When I first moved to New Mexico, there were a few terms
that were new to me. Like ‘swamp cooler’
and ‘evaporative cooling’. And
‘refrigerated air’. What the heck? And ‘air conditioning’ or ‘central AC’ are
not terms used here AT ALL. Weird,
right?
Refrigerated air is the same as central air. A swamp cooler (or ‘evaporative cooler’)
however, is an outside unit that is hooked up to water and it uses that
moisture to cool your house. That’s what
most people have here. There are pros
and cons. The pros are that it is
inexpensive. And….that’s pretty much the
only pro. The con list is much longer. It doesn’t completely cool. You can’t control the temperature at
all. There are literally just switches
(they look like light switches) to flip it on and off. That’s it.
Well, I take that back. There’s a
‘high’ and a ‘low’. Those are your
options. It will cool the house down
somewhat, but when it’s 100 degrees outside, your house is going to be about 80
degrees inside with the swamp on. I’m
not kidding. And upstairs? Hahahaha…..much warmer. The other con is that every year, you have to
‘prep’ the cooler. So when it’s fall and
you don’t need the swamp cooler anymore, you (or one of the many companies
around town that will do it) have to drain it, unhook it, cover it up, etc
(honestly I have no clue what is involved).
And then when summer starts, it needs hooked back up, etc. Kind of a pain, especially if they’re on the
roof (which most of them are). You have
to leave the windows cracked for it to work.
So if there’s heavy pollen in the air, or ANY kind of smoke (in the land
of wildfires), that will come into your house.
As well as dust, dirt, the occasional lizard, etc (I’m not
kidding). So it’s not ideal.
When we bought our house, we knew it had a swamp cooler
instead of refrigerated air (Central AC).
Most houses here have swamp coolers.
‘Refrigerated air’ or central AC is a luxury. For dry climates, most places have swamp
coolers (because they don’t work when it rains). And it makes sense that they used a swamp
when they built the house….our house is ginormous and to cool it via Central AC
would be an astronomical cost each month.
At first we looked into converting the swamp to refrigerated air, but
that still didn’t make sense. Because
with refrigerated air, you don’t have much control. You can close certain vents in rooms, but
that air is still going to try to force it’s way in. And there’s a few rooms in our house that we
just don’t use on a daily basis. So why
pay to cool those rooms every day?
Because hubby researches everything (bless him), he
decided on ductless heating and cooling units.
With ductless units, you can control the temperature of every room in
the house. So we can completely shut off
the heating/cooling in Amy’s room, the gym, the library, the dining room, the
front room, etc (the rooms we don’t use much).
We can just turn units on as we need them. Or….you can leave them on always, but set the
temperature higher if it’s a room that you rarely use. There’s little remote controls for each
unit. There’s a unit in each room
(except for bathrooms/hallways) and then we have 3 larger ceiling units: one for our kitchen, one for our master
bedroom, and one for my mother-in-law’s kitchen.
Ductless systems are the primary systems used in Europe
and Asia and have been for the past 30 years or so. Once again, we are way behind the times here
in America.
The initial equipment and set up is insanely expensive
(we budgeted it in with the addition build-on).
But after that….it’s incredibly efficient. Our electric bill should lower as well as our
gas bill in the winter. We won’t be
paying to heat and cool our 4,000 square foot house when we only use like half
of it. The maintenance is minimal. Each unit has a filter, however they are
re-usable. Once every couple of months
you just remove the filter, wash it, and pop it back in.
The installation was quite the process though. First, they had to pull out all of the
existing duct work. Then they had to
wire everything for the new units. There
were random holes in the walls and the ceilings with various tubes and wires
coming out of them. Then they had to
install the large units outside. We have
3 of them. One is on the side of the
house, and two are on the flat part of our roof (you can’t see them and I
forgot to take a picture of the one on the side of the house…it’s not large
though). Then the tubing for each unit
had to be connected to one of the larger units.
I think. I’m not exactly sure how
it works, can you tell? Ha ha. But what I DO know is that each unit is
controlled individually. Which is
amazing. And they are whisper
quiet.
It was an interesting experience though. I never knew what I was going to be coming
home to. Every day there would be
various holes in the walls with various things coming out of them. I wish I was exaggerating. It was interesting and unsettling and kind of
comical. It took about a week and a half.
See?
Right now we are in the process of getting the holes
where the existing vents and ducts were all sealed up, patched over and painted
(to match the existing paint colors).
But the house is COOOOOOOOL! It’s soooooo nice. My library upstairs is no longer an
oven! And bye bye window air conditioner
units!
I’m officially a fan of the ductless cooling.
