Which Heating and Cooling System Is Right for My Home?

How to use this guide

This is not a calculator and it will not size your system. Sizing comes from the house: floor area, ceiling heights, insulation, glazing, orientation and how the rooms are used, and it is done at the site assessment. What this guide does is help you understand the real differences between the options, so the conversation with any installer starts from the right place.

Work through the questions. Most homes end up in one of a small number of outcomes.

1. Whole home, or particular rooms?

Whole home. You want the living areas and the bedrooms comfortable, ideally with zones so you are not conditioning empty rooms. That points to a ducted system: ducted reverse cycle for heating and cooling, gas ducted heating for heating only, or evaporative cooling for cooling only.

Particular rooms. One or two living areas, a main bedroom, a home office. That points to split systems, or a multi-head system when several rooms need units and you would rather have one outdoor unit than three.

2. Do you want refrigerated cooling, or is evaporative enough?

Refrigerated cooling (reverse cycle, splits, multi-head) works in any weather, including humid days, and needs the house closed up. Evaporative cooling uses far less electricity and gives fresh, moving air, but it relies on dry heat and an open house, and it is less effective on humid days. Many Macedon Ranges homes have lived happily with evaporative cooling for years; what matters is knowing how to use it. Our evaporative versus refrigerated comparison sets out the trade-offs.

3. Do you have gas, and do you want to keep it?

If the home has a gas ducted heater that is worth keeping, servicing and repairing it is usually the sensible path, and when it is at the end of its life a like-for-like replacement is straightforward. If you would rather move away from gas, the Victorian Energy Upgrades program can reduce the cost of replacing gas heating with an efficient ducted reverse cycle system. Curtis puts it this way: “You can offset a power bill with solar and batteries. You can’t do the same with your gas bill.” Our gas heating versus ducted reverse cycle comparison goes through it honestly, including the cost side.

4. Is there room for ducts?

Ducted systems need roof space, or another route, for the ductwork, and a new ducted reverse cycle installation gets new insulated ductwork. Homes with no roof space, complicated rooflines or heritage constraints often suit a multi-head system instead, which delivers several indoor units from one outdoor unit without ducts. The multi-head versus ducted comparison explains where each one wins.

5. Do you mind wall units?

Splits and multi-head systems put an indoor unit on the wall of each room. They work very well, and they can be positioned thoughtfully, but they are visible. Ducted systems put the equipment in the roof and leave only outlets and a controller in the rooms. For some homes and some people that matters a great deal.

6. Are you thinking about solar and batteries?

If you have solar, or plan to, an electric heating and cooling system can run on power you generate. That changes the running-cost picture for reverse cycle heating in particular. It is one of the reasons many VEU conversions make sense, and one of the things we talk through at the assessment rather than promising numbers on a website.

7. Zoning and control

If different parts of the house are used at different times, zoning matters. Ducted reverse cycle systems can be zoned around how you live, with temperature sensors placed where they read the room. Multi-head systems give room-by-room control by their nature. Gas ducted heating and evaporative cooling are usually whole-house systems with simpler control.

Where most homes land

• Cooling only, dry summers, an open house: evaporative cooling.
• Heating only, existing gas, a sound heater: keep and service the gas ducted heater; replace like for like when it is time.
• Heating and cooling for the whole home, one system, zoned: ducted reverse cycle, with VEU support where you are replacing gas.
• A few rooms, no roof space or no appetite for ducts: splits or a multi-head system.

What happens next

Tell us which of those sounds like your home and we take it from there: a site assessment or floor-plan review, a conversation about how you actually live in the house, and then the suitable options explained plainly. That process is the MRGA Standard.