Cool it! Buying a Central Air Conditioner

Buying a central air conditioner constitutes a major expense. Because of the initial cost, ongoing monthly energy costs, maintenance and environmental concerns, you should become familiar with the basic function and terminology of central air conditioners before you buy a new one.

The term “central air conditioner” refers to the fact that one unit cools the entire home rather than one that works in one room only. Examples of these are window or free standing models. A central system turns warm air into cool air and releases it into each room through a system of ducts and vents. In fact central air conditioners often work in conjunction with a furnace or other air handler.

Let’s start with a small lesson on how central air conditioners work.

How Central Air Works
Each one consists of a compressor, evaporator, and a condenser. Sometimes the whole system sits outside, while other models call for just the compressor and condenser to be installed outdoors. In that instance the evaporator attaches to the furnace or other air circulating system inside the house.

In both configurations the three components are connected by copper tubing. Extremely cold liquid refrigerant flows through the indoor copper first. It then changes into gas as warm air circulates around the tubing. In this gaseous form the refrigerant goes through the compressor which in turns pushes it into the outdoor copper coil. At this stage it expels the heat and turns back to liquid as the heat it attracts varies in temperature.

The furnace or other air handling device with a fan circulates the now cool air throughout the home via air ducts. The circulating refrigerant cycle keeps repeating for as long as the air conditioner stays on.

Pollen, dust, lint and other particles that irritate our lungs collect on a filter which may be cleaned or changed out periodically.

Two issues are critical to consider in buying central air: the quality of the unit and the efficiency of the unit.

Central Air Conditioner Quality
While Consumer Reports rates the quality of room air conditioners, neither they nor any other organization, rate the quality of central air conditioners. The best available information is found in consumer central air conditioner reviews through a site like FurnaceCompare.com.

Air Conditioner Efficiency
For years Americans used cheap energy to heat and cool their homes. These days the costs continue to rise as we use up our natural resources. Not only that but emissions, including those from air conditions are poisoning our air and depleting the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Old style refrigerants, known as Hydrochlorofluorocarbons or HCFCs were especially harmful to ozone. Although formulas have improved over the years, at some point coolants containing any HCFCs be banned completely. A hydro fluorocarbon called R-22 now constitutes the standard refrigerant in new central air conditioners as it doesn’t negatively affect our ozone layer.

In the spirit of trying to lessen the damage, the Department of Energy now imposes efficiency standards for air conditioning units. These ratings use the acronym SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating). As you’re making your decision as to which brand of air conditioner to buy, the SEER rating will figure into the equation.

The minimum rating sold is 13 but there are systems with much higher numbers assigned. What you need to keep in mind is that the higher the SEER the less it will cost to run and the more efficiently it will operate. Central air conditioners with high SEER cost more to purchase, but the savings to both your monthly budget and to the environment pay off in time.

You’ll find air conditioners in a number of sizes. Most of them use British Thermal Units (BTUs) or tons to tell you how much air it puts out. Each BTU refers to how much energy it takes to elevate the temperature of a pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. A ton is 12,000 BTUs per hour, referring to how much energy it takes to melt a ton of ice in one day.

One mistake many homeowners make occurs when they think they need a larger than necessary air conditioner. A unit that’s too big for your space does not run efficiently. It wastes energy and costs more money than you need to spend each month. To help you determine what size to purchase, visit this website. It provides a calculator to help you determine just how large the new or replacement air conditioner needs to be. You may also want to consider hiring an air conditioning specialist to help you figure out your needs. By doing a little homework up front, you’ll do both your budget and the earth’s atmosphere a favor.

This Old Houseblog

What’s a houseblog?

Houseblogs are online diaries written by folks who are building, improving or restoring their own homes. Like other blogs, they are updated regularly and show the work unfold in real time.

If you’re interested in reading houseblogs or starting one of your own, head over to Houseblogs.net, where you can:

- Find people with similar homes, taste, or challenges via their community.
- Follow along as people renovate their homes by reading the latest blog entries.
- Get help with a DIY problem by asking a question or searching our discussion board.
- Show off your own house by adding photos to your member profile.
- Share your own home improvement adventures–start your own houseblog!

