If you are looking for air conditioning in your home, a Carrier ductless mini-split heat pump is a great option. Hentkowski, Inc., a Carrier factory authorized contractor in Wilmington, Delaware, installed a multi-zone ductless mini-split system in this converted church in Landenberg, PA to provide air conditioning to every room, and to supplement a new geothermal system, which is handling the primary heating.
Watch the video to get the whole story and select a dealer from our locator if you think your home is a candidate for Carrier ductless mini splits.
Brian Roberts: Today we’re in Chester County, in Landenberg at the former Francis Xavier Church, and I want to take you through and show you some of the challenges that we had to air condition this property. I met Angus, the homeowner, a few years ago through our local historic commission, and he was bringing the plans in to revive this beautiful house. It’s got geothermal heating, but there was really no room for ductwork. So, we have a series of five ductless mini splits. So, let’s check it out.
Problem: This converted church in Landenberg, PA needed a solution to supplement their geothermal heat that would also provide air conditioning to five distinct spaces.
Solution: A five-zone Carrier ductless mini-split heat pump installation provides impeccable cooling and supplements the heating system during colder months.
Click here to learn more about the cost of a ductless installation in Wilmington, DE.
Angus: My wife got a job at Christiana Care, so we knew nothing about Landenberg. We’d never been here before, and we came down and we saw a bunch of different houses that weren’t quite what we were imagining. Before driving back up to New England, we happened to drive down Landenberg Road and we saw for sale sign in front of this big yellow house. We stopped and realized that it wasn’t a house, it was a church. And we got really excited. We came back down the next weekend and we loved it, and we put an offer on it. And then we spent the next two years working to make this place a reality. A year of planning and then a year of construction.
As we were thinking about what we wanted to do with this house, heating it and cooling it was a major concern. When we first moved in, there was this gigantic propane furnace in the basement that forced hot air up through some vents in the floor. But the whole space under the choir loft never really heated that well. The open space of the sanctuary and the altar didn’t have heat to it. There was no ductwork up in the ceiling or anything like that.
The problem was, how do you heat a space this big and this open and make it comfortable? And so, we had the idea that we could do a radiant heat system and that we could do it through geothermal, but we needed to find someone else that shared that vision and thought that was a good idea and thought that it was possible. And then I met Brian Roberts through the historic committee, and we got to talking about what we were going to do to heat and cool the space. And he came out and visited the house a couple of times, and we went through a couple of different iterations of plans and ideas, and then we finally came up with the idea of doing the geothermal to supply the radiant floor, and then putting in the ductless system for cooling.
One of the reasons that we didn’t want to do geothermal for both, we didn’t want to put any holes in the floor, and we didn’t want to put any holes in the ceiling. So, we combine these two systems, and I think maybe you get a little bit of redundancy there, but I think that’s probably a good thing.
Brian: Well, this space here was a little bit of a challenge, because there really isn’t a good spot under the floor to put ductwork with the different piers and everything. And if you look up at the ceiling, it has this beautiful pressed tin ceiling. And we just didn’t want to cut holes in it. Really, the best way that I could come up with was the mini split evaporators. And at least in here we could tuck them away so they were effective, but not really visible. And we have one over his office up here in the catwalk, and then over here in the corner over the doorway we have another one. This way we have the two of them. They are able to cover the space nicely and it really does work well.
Angus: So, what we did throughout the first, second and third floor, we ran radiant floor heating and it heats up the floor and then the air to about five feet above the floor is very, very comfortable.
Carrier Ductless Mini-Split Installation
I think the ductless system was really important to us because of the look of this space. We wanted to have it be as unobtrusive as possible so that we could maintain the aesthetic and the architectural integrity of the church itself. So, there are five heads in all. There’s two in here. There’s one in the guest bedroom. There’s one in the primary bedroom. And then we have one on the third floor.
They have the ability to do heating and cooling. Primarily, we’re going to use them for cooling, and we’ve gone through one summer already while construction was happening, and they do a really nice job in combination with the fans of cooling this entire space. It’s pretty remarkable. And I really like how quiet they are, how easy they are to use, they’re pretty user friendly. They’re not obtrusive. They don’t look out of place in here. I love that they can do heating and cooling. In terms of efficiency, I really like the electric bill at the end of the month.
One of the reasons why we did the ductless systems that were electric is because we really want to not be burning fossil fuels. So, these are all electric. We’re really happy about that. And we’re going to be putting in solar so that this house can be heated and cooled and our water can be heated. And then we will be, I think, as green as we can possibly be.
I would absolutely recommend these systems, I think, to anybody, but particularly in a space that maybe is a little bit different, that has some presents some challenges in terms of putting in like a traditional gas system. Being in a space that you can heat and cool with one machine is pretty remarkable. This is the future, and it’s now and it’s happening. And I think they work really, really well.
Brian: Well, thank you for viewing today. And if this is something that you think might be a good fit for your home, please give us a call or check us out online.