Here is something that not many installers bother to mention at the time of getting a ducted air conditioning quote: the actual physical installation is the easy bit. What really makes all the difference between a system that gives good service for twenty years and one that starts to get on your nerves within the first two is the design process that happens before they even start cutting a single duct or positioning a compressor. And in Melbourne’s residential market, well, the quality of that design is probably more variable than most homeowners realise until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Design and Installation: Two Very Different Skillsets
Ducted Air Conditioning Installers Melbourne might be pretty good at the hands-on stuff, you know, running ductwork through ceiling spaces, making sure the refrigerant circuits are all sorted, hooking up zone controllers and positioning the outdoor unit. It’s where the system design comes in that the inconsistencies start to come in.
Running ducted air con can be a surprisingly varied affair, and while many installers can do the physical work with their eyes closed, the quality of the design that comes before, well, that’s where they can differ quite a bit.
Duct layout is really important when it comes to airflow balance across the whole house. But if a supply duct system isn’t sized relative to the return air plenum, you can end up with pressure imbalances that reduce efficiency, make the thing run really loud and shorten its lifespan. And it’s the return air sizing that’s probably the most commonly underspecified bit of the whole installation and it can be a bit sneaky: the system might work okay, some rooms get a bit of air and all, but under peak summer or winter load, you might just find it never really reaches the mark.
Ask the estimator to show you the duct layout and tell you how they came up with it, and who knows, you might find a pretty different response. A contractor who does the design because they reckon they know what they’re doing, well, that’s one thing. But one who comes up with some actual documented load calculations, now that’s a different story altogether.
Zone Control Mistakes That Cost You Real Money
Zone control can be a game changer. It lets you condition different areas of the house independently, so you only use power when you actually need it and that makes a big difference on the electricity bill. According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, for every degree you crank the heating or cooling up, you can expect your energy consumption to jump by between 5 and 10 per cent, so zone control is something you can actually see in black and white.
But you can still get it wrong and the costly mistake is closing down too many zones at once. Ducted systems need a minimum airflow load in order to work properly, and if you shut too many zones off, what happens is the remaining open zones get too much air and the compressor ends up working against a restricted airflow. And you can’t see the damage building up until some component fails at the most inopportune moment. A competent installer will make sure you know the minimum zone configurations, set in bypass dampers where needed and tell you the rules of the operation before they even leave the job.
The Gas Ducted Heating Transition That’s Already Happening in Victorian Homes
Ducted reverse cycle systems are pretty neat because they deliver both heating and cooling through the same ductwork, so you can swap out your old gas ducted heating system and get a system that does it all. Sustainability Victoria reckons around 950,000 Victorian homes still rely on gas ducted heating as their primary heat source and the Victorian Government’s net zero 2045 strategy is all about phasing that out. The numbers are starting to change.
What Melbourne Roof Spaces Do To Installations?
There are many Melbourne homes that have low-pitched roofs, heavy bracing, limited access spaces and no duct routes in place prior to installation. This combination of characteristics makes installation challenging, impacting cost and performance negatively.
When ducting is crammed into a tight roof space to accommodate a route that the estimator believed would be easy to achieve, the area inside the duct decreases. As a result, air velocity, noise and air volume output decrease. It is hard to recognise the problem of poor system performance as an installation issue and even harder to establish the link between the two once the job is finished.
Require your estimator to perform a roof assessment and explain the routing of each large duct before you agree to pay. His/her reluctance to do so will tell whether the price was estimated based on the space that exists.
Servicing Required But Most Homeowners Do Not Understand
The fact that ducted air conditioner parts are not accessible makes annual servicing more important than servicing of the split system where the filter and coil can be serviced. A dirty evaporator coil reduces the airflow and efficiency noticeably; cleaning costing a couple of hundred dollars helps prevent refrigerant circuit breakdown and saves several thousand.
Regulations on refrigerant phases in Australia are gradually limiting the availability of certain types of gas which, in turn, will lead to the rise of servicing prices for systems operating on the old gas due to its unavailability. Modern installations use only compliant refrigerant while the older systems reach the end of their life cycle in the atmosphere where their availability is becoming harder and harder.
The decision to install the ducted air conditioning system is not a matter of the installation day.
