If you’re in the market for a new air conditioning system, congratulations! A new system can pay huge dividends not only in your ability to reliably keep your Plano, TX home cool, but in lowering those monthly air conditioning bills in the process. The SEER rating is a huge part of that, information your of how efficiently the new system does its job and helping you save money in the process. Here’s a quick breakdown of how the SEER rating works and what it means. It should help you make a decision as to which unit to buy.
What It Means
SEER stands for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio, which is a fancy way to saying it measures how well the system uses the energy it consumes. You derive it by dividing the cooling output in British Thermal Units (or BTUs) against the watt-hours of energy consumed. that gives you a number usually somewhere between 10 and 15 or so, though older units can have lower SEER ratings and some industrail units have much higher ones. The higher the rating, the more energy efficient the unit and the less you’ll pay for the same amount of work than you would with an air conditioner with a lower SEER rating.
Things to Keep in Mind
It’s important to remember that, while you want the SEER rating to be as high as you can afford, you also need to balance it against the power levels required to cool down your home. For instance, you could buy an underpowered air conditioner with a much higher SEER rating than a more powerful air conditioner better sized to your home. The efficiency of the underpowered unit would be lost because it would run much longer than it should in order to cool down your home. Talk to your installation service about balancing the SEER rating against the needs of your home.
Call Hutchins Plumbing and Air Conditioning to install your new air conditioning system.
