Heating and cooling unit.

[Rodney Lee]

I recently enclosed my garage and made a den out of it. It is about 400 to

450 square feet. At the moment, I am using a window unit to heat and cool the room, but it doesn't do a very good job. I thought about tying it in to the central unit for the rest of the house, but the guy that serviced my unit didn't think it was large enough to handle the extra square footage. Also, my central unit is at the other end of the house and I would need to add about 30 feet of duct to reach the room.

I was wondering what would be my best bet for heating and cooling this room. Would I be better off Just buying a larger unit for the house, or is there a central unit small enough for a room like this? I thought that there were units made that could be placed in the attic, but I can't seem to find anything on the internet. What should I do?

Rodney

[Joseph Meehan]

Without knowing the age and condition of your current system, it would be difficult to even guess. Your service man should have been able to give you some good advice. BTW if your current system was properly sized for your home, he was likely right. Too big is a bad a too small so changing the load usually means a problem.

If you system is old moving up to a slightly larger and more efficient unit may actually reduce your heating and cooling cost, even with the additional space.

[SQLit]

Depending on where you live put R-40 in the attic above the garage. I put R-30 in mine before this summer. It sure made a difference. I also put foam panels in the garage door and that helped as well. My garage door faces west and I live in Phoenix. I would spend more money on insulation before I would think about another unit. Unless of course yours is to small for the area to begin with. Buying a bigger unit for you home will cost a bunch. The duct work will have to be redone to get it to work right.

[Stormin Mormon]

Some HVAC guys install "mini split" systems. A small AC system. Some come with heat, too.

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

Mini-Splits , Through the wall like motels, or maybe get a bigger hvac system for the house. By what you say here of it being at the other end of the house and a long run to it. This tells me that your going to have to redo most of the ductwork also and in a lot of cases this room does not get the air it needs even when all the Manual D calculation are right. A remote zone when you don't have the run time to keep all areas the same temp.. You will get a good amount of veriations in the temp of this room by it being so far out of the other part of the house.

I would look at the mini-splits or the motel type units.

TURTLE