Thread: Air conditioners

Originally Posted by Ace

Dont most of those sytems need wiring in by an electrician etc anyway? Matt

yes they do.

From a sparkies point of view,

All new houses must have a minimum mains size of 16mm2 which allows for 80Amps, this has definately been the case since 2000 and probably going back to the early 80's. As far as the largest unit goes you will need a sparkie or just the info to calculate out a maximum demand, which if it is over 80A means you will need larger mains, most new/renovated houses in ritzy areas now have 3phase which means you can have 16mm2 mains where as in single phase they would need at least 35mm or higher (which with the price of copper can be expensive).

Just looking at the book and maximum demand for Airconditioners is 75% of the full load current, so for a 6kw A/C you need to allow 75% of 25 Amps which is 18.75A. This figure has nothing to do with cablesize to the unit, only the house mains.

Pretty safe to say that if your wiring is fairly new and unless you have a huge house with 5 Bedrooms, spa/sauna and umpteen thousand downlights your mains should be ok.

Hope that helps, and that i didn't get to nerdy on you. If you have any more Q's I should be able to help.

Cheers
Stu

P.S. If you are getting a sparkie in, it might be worthwhile getting safety switches installed if you don't have them already.