Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jul 17, 2012 6:02 pm Hi All, I am new to the forum so bear with me as I am still learning the ropes. My partner and I recently purchased a nice level 761m2 North facing block in Pakenham, Vic. Slab is going down in October (hopefully) and we have yet to make decisions on a few things for the house. One thing is that we have been recommended to simply get two split system air con/heating units for the house. One in the open plan living/kitchen/dining area and another in the master bedroom. However now I am questioning whether that will be enough in regards to heating and whether a ducted heating system will also be warranted. Although it will only be me and the man living there for a while, we will still have family from interstate staying over ocassionally and probably friends and the spare rooms are off a hallway which is slightly separated from the open plan area. Does anybody have any experiences with these different types of systems who can help us make up our mind? Thanks Land 761m2 - Settled 06/07/2012 - Newbie Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 2Jul 17, 2012 8:47 pm We are having two split systems, one in the living area like yours and the other is a multi split system servicing the four bedrooms and the media room from the one unit. My hubby did not want any 'holes' in the roof so we are opting for this set-up. We have also found with ducted RC that there can be a lot of air noise to the return vent and sometimes doors can't be closed as there is a 'whistle' as the air tries to get throught o the vent in another area. (Although the ducted RC are probably better these days than the two systems we have had before that are about 12 years old). The system is costing just over $16k installed through the builder. The system we are getting is Mitsubishi, if you are able to get into a shop that sells them, pick up the Mitsubishi Electric air conditioning system book with the models and details in. There are lots of other brands but our builder uses a company that uses these systems which is why we are getting Mitsubishi. On the up side for ducted, they are usually cheaper to do the whole house, although, as you may only get two systems, split may be cheaper. And there is only the ceiling vents whereas with the split you will need an indoor unit on the wall in each room. By the way, our master bedroom is quite a way from the other rooms that are off the one system - if you have a look at page 12 of my thread you will see our house plan with the two outdoor units. https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43937&start=0 Bought a block in Golden Grove - Jan 2011 Finally finished our design, Mar 2012, *yay* Signed with ADH council consent June 12 Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 3Jul 18, 2012 2:20 pm Thanks for the feedback. I suppose getting the right size is important too for the area you cover. Will definitely look into picking up the Mitsubishi air con system book so we can have a squiz. By the way I love you house design, especially the kitchen! Looks fantastic and can't wait for updates Land 761m2 - Settled 06/07/2012 - Newbie Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 4Jul 18, 2012 11:12 pm We had ducted in our first build which was open plan and the machine had to heat/cool from the back hall to the front door. We were wiser with this house, the large open area has a CSD leading to the rear bedrooms and double doors leading to the front hall. We have gone with two splits, a large unit in the kitchen/dining/family and a small unit in the TV room. In the four bedrooms we had fans installed with remote controls and we also put a fan in the study which is at the front of the house facing northwest. The brand is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, they are inverter model numbers SRK71ZKS and SRK35ZJS, they were installed after the build and cost $4494. Because they were installed post build we do have pipes running down the outside wall but you can get them installed in the wall during the build but the company may charge a bit extra. My advice whichever system you install is make sure you can close off the area you are heating/cooling to save as many $$ as possible. Regards, Grumbles Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 5Jul 19, 2012 8:24 am The pros and cons of ducted vs wall or cassette type splits are: Ducted pros: 1) More aesthetically pleasing (no ugly fan coil unit visible) 2) Quieter (if properly designed) 3) can condition the whole house at a lower capital cost. Ducted cons: 1) Cannot cool rooms individually, and as a result concume a lot more energy. There are zoned systems, but the reality is, these zoned systems have one return air grille, which will end up dragging warm air back to the unit from the entire house - the builders never tell you this, mostly because they don't realise this is an issue. 2) To distribute the air around in the ductwork consumes a suprising amount of energy (30%-50 % of the energy consumed), which needs to be considered. There is a middle ground where you can have the best of both worlds, with small ducted splits - one per room/zone. New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 6Jul 19, 2012 10:10 am Sean, I agree with you and it's the reason why I'm going split systems in each bedroom and one big one in the 55sqm living area. At night I can turn on the each bedroom individually. Even though you can zone, the return air duct may be a vastly different temp to the zoned area you wish to cool/heat resulting in more energy consumption. Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 7Jul 26, 2012 1:26 pm grumblebum54 We had ducted in our first build which was open plan and the machine had to heat/cool from the back hall to the front door. We were wiser with this house, the large open area has a CSD leading to the rear bedrooms and double doors leading to the front hall. We have gone with two splits, a large unit in the kitchen/dining/family and a small unit in the TV room. In the four bedrooms we had fans installed with remote controls and we also put a fan in the study which is at the front of the house facing northwest. The brand is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, they are inverter model numbers SRK71ZKS and SRK35ZJS, they were installed after the build and cost $4494. Because they were installed post build we do have pipes running down the outside wall but you can get them installed in the wall during the build but the company may charge a bit extra. My advice whichever system you install is make sure you can close off the area you are heating/cooling to save as many $$ as possible. I took a look at those models and they definitely have alot of benefits. At this point I definitely feel like we will head more towards split systems, the Mitsubishi ones in particular. I don't like the fact that they are so noticeable but they do seem to work well at my Mum's house. She has had both ducted and split and recommends split systems also. Thanks everyone for your feedback, it has been so helpful! Land 761m2 - Settled 06/07/2012 - Newbie Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 8Jul 26, 2012 2:36 pm Just a note for the ducted splits... we rented an apartment which had them in the bedrooms and they were all very noisy even if only one was actually switched on. Annoying when the one in living area was on and I was trying to get my baby to sleep in the other room with a lot of gurgling and rumbling going on! Might have just been that system though. Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 9Jul 26, 2012 6:00 pm Looking for opinions also . . . What about evap cooling? We have ducted zoned heating installed by builder with the intentions of saving up for evap cooling. We are in Victoria. Would we be better with split systems? Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 10Jul 26, 2012 6:10 pm heating go ducted, cooling go split, melbourne like weather require heating more often. cooling can be isolated in certain room for that 5/10 days of extreme hot weather. with the house properly insulated setting ducted heating to 18 or 20 will only kick off every half an hour or so for a good 10 minutes before it shut down again once the room temp is stabilize. if the house has low energy rating in term of heat loss any system will not save money in the long run. i can never get use to evap cooling in the previous house always end up with sticky skin, and you need to leave window open for evap cooling to work. with split system we can either go for a really expensive brand knowing the most expensive cost is actually installation and piping, or we can go for a cheap brand so if anything goes wrong just buy a new one and swap it over without going through all the piping work again. Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 11Jul 26, 2012 7:29 pm We spent 5 years in Cairns, and found that a multi-head split system (Daikin) gave the best results overall. Given the humidity, one of our daughters needed to sleep with it on nearly year round. It was often a topic of conversation when the electricity bills came out, and ours was always amongst the lowest compared to similar homes, in spite of this frequent use. We had evaporative at our last house in Melbourne, and although it has its positives, our next house will definately have refrigerated. As for the heating aspect, never once needed it in Cairns, so no comment. Re: New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 12Jul 26, 2012 8:42 pm Have a look at an Actron System. It can be isolated whether heating or cooling down to one room/zone using their ESP plus system. Settlement 1/2/12 New Shed 23/3/12 Slab poured 27/3/12 Frame complete 4/5/12 Roof complete 1/6/12 LOCKUP 29/6/12 Our new build blog http://kareenhillsownerbuild.blogspot.com/ New Home Heating and Cooling - Split System vs. Ducted 13Sep 04, 2012 9:42 pm In my short experience with Evap cooling I definitely felt that stickiness and it was irritating so I wanted to avoid that I guess. The Actron system looks very interesting-does anyone have experience with it or have a general idea of pricing. It seems like the new gen of heating and cooling! Land 761m2 - Settled 06/07/2012 - Newbie We already paid for somfy motors for the blinds. The quote above was purely for “pre-wiring” so the blinds company can install the motors and blinds. That’s why we… 5 16083 Move your linen into laundry and access laundry from your present linen space 1 7984 It's all about wireless, self install now. The cost/benefit of wired setups for the house are no longer what they used to be. Lots of wireless options. Eufy, Arlo and… 2 9768 |