Multi-head air conditioning on the Central Coast

A multi-head air conditioning system connects two or more indoor units, usually wall-mounted, to a single outdoor unit through refrigerant pipework. Lilac Air Conditioning installs multi-head systems for homeowners who want separate temperature control in several rooms without an outdoor unit for each one, and without the ceiling space a ducted system needs.

Every indoor unit gets its own remote and its own temperature setting, so the main bedroom can sit at one temperature while the living area sits at another. The catch is that all the heads share one outdoor unit. That's where sizing earns its keep.

Add up the rated capacity of every indoor unit and the total usually comes out bigger than the outdoor unit's rating. That's normal, because outdoor units are chosen on the assumption that not every room runs flat out at once. The risk is guessing wrong about how you live in the house.

A family home all day with every room in use needs a different outdoor unit from a couple who only cool the living room and the main bedroom. At the free on-site assessment, Gary Lui works through the house room by room: ceiling height, insulation, window area, which way each room faces, and which rooms will genuinely run together on a hot afternoon.

An outdoor unit that's too small for the rooms you really run is one of the surest ways for a multi-head system to disappoint. It's much easier to get that right on paper.

Placement decides whether a system merely works or feels good to live with. On the first visit Gary looks at each room with a few things in mind.

This is the decision most homeowners are really making. There isn't one right answer, and Lilac Air Conditioning will tell you plainly when multi-head isn't the right fit.

The job covers each indoor unit, the pipe run to the outdoor unit, drainage and the electrical connection. Gary carries it out as a licensed NSW contractor (licence 469578C), to Australian Standards. Lilac Air Conditioning is an authorised Hitachi and Temperzone installer and fits other major brands as well.

Most days you'll only run one or two rooms, and the system adjusts its output to suit. The trade-off is that a fault in the outdoor unit affects every room at once, so keeping each head and the outdoor unit serviced is worth the small effort. Lilac Air Conditioning services multi-head systems it didn't install too.