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There are no air ducts to move air between the units. They are old brick buildings and retrofitting central air you might as well tear down and rebuild a lot of
by trillic 2mo ago
There are no air ducts to move air between the units. They are old brick buildings and retrofitting central air you might as well tear down and rebuild a lot of the time.
- blacksmith_tb 2mo agoWhich of course means they should use heat pumps, since the copper lines don't need nearly as much room (I suppose you'd still have to put a drywall wall in front of one brick wall potentially). Even just putting a bunch of mini-splits on the roof (instead of individual window AC units) would be an improvement, seems like.
- Amezarak 2mo agoThe only difference between a heat pump and an AC is a reversal valve to change which direction you’re pumping the heat in. (Of course obviously an AC fundamentally is a heat pump, but setting that aside.) That makes it very hard to puzzle out what you mean by this comment.
- kube-system 2mo agoYes, mini-splits are a good retrofit option, and they are efficient as well. They are more work to install than a PTAC, though, so cheap landlords pick PTACs to reduce labor cost. PTACs are self contained and so they don't even require an HVAC technician to install. Simply knock a hole in a wall and plug it in. They are basically a permanent version of a window AC unit.