How Many BTU Air Conditioner Do I Need

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When I was looking for my actual air conditioner I was asking myself how many BTU air conditioner do i need. My last air conditioner was old, oversized and was making my energy bills go up like rockets.

Because I was set on buying a new air conditioner unit which uses less energy and delivers more comfort, I started studying what the big air conditioner dealers had to offer. This is how I got to know more about.

In a little time I understood how to save money when buying a new AC unit and how to save money on the energy bills after I bought my new air conditioner.

how many btu air conditioner do i need

How many BTU air conditioner do i need

You never really know how much you need air conditioning till one day when your ac unit actually breaks. If just the day before you were enjoying the comfort of a nice refreshing air in your house, now suddenly your house is hot and opening the windows does even worse.

My air conditioner unit broke in the middle of last year’s summer. The AC technician which I called to fix it gave me a bitter diagnostic. I needed to change the compressor and heat exchanger of my central air conditioner unit. The bill for all the work and spare parts was more than the price of a new central ac unit.

So, I paid the guy for the expertise and decided to trash my old central air conditioning unit and to buy a new one. This was the moment I had to decide how many BTU air conditioner do i need.

If you have money to spend you can hire for a fee an AC technician which would measure your house, count how many windows do you have and how big they are and how well is your house insulated. Then add up all the data and taking count of the climate in your area would tell you how big your air conditioning unit should be.

The AC technician was was a little bit expensive so I skipped this step. Instead I started to make my own calculations to figure out how many BTU air conditioner do i need.

So after measuring all the rooms and adding up all the data I come with my first result – the surface of my house. I have a small house measuring 1600 square feet.

Next I found a chart which told me how many BTU air conditioner do i need, based on the surface of my house. Of course the advice is for a building with 8-9 feet tall rooms. If your rooms are taller than 9 feet you need to compute the volume of your home and use another chart.

This is the chart which I used for finding how many BTU air conditioner do i need:

how many AC BTU’s you need for your room or home
Room Size (square feet) BTU’s Needed BTU/square foot
150 5000 33.30
250 6000 24.00
300 7000 23.30
350 8000 22.85
400 9000 22.50
450 10000 22.20
550 12000 21.81
700 14000 20.00
1000 18000 18.00
1200 21000 17.50
1400 23000 16.42
1600 25000 15.62
1900 28000 14.73
2700 36000 13.33

 

For my house’s surface I found that I need 25000 BTU’s. Translated in air conditioner tons this would be a little bit more that 2 tons. Please read also what size air conditioner do I need for my house.

Because the area I am living in is very sunny with very hot summers I needed to add another 0.5 ton of AC. Some experts tell you to add another 0.1 ton for every occupant of the house. This is why I decided that I need 35000 BTU which translates in a 3 ton air conditioner central unit.

Final words. After looking for information about how many BTU air conditioner do i need and measuring, computing surfaces and crosschecking values in a simple chart I saved $500 on the expertise of an AC professional. I am glad I did this by myself because my air conditioner is working fine and my energy bills are now a half of what they used to be.

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