window/through the wall or mini split?

[firedome]

mini-splits

have worked great for us, we have Mitsubishi and Friedrich units in our VT place and a Mitsubishi unit in NY (recently installed). The VT units have worked perfectly for 5 yrs, and with their inverter technology are super economical, far more so than central or regular heat pumps, and best of all can be run on solar electric, including on battery backup, when we install it. Mini-splits are the future, as seen by their heavy adoption in Europe and Asia in recent years.

 

[petek]

The heavy usage in Europe and Asia is because forced air heating isn't a thing like in the US and Canada wouldn't you say though.

 

[brisnat81]

In Australia, it was because until the naughties, only the rich had central air.

In the southern states you might have forced air heat, but AC was rare. So you had split systems or window units to cool parts of the house. I grew up in a house that had a late 70s Carrier split system, we used fans to distribute the air around the house. That house was built in 1962.

Our current house had one split system when we bought it. We now have three compressors and 5 head units to heat and cool the whole house. Our place was built in 1992

Mums house had no AC or heating at all until about 5 years ago. We could’ve put ducted or splits in hers, but it was cheaper overall to use split systems and she just turns on the units that are needed. Her house was built in 1967

Michael’s mums had no AC until 2005 and then we installed a split system that heats/cools 2/3s of the main part of the house. As she’s getting older, we’re spending more time up there and working from there, so we’ve just gotten estimates to fully air condition the house. The first company can only offer split systems due to the Truss spacing in the roof being too tight, we’re still waiting on the second proposal. This house is built in 1976.

In the last 20 years, most new houses have central air now, however that has become a necessity because of small block sizes and houses lacking eaves or verandahs.

Split systems are a cheap way to retrofit to existing houses, or where you only need to control the environment in part of the house. Here they tend to last 10-20 years with limited repairs. Window or through the wall units here are seen as something used in commercial situations or when you can’t afford anything better.

 

[geoff]

Mieletag

That's exactly what happened. Exterior moisture was dripping onto the board from an outside opening that wasn't completely sealed. The air handler is mounted horizontally. Would not have happened if it was vertical.

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

At the moment at my mum’s house, almost all the bedrooms have a wall split, as well as the office and lounge room, mum has a cooling only mounted up in a cupboard to hide it from you because that’s how it was previously, we have an old Japanese brand window unit in the window in the family room, and a evaporative window unit (Bonaire Durango) in my sunroom, I’m probably gonna be swapping that over with my window unit in the family room. Just so I the reverse cycle window unit can go in the sunroom as I can also use it to heat up the sunroom in winter instead of using resistive heaters plus the evaporative window unit will probably do a better job cooling hot dry days if we want to save on money, plus it’s quite a bit oversized for the sunroom as with both the sunroom door to the house and the sunroom door to the outside. When both are shut, there’s a lot of the breeze coming through the laundry window and toilet/bathroom windows so it’s powerful