The importance of choosing the correct air conditioner size

Choosing the right air conditioner for a given room size is essential if you want to minimize your electricity bill. A small air conditioner will have a hard time cooling a large room, or it might not be able to cool it at all.

On the other hand, choosing a huge air conditioner could cool the room very fast but won’t dehumidify the room at all. This would mean while your room cools down too fast for comfort, it leaves the room cold and, at the same time, clammy, which is not comfortable at all. Therefore, it is crucial to decide what size of air conditioner you need before buying one.

You should also consider of course factors such as the amount of direct sunlight the room receives, the number of people usually occupying it & the frequency of door/window opening (if applicable).

Generally speaking though, selecting an AC “boils down” to (pun intended) the square footage of the room & the tonnage/cooling capacity for the AC.

Room Size & Capacity

This air conditioner room size calculator can help determine the recommended output power your air conditioning unit needs to function perfectly. Of course, this depends on the room’s area, the average number of people regularly in the room, and its exposure to the sun.

1. Measure the square footage or area in square meters of the room. For that, multiply its length by its width. If using meters, multiply the result by 0.092903.

Now that you have measured your room size, it’s time to decide what capacity of air conditioner you need, or what is commonly called rating/BTU. But before we do that, here’s a quick explanation of the basic measurement used for Air Conditioners or BTU.

BTUs are used to rate an air conditioner’s cooling capacity. Higher the number, more powerful is the AC. BTU (in its expanded form) stands for British thermal unit, which is measured as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. A rating of 9000 BTU/h for example, in cooling systems means the air conditioner will remove 9000 BTU of heat each hour.

2. Now Multiply the result you got above by 25 BTU to get your recommended air conditioner size.

But in case you don’t want to do all that math –   Here’ s a quick guide to help you out!

9,000 BTU ~ 0.75TON, 12000BTU ~ 1 TON, 18000 BTU~1.5 TON; 24000 BTU~2 TON