Is Air Conditioning Worth It for a Kent Home?

For many Kent and SE London homes, air conditioning is now worth it, especially for bedrooms and home offices that overheat in summer. A wall-mounted split system is the usual choice, many units can heat as well as cool, and booking outside the summer rush gets it fitted before the heat arrives.

A few years ago, air conditioning in a Kent semi would have sounded like an extravagance. Now it is a question many homeowners are asking. The long, hot spells of recent summers have left plenty of people lying awake in bedrooms that never cool down, or trying to work in a box room that turns into a greenhouse by mid-afternoon. So is it worth it? For a lot of homes, the honest answer is yes, as long as it is the right system in the right room.

What Has Changed

UK houses were built to hold on to heat, which is exactly what you want in January and exactly what you do not want in July. Loft conversions, extensions with large glazed doors and south-facing bedrooms all trap heat, and once a room has warmed up it can stay uncomfortable well into the night.

Fans just move warm air around. Portable units help a little, but they are noisy, need a hose out of the window and struggle in anything bigger than a small room. A fixed system is designed to actually take the heat out of the room and keep it out.

Which Rooms Benefit Most

You rarely need to cool the whole house. Most people get the biggest difference from one or two rooms.

• Main bedrooms: A cool bedroom makes the biggest single difference to how you feel through a heatwave, because it is where poor sleep starts.
• Loft conversions: Rooms under the roof are usually the hottest in the house and the hardest to cool any other way.
• Home offices: Computers and screens add heat of their own, and a room that is fine at nine in the morning can be unbearable by three.
• Living rooms and extensions: Large windows and bi-fold doors let in plenty of sun, which is lovely until it is not.

How a Split System Works

The system we recommend for most homes is a wall-mounted split. A slim indoor unit sits high on the wall of the room, and a compact outdoor unit sits outside, usually on a bracket or on the ground. The two are joined by a small bundle of pipes and cables that runs through a neat hole in the wall.

Because the noisy part of the system lives outside, the indoor unit is quiet enough for a bedroom. The size of unit matters: too small and it runs flat out without keeping up, too big and it cycles on and off. That is why every job starts with a free survey, where we look at the size of the room, how much sun it gets and where the indoor and outdoor units can sensibly go. You then get a clear written quote.

On install day, pipe runs, condensate drainage and the electrical supply are finished neatly, and the system is commissioned and tested before we show you how to use it.

Heating as Well as Cooling

One thing that surprises people is that many modern split units can heat as well as cool. They work by moving heat rather than making it, so in spring and autumn they can take the chill off a room efficiently without firing up the whole central heating system.

That makes a unit far more useful than something that only earns its keep for a few weeks in summer. It is particularly handy in a home office or a garden room that is used during the day when the rest of the house does not need heating.

When to Book

The worst time to decide you want air conditioning is the first week of a heatwave, because that is when everybody else decides too. Booking your survey and install outside the summer rush means the system is in and tested before the hot weather arrives.

If you are weighing it up, a survey costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You can read more about what we install on our air conditioning page.

Frequently Asked Questions