AC Installation in Bristol, PA
A new air conditioner in Bristol will run from June through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Bucks County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Three months of real heat, and hail besides
Bristol summers run June through August, with afternoons averaging 84°F. That is not extreme heat, but it is steady, and a new air conditioner has to hold up through the whole stretch without much of a break.
Bucks County has logged 235 damaging wind events and 35 hail events over the past ten years, with hail up to 2 inches. The outdoor unit sits outside through all of that, so where it goes and how it is set matters. Any new system installed today also has to meet the federal efficiency minimum of 13.4 SEER2.
- 3 months
- June through August, your air conditioner is on duty
- 84°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 35 hail events
- in ten years, and hail bends the fins on outdoor coils
- 13.4 SEER2
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A higher-efficiency unit would save about $40 a year to run in Bucks County compared with a new unit at the federal minimum.
Estimates for a typical Bucks County home, from EIA household energy data, Pennsylvania fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Pennsylvania requires contractors to register with the state.
Registration puts a contractor's business on file with the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Nobody tested their HVAC work to get that number, and the state isn't vouching for the work itself. Cities and towns in Pennsylvania can't require their own HVAC license on top of it, so this registration is the only state-level record that exists anywhere in the state.
For an air conditioner installation, the backstop is local. Most cities and counties require a permit from the building office before the work starts, and an inspection once it's done. That inspection, not the state registration, is what checks that the installation was done right.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- The right size depends on your square footage, your insulation, how many windows you have, and which way your house faces, so there is no number that works for every home. A contractor works this out with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage alone. Going bigger than what the calculation shows is not a safety margin. An oversized unit cools the air fast but shuts off before it pulls the humidity out of the room, so the house feels clammy even at the right temperature.
- Should I replace the whole system or just the outdoor unit?
- If your indoor coil and outdoor unit were installed together and matched to each other, replacing only the outdoor unit can leave them mismatched, and the system will not run at the efficiency either piece was built for. Age matters too. If the indoor coil is old, it may fail soon after you pay to replace the outdoor unit. A contractor can look at both pieces, check what they were rated for, and tell you whether the coil still has enough life left to make replacing only the outdoor unit worth doing.
- Do HVAC contractors in Bristol need a state license to work on my home?
- Pennsylvania requires HVAC contractors to register with the state through the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Ask to see this before work starts. It is a straightforward way to confirm you are dealing with a legitimate contractor before they touch your system.