First time posting! Please pardon my newbishness.
I'm starting to do some research into adding air conditioning to an 1100sf floor-through old construction (1910) condo in NYC (11206). The building's steam central heating is sufficient and I don't see any need to add more heat. What I do want to avoid is an annual ritual of storing, hauling out, installing & uninstalling window-mount A/C units.
It's one of those long, narrow apartments with a hallway running half the length, and connected walkthrough rooms after that. All bedroom doors have functional transoms. It's almost 90' long, gradually narrowing from 16' in front (south) to just 10' wide (north) in the back. Here's the floorplan:
The unit is on the top floor, with an uninsulated air gap to the roof deck. There is a similar lack of insulation in all walls, but the only heavily lit exposure is south, which is still just 16' across. The eastern exposure is on a narrow blind alley against another building and receives very little direct light. The front (south) half of the apartment has no eastern exposure, as it abuts directly against that adjoining building. There is no western exposure.
My initial naive assumption was that I would want to run ductwork above the hallway to each of the rooms, and above the dining room ceiling to the back of the apartment, with the mechanicals & plenum above the bathroom & trapezoidal closet off the bedroom.
Looking around on this forum a little bit though, I'm beginning to consider something less drastic, like a ductless heat pump system, maybe with one head by the bathroom & one by the kitchen where there are drains. I get worried about convection being sufficient to dry out the air in the whole space, though. It would also be really nice to have a way of humidifying the apartment, which gets pretty dry in heating season.
I'm going to contact some HVAC contractors for estimates on what they think the load is like, but I'm curious if people here have initial thoughts. Thank you!
I'm starting to do some research into adding air conditioning to an 1100sf floor-through old construction (1910) condo in NYC (11206). The building's steam central heating is sufficient and I don't see any need to add more heat. What I do want to avoid is an annual ritual of storing, hauling out, installing & uninstalling window-mount A/C units.
It's one of those long, narrow apartments with a hallway running half the length, and connected walkthrough rooms after that. All bedroom doors have functional transoms. It's almost 90' long, gradually narrowing from 16' in front (south) to just 10' wide (north) in the back. Here's the floorplan:
The unit is on the top floor, with an uninsulated air gap to the roof deck. There is a similar lack of insulation in all walls, but the only heavily lit exposure is south, which is still just 16' across. The eastern exposure is on a narrow blind alley against another building and receives very little direct light. The front (south) half of the apartment has no eastern exposure, as it abuts directly against that adjoining building. There is no western exposure.
My initial naive assumption was that I would want to run ductwork above the hallway to each of the rooms, and above the dining room ceiling to the back of the apartment, with the mechanicals & plenum above the bathroom & trapezoidal closet off the bedroom.
Looking around on this forum a little bit though, I'm beginning to consider something less drastic, like a ductless heat pump system, maybe with one head by the bathroom & one by the kitchen where there are drains. I get worried about convection being sufficient to dry out the air in the whole space, though. It would also be really nice to have a way of humidifying the apartment, which gets pretty dry in heating season.
I'm going to contact some HVAC contractors for estimates on what they think the load is like, but I'm curious if people here have initial thoughts. Thank you!
