wrote:

Anyone done anything like whole house DIY-ish air con ?
For example, air con unit in loft (meaty one), vents in roof,
DIY ducting around house, to air condition the main rooms of the house.
It strikes me this might be easier than those through-the-wall units in
one or two rooms. Bung a duct down unused chimney breast etc. Might
need booster pumps due to large ducting lengths. Any thoughts ?

The difficulty with ducting is that it would need to be two way. Air con
is not just about pumping cold air into the room. You also need to
extract the warm moist air since it is the dehumidification that makes a
big difference to the comfort level and not just the temperature.

Getting two sets of insulated ducting to/from each room is going to be
harder.

A split system that uses several internal air handlers connected to a
single external condensor would be a simpler job to install.

I did look into options for doing this (when I had the roof off the
house seemed like the ideal opportunity!) but could not find any multi
way split systems that were avaiable for self install (one or two way
units were available - but four way seemed more elusive). The
"professional" installation often cost more than the hardware costs by a
fair margin! (i.e. an internal heat pump air handler costing 250 quid
say, was often accompanied by an installation charge of 500!). There
also seemed to be a certain amount of "closed shop" mentality going on
as well, in that many suppliers were not keen to supply the kit to
people outside of the HVAC funny handshake club.


--
Cheers,

John.

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