5 simple ways to save money when buying an air conditioner

With the onset of sum­mer, the air tem­per­a­ture ris­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and then every­one begins to look for all kinds of ways to cool the room. With tem­per­a­tures break­ing sev­er­al heat records in Europe and this sum­mer set to be the hottest on record, many are escap­ing under a fan, oth­ers are cov­er­ing their win­dows, and some are con­sid­er­ing air con­di­tion­ing as the most effec­tive way to escape the sum­mer heat. Online retail­er Rozetka and research com­pa­ny GfK Ukraine summed up the devel­op­ment of the Ukrain­ian air con­di­tion­er mar­ket in the first half of 2019. Ukraini­ans pur­chased 74.3 thou­sand air con­di­tion­ers, which is 59.78% more than in the same peri­od a year ear­li­er. With the onset of June, the activ­i­ty of Ukraini­ans increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly: the demand for air con­di­tion­ers grew by 244% over the year. The peak of sales also fell on the hottest month of this year — June, and Ukraini­ans began to active­ly stock up on cli­mate equip­ment in April.

The range of air con­di­tion­ers on the mar­ket is quite wide, and buy­ing a new unit can be a chal­lenge, espe­cial­ly giv­en the huge selec­tion of mod­els with dif­fer­ent func­tion­al­i­ty and price. In order not to over­pay for com­fort and main­tain­ing an accept­able tem­per­a­ture all year round, it is impor­tant to pay atten­tion to some fea­tures of future tech­nol­o­gy. Online retail­er Rozetka has pre­pared a list of sim­ple tips for smart sav­ings when buy­ing a new air con­di­tion­er, which will help you not only save your bud­get, but also get the best option for dai­ly use.

Choose the right air conditioner power

The pow­er of the air con­di­tion­er is the most impor­tant indi­ca­tor, because if you make a mis­take with it, you can buy unnec­es­sary cli­mate equip­ment, which will bring high costs and lit­tle ben­e­fit. It is nec­es­sary to select pow­er, tak­ing into account many fac­tors: the area of ​​u200bu200bthe room, the num­ber of peo­ple, the height of the ceil­ing, the num­ber of win­dows. In addi­tion, it is nec­es­sary to con­sid­er whether direct sun­light enters the room. To select the right air con­di­tion­er, you can take paper, a pen and do the cal­cu­la­tions, or you can use a spe­cial cal­cu­la­tor on the Inter­net, which will cal­cu­late every­thing by itself. The cryp­tic abbre­vi­a­tion BTU on an air con­di­tion­er is the British ther­mal unit, which mea­sures its pow­er. Know­ing the pow­er of the air con­di­tion­er, you can eas­i­ly cal­cu­late its costs in kilo­watts, because 1 BTU is com­pa­ra­ble to 0.2931 watts. The most com­mon mod­els of air con­di­tion­ers with a capac­i­ty of 7,000 to 12,000 BTU. On aver­age, an air con­di­tion­er with a capac­i­ty of 7,000 BTU is suit­able for a room up to 18–20 m², and 12,000 BTU for up to 26–28 m². In order not to waste time search­ing for the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, the fol­low­ing sim­ple scheme will help you choose the right pow­er for your apart­ment or house:

Air conditioner with inverter compressor is 30% more economical than its predecessors

Let’s look at the heart of the air con­di­tion­er — the com­pres­sor. There are many types of them, but most often you can find con­ven­tion­al or invert­er sys­tems. Although an air con­di­tion­er with a con­ven­tion­al com­pres­sor is cheap­er, easy to install and easy to use, it has one big draw­back — this is the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion. The bot­tom line is that the engine is con­stant­ly turn­ing on and off, which leads to wear of the air con­di­tion­er. Invert­er split sys­tems are a very dif­fer­ent process that is about 30% more eco­nom­i­cal than its pre­de­ces­sor. To quick­ly reach a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture, such an air con­di­tion­er oper­ates at increased pow­er, and after that it does not turn off, but con­tin­ues to main­tain the desired mode, oper­at­ing at min­i­mum pow­er. Such air con­di­tion­ers are qui­eter, con­sume less elec­tric­i­ty and, as a rule, an invert­er split sys­tem is equipped with a mul­ti­lay­er fil­tra­tion sys­tem. Now invert­er tech­nol­o­gy has become much more afford­able than two or three years ago. Such air con­di­tion­ers are a lit­tle more expen­sive, but if we take into account that the fig­ures on the elec­tric­i­ty bill will be low­er, and the air con­di­tion­er is a pur­chase for years, then such an over­pay­ment is quite jus­ti­fied.

The air conditioner’s high energy efficiency class reduces your energy bills

It would be jus­ti­fied to pay atten­tion also to the ener­gy class: the high­er it is, the less elec­tric­i­ty the air con­di­tion­er will con­sume. You may have already heard about the Euro­pean Union direc­tives regard­ing the new ener­gy effi­cien­cy stan­dards for air con­di­tion­ers — SEER and SCOP. They help deter­mine the annu­al ener­gy con­sump­tion and effi­cien­cy dur­ing nor­mal dai­ly oper­a­tion of the air con­di­tion­er. SEER is an indi­ca­tor that deter­mines the cost of elec­tric­i­ty used to cool a room dur­ing a warm peri­od. SCOP is its oppo­site, it helps to cal­cu­late the ener­gy costs for heat­ing air dur­ing the cold sea­son. Thanks to these two abbre­vi­a­tions, it is easy to com­pare the per­for­mance of instru­ments based on sea­son­al weath­er changes. In addi­tion, the indi­ca­tors are inter­na­tion­al and uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized for spe­cial­ists from all coun­tries and con­ti­nents. It is accord­ing to SEER and SCOP that air con­di­tion­ers are divid­ed into ener­gy effi­cien­cy class­es — from A to G, depend­ing on the degree of ener­gy con­sump­tion. Class A has the low­est pow­er con­sump­tion, class G is the least effi­cient. That is why when choos­ing an air con­di­tion­er, you should focus on class options not low­er than A or A +. For a mod­ern invert­er air con­di­tion­er, these coef­fi­cients are in the range of 3.4 to 8.5.

