How long should it take the air conditioner to cool or heater to heat my home?
Few homeowners realize that their HVAC system is not specifically designed to recover from a high or low temperature. Rather, it’s specifically designed to maintain a particular temperature. For central Contra Costa a common design temperature during the summer is 97 degrees outside and 75 degrees inside. What that means is that a properly designed air conditioner will run nonstop to maintain 75 degrees inside when the outdoor temperature is 97 degrees. No where in the design criteria of an air conditioner or heater is there a number that tells us how quickly a system will heat or cool. How long it takes will depend on your home’s mass, insulation, shading, etc. There are many good measures of how a system is performing. Recovery time is not necessarily one of them.
