CENTRAL AIR Central air-conditioning is the most well-liked sort of cooling system in america. Greater than 75 % of households with a cooling system use central air, in response to the newest information from the United States Energy Information Administration.
However New York Metropolis is without doubt one of the massive outliers. The explanation: Its constructing inventory is older than that of most main American cities, in response to estimates by the Division of Buildings, with about three-quarters of the buildings constructed earlier than 1960 — in different phrases, earlier than central air-conditioning became popular. Retrofitting older residences with central air means putting in a condenser exterior the house, a fan-and-coil system inside and ducts to distribute the cooled air. That’s not low cost, and it requires area, a useful resource missing in lots of New York Metropolis residences.
“It is extremely difficult to retrofit a constructing that was constructed with out air-conditioning,” stated Andrew Gerringer, the managing director for brand spanking new enterprise growth on the Advertising and marketing Administrators, a New York growth, leasing and advertising and marketing firm. “Buildings which have put in it” — together with, he famous, some residences at 190 Riverside Drive and Manhattan Home at 200 East 66th Road — “have carried out so by nice expense and aggravation.”
Even in case you are prepared to surrender a closet to put in a central air system in your prewar residence, your constructing could not help you put a condenser on the roof. And retrofitting an residence constructed with out ductwork could possibly be prohibitively costly. Within the best-case situation — the place you don’t must run a pipe by your neighbor’s kitchen ceiling to get to your compressor — putting in or changing a whole-house system can value, on common, from $2,650 to as much as $15,000, in response to Fixr.com, a website that tracks house enchancment prices.
One other consideration: Most central air programs lack room-by-room management, so if you wish to cool the bed room when you’re sleeping, you’ll have to chill the remainder of your private home, too. Nonetheless, as a result of the ducts and mechanical parts are in-built, successfully hidden inside the partitions, flooring or attic, central air is probably the most discreet possibility.
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