Before you buy, know the right AC square footage per ton!

before you buy a new AC system one of the most important things every homeowner needs to get right is the size of the new AC system if an AC system ends up being undersized meaning too small then you end up with problems down the road for instance what's going to happen is it's going to run all the time to satisfy the indoor temperature that you have it set at and this is going to dramatically reduce the life expectancy of of your new AC system on the flip side if your system is oversized what this is going to lead to is short cycling because the system is too big for your house this could lead to hot and cold spots throughout your home and if your duct work wasn't sized properly for the bigger system it could also impact the life expectancy of the system and lead to other duct work issues in the worst case scenario if your system isn't sized properly it could lead to mold growing in your house hi this is Kenneth with Atlas AC and today we're going to be answering the question what is the right size AC system for my home at any point during this video if you find it to be valuable please hit the like button that's going to really help me out with the YouTube algorithms quick disclaimer this video is more of a rule of thumb to help home owners better navigate the HVAC industry it will help you budget for a new AC system a lot easier along with making it easier to work with contractors as you're going through the process of getting quotes and bids to start off with where you're located in the United States is going to determine the size of the HVAC system that you're needing here's a nice little visual representation of the different climate zones throughout the United States in each one of these zones we have to size AC systems differently for since I'm located in Texas and most of my HVAC knowledge comes from Texas that's the zone that I'm going to largely be talking about if you're looking at the chart you're going to notice a couple things on it so not only that there's five different zones but also the the way that it's zoning things out is based off of two metrics metric number one has to do with the tonnage and the tonnage has to do with the size of an AC system and there is 12 000 BTUs per ton so if you look at a three ton AC system that represents 3600 BTUs now next to it we're going to see the square footage now the square footage is the recommendations for that size system to go with that square footage so for example if we're looking at this three ton system it's saying it's going to fit a house in between the size of 1500 square feet to 1800 square feet and that three-ton system is going to be the perfect solution for you to keep things simple we're going to use the example of homes that were built in between 1200 square feet and 1800 square feet also please keep in mind that the areas that I'm most familiar with is the San Antonio Austin and Dallas areas if you're not located in this area there's a chance that things might vary a little bit for you based on just the building standards in your city so if we're looking at a home that's not an old house but not a new house either let's say in the range of built in the 60s all the way up until I guess the early 2000s somewhere in that time frame and let's say the house is 1500 square feet what we see in this area that the most ideal size for a 1500 square foot home is going to be about three tons or if the home size let's say is 1800 square foot I would probably go ahead and bump that up to a three and a half ton system so the rule of thumb for homes that are not real new and are also not real old is you're going to be looking at about 500 square feet per ton and that's just a basic rule of thumb you know that's not always the case as as you're going to see here pretty quick so if you're looking at the chart you're going to see that there's a range in square footages for particular size of of tonnage and I would recommend if you have a house that was built in this time frame I would lean more on the the smaller square footage side of the equation and it's typically going to be more correct than not if you have a 1500 square foot home I would go with a three ton system if you have a 1800 square foot home I would deal with a three and a half ton system and again this is still just a rule of thumb so you might be asking why is it also recommending that I can put a three ton on a 1800 square foot home well the short answer is it's probably a newer home and newer homes can get away with that just due to um that a lot better insulation double pane windows it could be sealed a lot better so typically what we see is homes that call for a smaller system with a larger square footage is going to be a more energy efficient home or even just a newer house in general there are some scenarios where the heat loads actually call for us to oversize a system for instance I've seen homes that were 1200 square feet and we actually had to go in with a three ton so you might be asking what could possibly cause us to go up a half a ton well the short answer is is when you calculate heat loads there's other variables that play into it things like if you have a pair and bean Foundation that's breathable that's going to change your heat load because it's going to call for more Heating and Cooling and another scenario is if you have a home built in the 40s and on a windy day you can feel the breeze in the living room and so when you have a house that breathes that much sometimes it's just going to call for a bigger system as you can see there was three different scenarios that we looked at the first scenario being the most common with homes you know that that are not old but they're not also new you know they're going to be at the the smaller square footage with the bigger systems and then the newer homes you're going to see the the larger square footage with the smaller systems and that's the best way to look at the chart and then you got certain scenarios in the far out there ones where you just have a really old home or the foundation is not concrete and you might need a bigger system than what this chart is calling for at the end of the day before you make the final purchase you're still going to want an HVAC contractor run a quick heat load on your house just to be for certain everything is sized properly it is common for most HVAC contractors to run heat loads before they replace an existing AC system for example we run heat loads for every single one of of our customers before we do a new install if you found this video to be helpful you might also find our next one in line to be helpful as well it covers the topics of seer rating and does it actually save you money until next time have a good one

Channel: Atlas AC

Views: 84,359

Keywords: 3 ton ac unit square footage, 2 ton ac unit square footage, 2.5 ton ac unit square footage, 4 ton ac unit square footage, 5 ton ac unit square footage, ac square footage per ton, square footage per ton, square footage per ton hvac, ac sq ft calculator, ac size by square footage, heat pump size by square footage, air conditioner size by square footage, ac unit size for square footage

Id: MKMXKfALfQM

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022