outlet will provide a good circulation of air, and will scoop up the warm air near the top of the room for return and retreatment. This makes the attic space one of the most successful for installation of an air conditioner, because it gives the proper position for the unit to operate. This position, however, is not necessary to get good air conditioning. A contractor can set up perfectly satisfactory units which vent and exhaust through registers placed near the floor. Part of this is achieved by the louver vanes on the register face, which direct the incoming cold air up into the room instead of along the floor.

If your home has warm water or steam heat, you will need an air-conditioning unit which will operate separately, and with duct work to be installed. In some older houses, it is easier and therefore far less expensive to install a number of window or single-room air-conditioning units than to tear up walls and ceilings to install the necessary ductwork for a central unit.
If the house has a floor furnace or space heater, the same problem exists as with steam heat or water registers. However, a house that may be heated satisfactorily with a ductless heater, such as a floor furnace, will probably require only a minimum-sized air conditioner to provide complete comfort.

A home with an older gravity type of hot-air furnace may have a conversion unit installed with a blower fan, or the furnace may be removed and new ductwork and a combustion heater-cooler package installed. Forced warm-air furnaces may have a conversion unit installed above the jacket area to dispense cool air in the summertime.

WINDOW AIR CONDITIONERS

Window air conditioners are the most common type of cooling system for the average home. They have the advantage of no ductwork needed, they take up relatively little space, and they are quiet and dependable. Window units do not necessarily have to fit in the windows. Many package units for single-room application may be installed in openings in the wall, and thus become a permanent part of the house. But this requires more conversion than most home owners are willing to try themselves, and the cost of a contractor making the opening can be relatively high.