When it becomes time to invest in a new heating or cooling unit for your home, you may be considering a ductless mini-split system. These unique systems provide homeowners with many different benefits that traditional heating and cooling systems do not. Before you make your decision of whether or not it’s worthy to invest in one for your home, it’s important to assess both its benefits and drawbacks.
CHEAPER THAN INSTALLING DUCTWORK
By far, the biggest benefit of ductless mini-split systems is that they provide a cheaper alternative to installing ductwork in an already constructed home. This makes mini-split systems popular for homeowners living in existing homes that are looking to invest in a whole-home heating or cooling system. Instead of having to invest in both an HVAC professional and a contractor to rip apart existing walls, install the ductwork, and refinish them, you can just invest in an HVAC professional who can install the mini-split system in your already finished home.
ZONE CONTROL
Another great benefit of mini-split systems is that they offer you zone control heating and cooling. Each individual wall-mounted or ceiling-mounted unit comes with its own thermostat. You can adjust that thermostat to whatever temperature you want in that specific room of your home while setting the thermostat on another unit to a different temperature.
When you have this ability to set different temperature zones in your home, it allows you to drastically reduce your energy bills throughout the year. For example, let’s take a look at the summertime. If you spend most of your time at home in your living room, it makes sense to set the thermostat relatively low in the living room and higher throughout the rest of your home. This way, you can relax in the cool comfort of your living room without wasting energy to dramatically cool all the rest of the rooms throughout your home that you’re not using.
THEY BOTH HEAT AND COOL YOUR HOME
One awesome benefit of ductless mini-split systems is that they can work to both heat and cool your home. Instead of having to invest in a furnace and then a centralized air conditioning system, you can purchase a system that does it all. This helps to simplify things like maintenance and repairs as you’re only dealing with one system as opposed to two different ones. It’s also very helpful when it comes to budgeting for future system replacement as you don’t have to worry about replacing two systems. You only have to worry about replacing one system.
PERFECT FOR ADDITIONS
If you’re like most homeowners, you’ll invest in at least one addition to your home. To ensure that the addition is adequately heated or cooled, you would need to run ducting to that addition. Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as just connecting to existing ducting. Your existing ducting was built to handle the air supply of your existing home. When you start adding on to it, you may notice a decrease in the ability of your heating or cooling system to adequately keep your home at a comfortable temperature.
Ductless mini-split systems provide a great alternative for heating and cooling new additions to your home. Instead of having to worry about hooking onto existing ductwork that could mess with your system’s ability to heat or cool your home, you can simply set up an individual system for that room. All that is needed is a 3-inch hole from the inside of the room to the outside for the refrigerant lines to be run between the indoor unit and the outdoor compressor unit. This makes the construction of your addition much simpler than if you were to be adding ducting into the mix.
NO AIR LOSS DUE TO POOR DUCTING
One of the biggest problems that homeowners end up facing with traditional HVAC systems is air loss through their ducting. This ducting is made of metal material that expands and contracts over time. This natural process of expansion and contraction will force your ductwork to develop unwanted gaps and leaks that can allow air to escape.
In the summertime, you’ll notice that it will take longer for your home to cool because the cold air making its way through your ductwork ends up escaping into your wall cavities. The same holds true for the wintertime, where your warm air ends up in your walls instead of inside your rooms. With a ductless mini-split system, there is no ductwork where air can leak out. All the warmed or cooled air is made right at the indoor unit. Therefore, there is no loss of air and no waste of energy due to that air loss.
CASH IN ON TAX CREDITS AND REBATES
Due to the fact that ductless mini-split units are more energy-efficient than other options on the market, there are many tax credits and rebates that you can take advantage of when you invest in this type of system. Many homeowners cash in on federal, state, and local tax credits. It’s best to speak with your installation professional to learn about the specific tax rebates and credits that are available to you based on the type of system that you’re purchasing for your home.
MORE EXPENSIVE THAN FORCED-AIR SYSTEMS
While ductless mini-split systems have a plethora of benefits for homeowners, they do come along with some drawbacks. The most notable is that they’re about 30% more expensive than traditional forced-air HVAC equipment. This makes ductless mini-split systems an unfavorable option for homes that already have ducting installed for a forced-air system.
POOR AESTHETICS
Another major drawback of ductless mini-split systems is their aesthetic look. Mini-split units feature wall-mounted or ceiling-mounted indoor units. Both of these tend to stick out from the wall or the ceiling and are extremely noticeable to the homeowner. While these units do come with a sleek design and favorable colors to help blend into your home, they still can be easily seen. Compare this to the simple vent of a ducted HVAC system, and it’s pretty obvious that the ducted system is going to be more favorable on the aesthetic front.
MULTIPLE REMOTES
With a traditional forced-air HVAC system, you set the temperature on one thermostat, and it sets the temperature throughout your entire home. When it comes to using a ductless mini-split system, each individual indoor unit has its own thermostat. Most of these thermostats are placed within a remote that can be utilized for setting the temperature on that specific unit. It can be a little bit more confusing when you have multiple remotes for multiple units inside of your home instead of dealing with just one thermostat for your entire home.
PROFESSIONAL DUCTLESS MINI-SPLIT SERVICES
Dragonfly Heating & Cooling offers professional ductless mini-split services for the whole Riverside, CA, region. We’re also here for all of your other heating and cooling needs, including maintenance, installation, and repair. We offer our customers a convenient maintenance plan as well as affordable installation financing on approved credit. Simply contact our office today to get the help that you need!
