Air Con - damn it's getting hotter.

[8OA8]

I'm about to renew all my AC units in my condo as the existing equipment is all pretty much at the end of its life, however I'm hesitant on the way to go forward since visiting the http://www.daikin.co.th/service-btu-calculation/#.

When I look at the power consumption figures comparison for my living room (6.5m x 5.6m) on the Daikin site, there is a large difference when I compare between the new duct type (inverter), same as I currently have, but with Inverter, at using Baht 29,340/yr electricity and the new Inverter wall mounted units using Baht 17,722/yr electricity.

Has anyone ever switched over from the built in units and gone for replacing them with wall mounted units? If yes should I just aim to have them fitted where the current duct outlet grilles are located and have a tradesman make the necessary support work for them to fix the wall unit to?

Appreciate feedback from anyone with this experience, even if they didn't go ahead with the change but replaced with the original style and can advise the reason for replacing the existing ducted units with new ducted units.

The best ducted types I've seen are still using tech from the mid 2000's - i.e. first gen inverters and r410A refrigerant - the worst are still using R22 with old fashioned compressor cycling. Performance and efficiency is a long, long way from the newest R32 inverter wall units.

For a room your size, you'd probably only going to use a single wall unit. Actually yes you are, I just used the calculator

I have two of the FTKM33NV2S systems the Daikin site recommends for you. These things blow serious volumes of cold air - you don't just feel a breeze, they blow papers off tables 4M away One thing you need to be mindful of is that it's not silent - it's not terribly loud - in a living room they're OK, but in a bedroom it'd bother you. The smaller systems are much quieter (and blow much less air) if that's a concern.

This model also has motorized left/right swing as well as up/down, so don't put them in a corner - ideally you'd want it in the middle of a wall somewhere where it's going to be able to distribute the air evenly around the room.

A couple of other things to consider:

1. The indoor unit is BIG. It's 1.2M wide and 34cm high - and you want to leave minimum 5cm gap (ideally 10cm) to the ceiling above it as that's where the air inlet is - which means the bottom of the unit is going to be 39-44cm from the ceiling.

2. These wall units do not have pumps for getting rid of condensate water like ducted systems do - so they have to be installed in a location where the drain pipe always flows downhill from the indoor unit.

Many thanks IMHO for your constructive feedback.

Much appreciated.

[Ahnsahn]

Smile Plus appears to be very new, so I did not look at them when considering my options or putting together the list.

However, from looking at the Daikin website, it looks while the normal Smile series does not have the IR sensor, both the Smile Plus and Smart series do.

As for SEER -- this should give you a reasonable indication of efficiency, but there are a couple of caveats (at least based on my research of SEER in the US, since I can't actually read the Thai standards for SEER).

1. SEER is calculated over a range of temperatures so depending on how your cooling load matches the assumed temperature range it may or may not be accurate.
2. The benefits of SEER increase diminish as the SEER gets larger. That is, you will see a bigger savings going from a SEER of 13 to 15 than you would see going from 15 to 17.
3. Some units still have their efficiency stated in EER, which is not directly comparable to SEER.

So, in general, I would only use it as a rough guideline, but I wouldn't put too much weight on it when making the decision, especially if working at the higher SEER values 19/20+.

I'm about to renew all my AC units in my condo as the existing equipment is all pretty much at the end of its life, however I'm hesitant on the way to go forward since visiting the http://www.daikin.co.th/service-btu-calculation/#.

When I look at the power consumption figures comparison for my living room (6.5m x 5.6m) on the Daikin site, there is a large difference when I compare between the new duct type (inverter), same as I currently have, but with Inverter, at using Baht 29,340/yr electricity and the new Inverter wall mounted units using Baht 17,722/yr electricity.

Has anyone ever switched over from the built in units and gone for replacing them with wall mounted units? If yes should I just aim to have them fitted where the current duct outlet grilles are located and have a tradesman make the necessary support work for them to fix the wall unit to?

Appreciate feedback from anyone with this experience, even if they didn't go ahead with the change but replaced with the original style and can advise the reason for replacing the existing ducted units with new ducted units.

The best ducted types I've seen are still using tech from the mid 2000's - i.e. first gen inverters and r410A refrigerant - the worst are still using R22 with old fashioned compressor cycling. Performance and efficiency is a long, long way from the newest R32 inverter wall units.

For a room your size, you'd probably only going to use a single wall unit. Actually yes you are, I just used the calculator

I have two of the FTKM33NV2S systems the Daikin site recommends for you. These things blow serious volumes of cold air - you don't just feel a breeze, they blow papers off tables 4M away One thing you need to be mindful of is that it's not silent - it's not terribly loud - in a living room they're OK, but in a bedroom it'd bother you. The smaller systems are much quieter (and blow much less air) if that's a concern.

This model also has motorized left/right swing as well as up/down, so don't put them in a corner - ideally you'd want it in the middle of a wall somewhere where it's going to be able to distribute the air evenly around the room.

A couple of other things to consider:

1. The indoor unit is BIG. It's 1.2M wide and 34cm high - and you want to leave minimum 5cm gap (ideally 10cm) to the ceiling above it as that's where the air inlet is - which means the bottom of the unit is going to be 39-44cm from the ceiling.

2. These wall units do not have pumps for getting rid of condensate water like ducted systems do - so they have to be installed in a location where the drain pipe always flows downhill from the indoor unit.

Many thanks IMHO for your constructive feedback.

Much appreciated.

^^^ me, too!

Kudos to IMHO and vaultdweller0013 for sharing their expertise and experiences with their units and supplying technical info!

[KonaRain]

Mitsubishi aircon is what our Thai friend suggested.. an architect.. I saw them in hotels in Los and Laos.

Nice and quiet with remote control temperature and fan settings.

Aloha

[KonaRain]

Mitsubishi had a duct as I think about it..