What Is Involved With Replacing an Air Conditioner & Duct Work?

Central Unit

• The central air conditioning unit is a large, heavy box located outside your house. Before anything else, you should hire a professional to drain and recover the refrigerant from the old unit. After that, it's simply a matter of shutting of the power and disconnecting all connections, dragging or lifting the unit out of place, and positioning the new one. Reverse the process by hooking everything back up and you're ready to tie into the air duct system.

Duct Work

• Cool air is delivered to the various rooms and hallways in your house by a network of hidden flexible and rigid pipes. The process of installing ducts involves both the physical labor or either working from a ladder or crawling around in the ceiling, as well as cutting and connecting lengths of metal ducts together to deliver air where it is needed. Keep in mind that joints between the pipes must be precision work, meaning they must be as airtight as possible to prevent air escape and an inefficient system.

Refrigerant

• Any time you're working with air conditioning, it is critical to pay particular attention to the refrigerant. With its possible detrimental effect to the earth's ozone layer, the Environmental Protection Agency now tightly controls the use and recovery of this gas to ensure that none escapes into the atmosphere. Most cities have at least a few certified technicians with the equipment and know-how to not run afoul of the rules. It might be worth your while to contact one.

Considerations

• If you're lucky, you'll only need to replace the central air conditioning unit and won't have to mess with the duct work much other than attaching it to the new unit. If you're unlucky, the old network of duct will be as worn out and leaky as the air conditioner and need to be completely removed and reinstalled. You should also verify that the unit needs to be replaced rather than fixed. With HVAC systems sometimes running into several thousand dollars, there's a chance that a repair might be cheaper and easier.