Question:
My concern is keeping the think warm in winter and cool in summer.
The spot we're building it in is quite exposed and gets
extraordinarily hot on summer mornings. Does anyone have any
experience of air-conditioning units? The firm we're likely to go
with fits some rather nice Fujitsu units. Do they cost a fortune to
run and are they effective? Do you need to keep all the windows and
doors closed for it to be effective (I do in my car) and will having a
permanent opening between the kitchen and the conservatory reduce its
effectiveness?
Answer:
As far as heating is concerned, do the calculations to see what would be
needed. At a rough guess, I reckon you would need 5-6kW on a really cold
day.
For cooling, we haven't found airconditioning to be necessary, although I
have used a portable split unit to try it out, although not very seriously.
A combination of pinoleum blinds in the roof, opening air vents and some
large diameter ceiling fans running very slowly seemed to cover all but the
very hottest days we had last summer. Beyond that the doors were opened.
All of the above are on automatic controllers that pull up the blinds and
open vents as appropriate.
You don't say what kind of airconditioning that they are talking about. If
you mean the split kind with almost all the works outside, that is probably
the most sensible choice if you are going to do anything; especially if it
is of a heatpump design and can provide heating in the winter without the
need to have electric element heating.
You are right that you need to close things up with air conditioning. That
would also include the air trickle vents that will be around the tops of the
walls. I don't think there's any point in having A/C going if you aren't
shielding the roof with blinds from the sun. You will probably want blinds
anyway on bright days.
