Selecting a new air conditioner for your home is typically a balancing act. You want enough power to keep your space cool at the height of summer heat, but you don’t want to pay for capacity you won’t use. When you see a unit identified as being 24,000 BTUs, the reference points are that it’s serious—a 2-ton cooling beast typically used in more powerful Residential Air Conditioning Systems. But how do you know whether this size meets your specific needs? The response is somewhat more complicated than simply looking at square footage.
The Square Footage Baseline
Cooling Capacity- It is described by BTU/h British thermal unit per Hour. The cooling capacity of a window air conditioner is measured in British Thermal Units per hour (BTUs). To give you a rough idea, for a mid-sized, well-insulated room, you’ll probably do just fine with a 24‚000 BTU air conditioning unit. This makes it a great fit for spacious homes where the unit is centrally located.
But using this number as your only guide can result in some pretty big sizing blunders. The most suitable BTU is estimated based on overall evaluation of thermal load of your house but not the size only.
Why the ‘Inverter’ Matters So Much
But before we discuss the factors that determine what size of Inverter split AC will meet your needs, let’s take a minute to understand why a 24000 BTU Inverter split and traditional AC are different from each other. You must switch inverter ACs on and choose the desired power output level. Non-inverter ACs are either off or on (at full output level). This process of turning on and off is ineffective, causing inefficient heating cycles and temperature fluctuations.
The Inverter technology, however, uses a variable-speed compressor. When the room cools to that set point, the inverter slows down the compressor instead of simply turning it off until the desired temperature is no longer maintained. That is, the unit doesn’t often have to run at its full 24,000 BTU range. It operates much quieter, more smoothly, and uses way less electricity in the grand scheme of things to provide better comfort. It is this efficiency that enables leading brands such as Daikin to provide significant savings over the long term.
What Can Increase (or Decrease) Your Cooling Load
The effective cooling area catches a bad case of shrinking when you’ve got a high “heat load” in your home — the amount of heat always trying to bust into your cool space. Here are some considerations that may bump you consider two units:
- Quality of Insulation: Uninsulated walls, ceilings, or attic can contribute to a huge heat gain. The 24,000 BTU model will work harder if your home is on the older side with thin walls or single-pane windows, which would make it less effective at covering space.
- Sunlight Intake: A room that has big windows, including those on the south or west side, accepts plenty of solar heat, thereby adding to the load.
- Internal Sources Of Heat: Kitchens – where you’re going to be doing a lot of baking on hot days or cooking on the stovetop – if people and electronic devices are a daily life in your home, you are going to require more cooling than, say, a lightly-used bedroom.
High Ceilings/Open Layouts - A 24,000 BTU inverter split AC is suitable for open concept living areas, but if you have very high or cathedral ceilings, it will create a much larger space that needs to be cooled.
The Risk of Oversizing
It may feel more secure to purchase the largest unit you can afford, but an air conditioner that is too big for your room is no better than one that is too small. Over-sized 24000 BTU AC cools air too fast and satisfies thermostat before getting cold long enough to dehumidify properly.
This cycle, called short-cycling, results in a home that feels cool — and yet damp and clammy due to big swings in temperature — making it the perfect atmosphere for mold and mildew. It also causes more wear and tear of the equipment, which results in higher energy consumption as well as an increased use of your system because it has to keep restarting.
The best way to do this is to hire an HVAC contractor who can conduct a thorough load calculation that takes into account all of your home’s specific thermal characteristics to determine if the 24,000 BTU capacity offers precisely what you need from residential air conditioning systems.
