Heat and Cool Your Midwest Sunroom
You love your sunroom in spring and fall, but it can feel like an oven under the scorching summer sun and may be completely unusable in winter.
How can you turn your sunroom into a comfortable and useable space through every season?
Be strategic in your use of fans and window coverings. Weatherize your sunroom with window caulking, upgraded windows, and weather stripping around exterior doors. Add a heating and cooling source.
Midwest Air Pros can help you find an expert heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) team to recommend heating and cooling options for your sunroom. We offer a network of top York HVAC dealers in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
Click our Find A Pro button to browse our directory and connect with a York dealer near you.
York Ductless Mini Splits
To enjoy your sunroom year-round, you need an HVAC system that keeps it comfortable no matter how high or low the outdoor temperature. A ductless mini split heats, cools, and lowers high humidity efficiently.
The system consists of an outdoor compressor and condenser coil unit and an indoor air handling unit containing an evaporator coil and a fan. The indoor unit mounts high on the wall and responds to a remote control.
The versatile ductless mini splitworks like an air conditioner but offers the added benefit of heating your sunroom. A valve in the equipment can reverse the direction of the refrigerant flow, enabling it to absorb heat from outdoor air and release it indoors. In cooling mode, it extracts heat from your home and sends it to the outdoors.
Inverter technology allows the mini split compressor to vary its speed, resulting in better efficiency and humidity control than HVAC compressors that run at one speed.
York offers four single-zone mini split models, including two that are ENERGY STAR® certified. York’s top-of-the-line Z series is Wi-Fi compatible, highly efficient, and has seven fan speeds. Ask your York dealer if the Z series mini split is best for your home.
Extending Ductwork
Can you extend ductwork and use your existing HVAC system to heat and cool your sunroom? Possibly. Check our Midwest Air Pros directory of York dealers for an expert to inspect your HVAC system and determine if it can handle the additional heating and cooling load.
A professional can explain how much construction you can expect when you extend ductwork into your sunroom.
A ductless system will be more efficient than your ducted HVAC unit, especially if your ductwork leaks air. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), “ducts that leak heated air into unheated spaces can add hundreds of dollars a year to your heating and cooling bills.”
Ceiling Fans
Install a ceiling fan to help distribute hot and cold air from your ductless mini split. The fan, running clockwise, will push warm air at the ceiling downward in the winter. Operate the fan counterclockwise to circulate cool air in the summer.
Heating Your Sunroom
A ductless mini split heat pump is an energy-efficient option even if you plan to use it solely for heating your sunroom in the winter. Here are a few other heat-only strategies:
- Install electric baseboard heating. Although not as energy efficient as a mini split, baseboard heat is a viable solution for many homes. You can purchase a portable baseboard heater that plugs into an outlet or a permanent version that ties into your electric system.
- Gas fireplaces and Franklin stoves can add warmth to your sunroom and lend a cozy feel to your sunroom in the winter.
- Radiant floor heat consists of electric cables or heating mats placed over the sunroom floor. You must remove the floor covering before installing this heating system. Tile, wood, and laminate are a few of the best options for covering the cables or mats.
Improve Sunroom Comfort Today!
Use your sunroom year-round in your Midwest home. Through our Midwest Air Pros directory, you can find a York dealer in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska. Click our online Find A Dealer link to get started.