Do you have “nontraditional” bathroom floors?

Are your bathroom floors any of the following?

- carpet
- hardwood
- cork
- bamboo
- glass tiles
- leather tiles
- glass mosaic
- rubber tiles or rolls

Have you reglazed or refinished vintage bathroom fixtures instead of replacing them?

If you have or have done any of the above, contact Kate, as she may want to interview you for HGTV.com.

Custom cabinets without the cost

When we were bulding our house, one of the favorite topics of conversation was who was going to build our cabinets. These discussions turned into a who’s who session where people complained about or complimented the guy(s) who built their kitchen cabinets. They threw around phrases like crown molding, custom height, european hinges, plate rack, and work surface, all followed by another word - expensive. Some of the folks I talked to spent as much as $10,000 on nothing but kitchen cabinetry, not counting the counter tops. One lady told me that if it came down to choosing between custom kitchen cabinets and my son’s UT tuition, to pick the cabinets.

I don’t want to make enemies of custom cabinet builders all over the country but I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I have a 14’X16’ kitchen full of custom cabinets that cost about $2300, not counting the Corian counter top. I got exactly the layout I wanted, exactly the color I wanted, exactly the positioning I wanted and I didn’t have to wait on a list for some custom cabinet builder to have time to get to me — and I saved a ton of money. How? Three letters - DIY.

With periodic assistance from my son, who was 17 at the time, I assembled and installed every cabinet in the kitchen and all three bathrooms. We also installed the wine racks, the plate rack, the light fixtures, the floor, the sinks, and the appliances. The only thing in the kitchen we didn’t do ourselves was install the counter top. When people ask who did our kitchen and I tell them I did it, they look at me kind of funny . . . but you should see the expression when I tell them that I got the cabinetry at Home Depot, the appliances at a locally-owned appliance dealer and ordered the flooring sight-unseen over the internet! Yeah, that “Home Depot” cabinetry gets a good laugh from folks who haven’t ever been in my kitchen.

I don’t want to sound like I’m endorsing any particular suppliers or merchants, but I will tell you that if my Home Depot cabinet experience is indicative of what you can expect when you hit the DIY superstores, I think this is the only way to go for a remodel or new construction. There are several “levels” you can buy into - we chose the next-to-bottom level (price-wise) that Home Depot carried at that time - a brand called Mill’s Pride, because they carried the finish I wanted with the “decoration” I wanted. What I got were better cabinets and more versatile arrangement choices than I have ever had in a “home bulder’s” house. For you wood purists out there, most of the DIY superstores carry at least one line of solid wood cabinets if you prefer solids to MDF with veneer.

I was able to customize my layout very easily because the literature offered at the store was very comprehensive. The sizes and dimensions of everything they carry is well-documented. And if you don’t happen to have a background in architecture or floorplans like me, you can have someone at the store design a layout for you to inspect on their computer before you make your final choices. All you need are accurate room measurements.

You can also be creative. You don’t have to choose traditional cabinet designs or layouts. Use your imagination. By using plain shelves or cabinets without doors in combination with the various types of trim, molding, and millwork offered, you can create pieces in your kitchen that look more like furniture than cabinetry. I was questioned by several people - the assistant at the store, my husband, my father-in-law, etc, about my choice of corner cabinetry because the components I chose for one corner wall cabinet set wasn’t the same as the store’s model kitchen. They all thought I had made a mistake but I had seen this “other” use of multi-height cabinets in the Mill’s Pride brochure and liked it, so that’s what I shot for, with a few minor adjustments. In the above photo, that unit on the left by itself is “custom made” by me from four separate pieces. The small trinket shelves on the left edge are one unit attached to one standard cabinet unit stacked on top of a wine rack unit. The plate rack is a module that you can insert into any cabinet of compatible size. Another tall and narrow cabinet that matches the cabinet on the right of the gap was installed to complete this custom wall unit.

