Cooling Services
for the Grayling MI Area

Whether you're retrofitting an older home with no central HVAC system or if you're building a new home, correctly sizing the system to the size of your home during a new HVAC installation ensures that the system will regulate temperatures properly for optimal comfort all year.

Our trained HVAC professionals will be able to precisely measure the square footage of your home, either from a blueprint or by measuring all the rooms in the existing home, as well as consider other important factors like the number of occupants in the home, the number of windows and doors, the home's orientation to the sun, and placement of the ductwork.

The process for determining the right size HVAC system to install in your home is a complicated one best left to the professionals at Classic Plumbing & Heating.

If you're working with an architect or builder, they can provide you with the home's overall square footage. You can also obtain it from the blueprints of your new home. If you're retrofitting an older home, you'll need to measure it yourself. Use a tape measure to determine the overall length and width of a room. Multiply those together for the approximate square footage of that room. Repeat this process for each room in the home, including all habitable spaces like finished basements, closets, hallways, and stairways. Add them all together. This is the total square footage you'll use for estimating purposes. 

An air conditioner's size in “tons” refers to its cooling capacity typically measured in BTUs, or British Thermal Units. A central air conditioning system needs about 20 BTUs of energy per square foot of living space to adequately cool that space. So, multiplying your home's total square footage by 20 will supply you with the number of BTUs needed to adequately cool your home. If your home's ceilings are higher than the typical 8 feet, you'll want to multiply your base BTUs by at least 1.25 or 25%, maybe more. There is a whole list of other factors that can adjust the number of total BTUs up or down, but this will give you an approximate number to start. A one-ton AC unit removes 12,000 BTUs of heat per hour, so if you divide your total BTU number by 12,000, you'll know the approximate tonnage unit you'll need for your new AC installation.