Mitsubishi Ductless AC Cools High-Ceiling Bedroom in Ocean City, NJ
July 26, 2019
It’s common to hear about a bedroom that never gets cool enough in the summer. After all, the second floor is usually hotter than the first. But, this ductless AC job was a little different.
The bedroom in this Ocean City, NJ condo had a vaulted ceiling that reached up around 20 feet.
So, even though the condo owner had an air conditioner that was the right size for his home, it wasn’t enough to circulate the air in that big open space.
Fortunately, this was an easy fix.
In this case study, we’ll look at the pros and cons of a vaulted ceiling when it comes to heating and cooling. Then, we’ll see how a Mitsubishi ductless AC, or mini split, addresses those challenges. Along the way, we’ll get into how these cooling systems work.
Problem: Even with a correctly-sized air conditioning system, the bedroom in this Ocean City, NJ home was always too hot in the summer. The cooling couldn’t accommodate the high, 20-foot vaulted ceiling. Solution: Installed a Mitsubishi ductless AC mini split system with an air handler in the bedroom and an outdoor unit on the second-floor deck. This solution treats the problem room without affecting the rest of the home.
Why is it hard to cool a room with vaulted ceilings?
A high, vaulted ceiling means a lot more air to treat. It takes longer for your heater or AC to circulate enough air to get to the temperature you want. In the case of this house, summers were especially tough. It seemed to take forever for the air conditioner to do the job. Of course, vaulted ceilings hold a lot of appeal. They look interesting, make the room feel bigger, and can let in plenty of sunlight. But, the drawback is trying to keep the room at the temperature you want. That’s where the air conditioner comes in. And, sometimes, we see homes where the air conditioner is too weak overall. An HVAC tech did a bad load calculation, and the homeowner didn’t get the right sized AC. But, the system in this home was doing the job just fine for every other room. The high ceilings made the bedroom an outlier. Maybe twenty years ago, this would have posed a real challenge. We wouldn’t recommend a larger system. And, we wouldn’t want to tell our homeowner to get a window unit. They’re loud, bulky, and expensive. That’s where ductless AC comes in.Treating one room with a mini split
Mitsubishi mini splits are especially versatile. You can treat an entire home year-round with air handlers in different zones in the house. Or, you can focus on that one problem room.
That’s what our Ocean City condo owner did here.
Mini splits are made up of indoor and outdoor components. In the room are air handlers. These are responsible for circulating the air.
You only need one per room. There are a few different kinds to choose from: High-wall units up near the ceiling, low-wall units near the floor, or ceiling cassettes mounted above your head.
It all depends on what works best in that situation.
But, that’s only one half of the equation. The other is the heat pump outside the house.
Despite the name, this provides cooling as well as warmth. It uses a heat transfer process to move thermal energy from one place to another.
When it’s on air conditioning mode, it’s working with the air handlers to move the heat from your house to the outdoors.
To connect the two, all we need are a refrigerant line, a power supply and a condensation line that gets rid of moisture from the air when it condenses back into a liquid.
When you bundle them all together, they fit neatly in a casing that’s only a few inches in diameter. From there, it’s easy to run them inside in between beams or along the wall.
As a result, we can mount the indoor air handlers just about anywhere. It’s much easier than building out ductwork. That traditional route is expensive and takes up way more space.
With this system, all we needed was a few feet of wall space. And, the handler does a great job of circulating the air. We can tuck it away in a corner, out of sight. It doesn’t need to be in the middle of the room or anything.
Installing ductless AC in a bedroom
Once we determined what strength system we needed, it was time for installation. We settled on a 12,000 BTU (British Thermal Units) ductless AC system. Then, we found the best spots for the mini split components.
We like to find the most out-of-the-way place for the air handler. They’re designed to go high up on a wall. That usually keeps them out of peoples’ eye-lines.
After that, we tuck them away in a corner. And, whenever possible, we line up the units with windows or doors. This way, it follows the flow of the horizontal lines at the top of the door or window. That helps it blend into the room.
We found the perfect spot here: in a corner behind the TV, at the top of the wall, and lined up with a sliding door.
And, that door was the key to where we’d then place the heat pump.
The closer we could get the heat pump to the air handler, the better. Of course, it’s simple enough to run the line down the outside of a house. But, we could do better than that in this case.
Instead, we placed the heat pump at the edge of the deck just off the bedroom. There’s still plenty of room for our condo owner to enjoy his outdoor space.
And, the heat pump is virtually silent, unlike a traditional AC condenser. He doesn’t even notice it when he’s out there.
What our condo owner does notice, however, is how much cooler his bedroom is thanks to his new mini split.
Do you have a room – or rooms – in your house that never get cool enough in the summer? Schedule a free consultation with Broadley’s today! We’ve been installing air conditioners for decades, and we’ll find the best system for your home.