We also hung our wall cabinets at a non-standard height to accomodate some misplaced wall switches that we didn’t catch until after it was way too late to do much about them. The additional inch or two actually makes very little difference in the overall scheme of things. It’s easier to use under-the-counter appliances (more space) and everyone else in my family is six feet tall anyway so they don’t really care how high the glasses are . . .

For “work space,” I designed a huge kitchen island built from five separate lower cabinet units. Most of the island is counter-top. We installed a small vegetable sink and left an area to accomodate a short stool. The cabinet units that make up the base of the island offer tons of storage. In fact, we’ve lived in this house for a year and a half now and I still have four empty cabinets. I started collecting kitchen gadgets so I could fill up some of the storage space. Most pre-fab cabinet manufacturer’s offer a selection of narrow cabinets (seen in the center of the island in the above photo) that you can build around for custom units. In this instance, we added two curved shelving units on either side of the center unit. The “torture chamber” light fixtures came from Lowe’s, bought right off the sales floor.

One of the major characteristics of this kitchen is the broken top line - cabinets of varying heights. It provide visual interest and makes it easy to display “mixed” collections atop the cabinets. This look was easy to create because Mill’s Pride, and most other pre-fab cabinet makers, offer wall cabinets in at least two heights. The “black thing” on top of the standard-height corner cabinet is an aged copper pot that I stuck a plastic ivy plant in. Yeah, like I’m gonna get out a ladder to water a real plant every two days. We didn’t like any of the vent hood treatments that any of the pre-fab manufacturers carried so we built our own, which allowed us to include both cabinet and shelving space, and allowed us to leave the pipe exposed for the look we wanted (seen below).

There are still a few finishing touches that we need to add like the top crown molding and the light rails under the cabinets, but for the most part, the kitchen is finished. Because we only spent about a third of what we had estimated for cabinetry throughout the entire house (yeah, the bathrooms got the pre-fab cabs too), we were able to splurge on the counter top and appliances.

We got last-forever Corian counter top and top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances to complete what has to be one of the most unique rooms in our home, at least as far as style goes. Even though we bought most of what’s in there off the floor from the major home improvement retailers, our choices and combinations were rare enough that we ended up with something I know I’ve never seen in anyone else’s house before. When it’s clean, folks who see it say, “wow, you did all this?” which is what I wanted.

~ .\\

Some helpful links for planning your kitchen design or remodel:

Corian Counters

Mill’s Pride Cabinets

Home Depot

Lowe’s

iFloor.com

Frigiaire Appliances

Thermador Appliances

If you’ve got a woodworking project or tips you’d like to share with us, send it The Fix Chicks at tips@thefixchicks.com. If we publish your project or tip, we’ll send you a free Fix Chicks coffee mug just for playing nice!

Build it yourself!

If you’ve ever assembled a computer desk, you can assemble pre-fab cabinets. The most common tools you need are a screwdriver, a hammer, a level, a drill, some wood screws that are long enough to attach a cabinet to a wall (2 1/4″), and some screws that are long enough to attach cabinets to one another without going through on the other side (1 1/4″), some shims (our cabinets came with plastic snap-off shims that were quite effective), a step stool, and some quality wood glue.

I also suggest that you use some strips of 1×2 wood (or similar) to put up on the wall as a “ledge” for you set your wall cabinets on when mounting them. Trust me, it’s a whole lot easier to level and measure a 1×2 and set your cabinet on it afterward than to try to hold a cabinet to the wall while you try to level and anchor it. It’s also helpful to use a plumb-bob, level, or stud-finder with a straight edge and make vertical stud lines down the wall before you start attaching cabinets.

You’ll use the screwdriver extensively in assembly of the cabinets so you might want a power screwdriver for the job. The Mill’s Pride major cabinet parts are held together with metal cams and dowels. You can use the glue for the dowels and the the edges of the cabinet enclosure. We used a long level to be able to span more than one cabinet when double-checking our placement and shim work.

Except for hanging wide wall cabinets, this kind of cabinet assembly and installation is a one-woman job.