Mini Split Air Conditioners for Pleasantly Quiet Cooling

Although window air conditioners are well suited to cooling a single room affordably, they also block up most of a window, preventing you from looking out of it or using it for other purposes. They are also quite noisy, especially once they begin to age. However, a quiet solution has been found that offers much the same functionality as the window unit without its drawbacks - mini split air conditioners.

Mini split air conditioners are, in a sense, "central air" units for one room (or more, in some cases). They solve the problem of blocked windows and noisy operation with one bold design feature - they place the compressor in one place and the air processing unit in another, connecting them with a conduit that contains several separate lines - power, a drain tube for removing condensation, and other tubes for suction and refrigerants.

Thus, the mechanical "action" takes place in the unit mounted on the outside wall of your house, where you will not hear it running, while the actual cooling takes place indoors. The conduit connecting the two parts of the air conditioner requires some way to reach the outside of your house - either passing through a slightly opened window, or, more typically, through a small hole drilled through the outer shell of your home. The conduit can be up to 50 feet long and still work properly.

Powerful mini split air conditioners for multi-room cooling

Although the majority of mini split air conditioners are designed to cool a single room unobtrusively, some models feature a larger, more powerful outdoor compressor which can run up to four conduits at once. Each conduit can support a single air processor, meaning that four rooms (at maximum) can be cooled by the unit overall.

Such units are equipped with an appropriate thermostat which allows separate controlling of each internal air processing unit. Thus, just as with central air, you can cool specific rooms while leaving other rooms at their natural temperature, or set different levels of cooling for different spaces in your house. This allows a near "central air" level air of comfort and convenience with much easier installation and cheaper operation.

Quick installation

Though it offers almost as much convenience as a central air conditioner, a mini split air conditioner can be installed in one to several hours and requires no major remodeling of your house. This makes it far more cost effective - as does it 30% lower energy use for an equivalent amount of cooling. Though it is not quite as powerful as central air, a mini air split conditioner is a viable alternative for small-scale multi room cooling projects.