Pay attention to a quality device from a lesser-known brand

Man­u­fac­tur­ers of air con­di­tion­ers every year improve their prod­ucts, mak­ing them more reli­able, bud­get and ener­gy effi­cient. Look out for air con­di­tion­ers from a few less­er-known mid-range brands. They are in no way infe­ri­or to more expen­sive coun­ter­parts and have the same func­tions — cool­ing and heat­ing, invert­er motor, air purifi­ca­tion func­tion, noise lev­el con­trol. At the same time, you do not over­pay for brand aware­ness. But the sav­ings must be rea­son­able — do not pur­chase equip­ment from unre­li­able man­u­fac­tur­ers, of dubi­ous qual­i­ty and with­out a guar­an­tee.

Get a warranty and installation of an air conditioner from the seller

If installed incor­rect­ly, even the best air con­di­tion­er will work inef­fi­cient­ly, out­door and indoor units will make noise, and in gen­er­al, the life of the device can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced. When buy­ing house­hold appli­ances, you can order a ser­vice for its instal­la­tion. Of course, not the sell­ers them­selves come to your home, but qual­i­fied spe­cial­ists from autho­rized ser­vice cen­ters in your city. They also do all the nec­es­sary instal­la­tion work, check the per­for­mance of the air con­di­tion­er, teach how to use it and pro­vide a guar­an­tee. In this case, sub­ject to the oper­at­ing con­di­tions, the sell­er is respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tion of the air con­di­tion­er. In addi­tion, when order­ing instal­la­tion, you can get an addi­tion­al dis­count on the pur­chase.

You can also find an eco­nom­i­cal option, know­ing about some of the tech­ni­cal nuances of the air con­di­tion­er. The prof­itabil­i­ty of buy­ing a device and the lev­el of your elec­tric­i­ty costs depend on the pro­posed char­ac­ter­is­tics. When choos­ing, you should pay atten­tion to the installed type of cool­ing, oper­at­ing mode options and the type of air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem. There are a num­ber of oth­er fea­tures and capa­bil­i­ties that affect the price tag of the pur­chase and the com­fort of use. Some fea­tures are real­ly worth over­pay­ing for, and some are just a mar­ket­ing ploy. For exam­ple, some mod­els have a Wi-Fi mod­ule. This means that you can con­trol such devices using a smart­phone or tablet, while being in the next room. One of the most acces­si­ble func­tions for an air con­di­tion­er has an inter­est­ing name — autoswing. It helps the air con­di­tion­er dis­trib­ute air even­ly through­out the room. With the Air­flow Direc­tion func­tion, the air con­di­tion­ing dampers can be locked in the desired posi­tion. Anoth­er fea­ture is pres­ence track­ing. And this is exact­ly the case when track­ing should not cause any con­cern. Built-in infrared sen­sors deter­mine when a per­son enters the room and increase the pow­er of work, and when they leave, they decrease it. At the same time, if the air con­di­tion­er is work­ing for cool­ing, it does not blow cold, and if it is for heat­ing, the tem­per­a­ture will be the most com­fort­able. Thus, the air con­di­tion­er will save up to 30% of elec­tric­i­ty.

Hav­ing bought a cov­et­ed cool­ing device, it is impor­tant to use it ratio­nal­ly — this will help increase home com­fort, reduce costs and con­tribute to the sta­bil­i­ty of the Ukrain­ian ener­gy sys­tem dur­ing peak hours when every­one turns on elec­tri­cal appli­ances. Cool only the rooms you need most of the time, and keep doors and win­dows tight­ly closed while the air con­di­tion­er is run­ning to keep you cool for as long as pos­si­ble. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that a com­fort­able tem­per­a­ture for a per­son in sum­mer is 23–24 ° C, and the dif­fer­ence between the air tem­per­a­ture in the street and in the room should not exceed 12 ° C. Do not for­get to reg­u­lar­ly do pre­ven­tive main­te­nance of the air con­di­tion­er — replac­ing and clean­ing fil­ters, updat­ing coolant — the device will work more effi­cient­ly, and its ser­vice life will increase. Also, do not leave the air con­di­tion­er con­stant­ly on. It is bet­ter to set the device to work peri­od­i­cal­ly using the built-in timer or use a smart sock­et. If you use the air con­di­tion­er at night, use the sav­ing or qui­et mode of oper­a­tion, and the dual-zone elec­tric­i­ty meter will help you pay half as much for elec­tric­i­ty from 23:00 to 7:00.

The final choice of device is always yours. When buy­ing an air con­di­tion­er, you should be guid­ed not only by the price, but also by the size of the guar­an­tee. You should also pay atten­tion to cus­tomer reviews, so you can deter­mine the strengths and weak­ness­es of the device of inter­est. Look for the best option in well-known online stores, large house­hold appli­ances stores or con­struc­tion super­mar­kets, and then you will cer­tain­ly be sat­is­fied with high-qual­i­ty and eco­nom­i­cal appli­ances for many years to come.