What size air conditioner do I need for my guest bedroom?

 A guide to selecting the right air conditioner

Summer is here! And with Christmas just around the corner, you’re probably planning to have friends and family come and stay with you during the festive season.

It’s time to get the spare bedroom ready to welcome your guests. In South East Queensland, that means installing an air-conditioner in your guest room to ensure their comfort. But which system is right for the job?

The first thing you need to know is, it’s not simply the size of the room to consider when you’re choosing the ideal air conditioner.

That means selecting the ideal system for a guest bedroom is not as simple as measuring that you have a 3m x 3m room, which therefore needs a 2 Kw system! There are many other factors to take into account.

For example, if you have a lot of people staying in your house over Christmas, the extra body heat will put a lot of strain on your air-con.

Whether your home is insulated or not, and the type of walls, floor, and even glass it features will all make a difference to the size of unit you’ll need.

What should you think about when choosing an air con?

As we all know, Christmas is the time for relaxing and enjoying the odd sneaky afternoon nap! If your air-conditioner is too small for the room, while it might cope at night, it may struggle during the day.

Different ambient temperatures will also affect your air-con’s performance. On a really humid 40 degree day, will it cope? Some air conditioners can cope with extreme conditions and some can’t.

There’s also the issue of how your guests will use the room. Will the ensuite door be left open often? Is there an open walk-in bathroom or wardrobe that also needs cooling?

On top of this, not all 7Kw air-conditioners are the same. Some can pump through only 250 litres per second, while a good quality unit can do 380 litres every second. This will bring down the room to a comfortable operating temperature sooner, which means the unit is more efficient, uses less energy, and costs you less in terms of power.

Any of these factors may mean you need to install a bigger air-con unit than you anticipated.