Ducted Air Conditioning Fairfield West

Local knowledge

Ducted in Fairfield West homes

Fairfield West is about as good as it gets for a ducted install: single-storey brick veneer, a pitched tiled roof with a full cavity, a hallway manhole and a driveway beside the house for the condenser. We size for the house on its worst day, which here means a 40 degree afternoon after three days the same, and we zone by use rather than by room count. In the typical layout that means the front lounge and kitchen-dining as one zone, the three or four bedrooms down the hall as a second, and a rear family room or extension as a third if it exists, so the bedrooms can run alone overnight and the extension can be shut when empty. On the Heights we take extra care with the west-facing rooms, sometimes giving them their own zone so the system does not chase the afternoon sun through the whole house.

The outdoor unit goes on the shaded side wherever the block allows, usually the south or east, on a slab off the driveway rather than on hot concrete against a west wall, and clear of the granny flat if one has taken the back yard. Ducted running cost here is roughly $1–$2 per hour whole-home, and the reason to zone is to keep that number honest over a long summer: an inverter ducted system that only runs the bedroom zone overnight costs a fraction of two old wall units running flat out. Winter is the other half of the case. A brick veneer home in Fairfield West goes cold fast on a clear night, and reverse-cycle ducted heats it for far less than the fan heaters most of these houses still use.