Cool! (and Warm!)

We recently had a home energy audit, prompted by a winter in which the downstairs (main floor) would be 10-15 degrees colder than the upstairs. The main takeaways from that were (A) my furnace, which was original to the house in 1997, needed to be replaced; and (B) we really should not leave the communicating door open to the garage/shop, because it made the house 20% leakier.

So I installed a self-closing hinge in the door, we made arrangements for a new HVAC system, and then Julie and I put some thought into heating and cooling the shop space now that it wouldn’t be “borrowing” from the house. I looked at portable air conditioners and wall unit air conditioners, and wasn’t really impressed. So we asked the heating contractors what they would do, and they all had the same answer:

I had initially dismissed these because I thought they’d be too expensive, but this little unit wasn’t actually that bad. It cost about $5k, installed, plus another $120 for the Cielo remote control that I added to it. For that price I get heat in the winter, cool in the summer, and humidity control year round. Compared to my old system — space heaters to keep it above 60, then a house HVAC to get it below 80 — it was actually really cheap (though that probably says more about my half-assed prior system than the new one).

The unit itself is a 12,000BTU Haier, modestly sized and able to fit on the wall above my clamp rack. Directly outside there’s a small compressor. The whole system runs on a single 115V circuit. It has a basic remote that controls the fan speed, louver direction and spread, and heat (heat pump) or air conditioning. And it was 88 degrees (F) the day it went in, so it got tested immediately. It is whisper quiet and circulates the air nicely.

One thing it doesn’t do by itself is maintain the temperature within a range, like larger systems do. I was a little bummed by that, but Julie found a third-party solution.

The Cielo is basically a smarter remote that adds in a bunch of features. It has to have line of sight to the unit, so in my case I mounted it high on the wall opposite. The USB cord is for power; you can also wire it up permanently to 24V if you have it handy, but I didn’t. The most important features (to me) are “comfy mode”, which will switch between heating and cooling as needed to maintain the garage between 65 and 78 degrees, and an alarm when the filter needs cleaning. Being in a woodshop, the air filter gets dirty fairly quickly — I need to clean it about every 2 weeks — so it’s nice to have that reminder.

Cleaning the filters is pretty easy. This unit has two, and they just snap in and out. I rearranged the corner a bit so I could easily clear a space to get to the unit. Removing, cleaning, and replacing the filters takes only a couple of minutes with an air compressor.

If I added a ceiling mounted air cleaner, would that make it go longer between cleanings? Maybe. Of course that unit would also have filters that have to be cleaned or replaced, and a power draw, so I’m not sure that’s worth it. Time will tell.

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