A long time ago, in my previous house, I had an ancient oil-burning furnace (converted to natural gas) ripped out of my basement along with all the assorted radiators and piping, and had a central air system installed. This was 1999 or so, and the house was only 1600 square feet in size. I paid somewhere around $5,000 for all of the demo and ducting work, and enclosed it all myself when they were gone. $5000 in 1999 equates to somewhere around $9500 today, factoring inflation.

We had a very nice man come to the house and give us an estimate for a ductless air system, where he spec’d out five wall units and one outside air handler. The total estimate came out to a hair over $25,000.

Guess I’m going to be humping window-shakers up and down the stairs for a while longer.

It’s pretty brutal across the Mid-Atlantic right now; we went from a month of wet but temperate weather straight into Sauna mode in one day. The girls and I disassembled and cleaned out all of our window units before installing them, and they’ve been rumbling away since Sunday evening. I’ve been curious to know exactly what it might cost to have ductless A/C installed in the house, so I called up a local company who’d come recommended to us by a neighbor and had the rep come out to walk through the house. He wasn’t scared by the layout, and is supposed to give us a quote for a couple of different options sometime today.

I’m prioritizing the bedrooms upstairs, knowing that the cold air will fall, and we talked about another unit in the office. It looks like the outside unit would most likely go on the west side under the dining room window, or possibly on the driveway side, but we’ll have to see how things shake out.

I don’t know that I’ve got the money for this immediately handy, but I want to know what we need to save up for to get it done. I’m sick and tired of humping window units up and down the stairs, having them block up the windows in each room, and having to store them on the porch or in one of the bedrooms all winter long. I was able to enjoy central A/C in my rowhome for a total of a year and a half before we moved; that was 22 years ago and it’s time to upgrade.