Whether you are trying to heat or cool your garage in Phoenix, it’s important to make sure you look at several factors before taking the leap.
First things first, it’s important to understand that you can’t just tap into your existing AC or heating system and add a cooling supply duct to your garage.
Here are a Few Reasons Just Adding a Supply to your Garage Won’t Work:
Reason 1:
The first reason for this is your supply air delivered to your garage needs to have somewhere to go – so if there is no return in your garage (a return is the area where the filter goes), your existing central heating and cooling system will not function properly and starve for the air it loses. This will cause your system to overwork itself causing your energy bills to rise and eventually, cause unnecessary and avoidable AC breakdowns in the future.
Reason 2:
The second reason you can’t just add a supply duct from your existing AC or heating system is that you need to make sure that your existing system has enough capacity. As in, is your AC system able to cool that much additional square footage down? The only way to know this is to do a proper Manual J load calculation, which Ideal can definitely help with!
Don’t Neglect Your Garage Insulation
The second thing to assess is if there is any insulation in your garage ceiling or in your garage walls. If you plan on conditioning your garage, adding insulation to the garage is an absolute must. Insulating your garage will help keep the temperature cool in the summer and nice and warm in the winter.
If you install a ductless mini split system in your garage without insulating your garage ceiling or garage walls, your mini split will work a lot harder to cool or heat your space down. And depending on how often and what temperature you’re setting your mini split’s thermostat to, your SRP and APS utility bills can increase pretty substantially. So always insulate your garage if you’re installing a mini split!
But with garage insulation, there’s a caveat – we never recommend insulating a Phoenix metro area garage without conditioning the space (with a ductless AC mini split or other type of garage AC system) because if you do, it will only make the space warmer in the summer months by holding in the heat. Your garage is already warm in the summer, and what insulation is designed to do, is keep the temperature of a space, which in turn would make your garage warmer. Since Phoenix is in Climate zone 2, insulating a garage space without cooling it down with an alternative AC source, would not be recommended.
Sizing your Mini Split to Cool or Heat your Garage
Making sure the mini split you choose to cool or heat your garage will be able to keep up with the heat load of your garage is one of the most important factors. The way we determine what size your ductless mini split should be is by running some engineering on your garage space called a Manual J load calculation. By running the heat load calculation, we can guarantee your garage will heat or cool to your desired setpoint temperature all year round!
Benefits of Cooling or Heating your Garage with a Mini Split AC System
There are a few benefits to heating or cooling your garage that we can all agree would be pretty nice to have! Some common benefits include:
- You don’t have to get in a hot car in the middle of summer
- Keeping canned or dried food in good condition for the entire year
- If you have a refrigerator or freezer in your garage, the change in temperature from the outside to the inside of the garage will be less (we refer to this as “Delta T”), which means, the less the Delta T is, the less hard your refrigerator or freezer will have to run in the hot summer months to keep food cold
- You can turn your garage into an air conditioned gym space, saving you potentially thousands of dollars in gym membership fees a year
- You can turn your garage into a real man cave! The rest of your family doesn’t want to watch football? That’s okay because you have your very own space to hang out!
- Now you can use your garage all year around as a workshop for fixing things, house projects, woodworking without sweating it out every summer out there
- Keep your vintage collectible, fancy cars at a cool temperature even when we have a heat wave in Phoenix!
- Store your household items and Holiday decorations without having to worry about them deteriorating due to excessive heat
How Much Does a Ductless Mini Split Cost?
There are several factors that we use to determine how much your mini split will cost to install. It’s really important to select a contractor that knows what they’re doing and doesn’t cut corners to try to save you a few bucks because it will cost you a lot more in the long run!
Generally here is what we look at when it comes to determining how much a ductless mini split system will cost you:
- Length of lineset your mini split needs
- The longer or more complex the linset run is, the more costs there will be that are associated with installing your garage mini split system in Phoenix
- High voltage
- Most mini split systems require 240v and a dedicated circuit which needs to be run from your main electrical panel to supply power for your outdoor mini split condenser
- Location of indoor mini split head
- If the indoor head can’t be installed on an exterior wall then a condensation pump will need to be installed to pump condensation water outside. Although quiet, these condensation pumps do make some sound and can be heard when they are running
- Size of the mini split
- A larger mini split with greater BTU capacity will obviously cost more, as a larger compressor is more expensive
- Quality
- The cheap, internet mini splits that are readily available and usually come with no warranty. All of our systems are backed by a 10 year warranty for parts and compressors and you have the peace of mind that if something happens to your system you know you have a contractor that will be there to fix it for you in case of an air conditioning emergency in the heat of the summer in Phoenix
The Cost of a Bad Mini Split Install
Installing a mini split incorrectly will almost always come with a much higher cost in the long run. You’ll have unnecessary breakdowns, headaches, short cycling, refrigerant line leaks, and more issues than you ever imagined. When you go through the headaches and finally have to call a reputable Phoenix air conditioning contractor to fix the poor installation mistakes, these costs tend to add up fast. Not only this, but sometimes, even a reputable Phoenix AC contractor can’t even repair some of the shoddy work and you’ll be looking at starting from scratch.
SRP Mini Split Rebates
If you’re an SRP customer in Phoenix, Mesa, or Chandler – you’re in luck because you can actually get some SRP AC rebates for your mini split as long as the mini split is in a space that is insulated correctly. The SRP rebates as of today are $225 per ton.
That amount just comes directly off of your total cost, all you have to do is fill out SRP rebate paperwork and direct the rebate to us, so you don’t have to wait for SRP to send you your rebate check in the mail – we do the waiting for you!
The bottom line is you have this amazing garage space – wouldn’t it be nice to actually use the space and not let it go to waste? Garages can be so much more than just a space to park your car – especially since some garages are as big as a living room! Why not use