AC Installation in Moline, IL
A new air conditioner in Moline will run from June through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Rock Island County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Three months of real heat, then it stops
Moline asks a lot of an air conditioner for a short stretch. Summer afternoons average 83°F from June through August, so the unit runs hard for three months and then sits idle the rest of the year. That on-and-off pattern, hot summers followed by long downtime, is part of what a new system has to hold up against.
The area has also seen its share of hail and wind, 34 hail events and 87 damaging wind events over the past ten years. An outdoor condenser sits exposed to that. Any central air conditioner installed new today has to meet a federal minimum of 13.4 SEER2, so whatever goes in will at least start from that baseline.
- 3 months
- June through August, your air conditioner is on duty
- 83°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 34 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 $30 a year to run in Rock Island County compared with a new unit at the federal minimum.
Estimates for a typical Rock Island County home, from EIA household energy data, Illinois fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In Illinois, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
Rock Island County does not run its own HVAC license either, so whether a contractor is tested and recorded depends on whether the city the house sits in has its own licensing rule. Some towns in the county may require it, some may not, and nothing at the state level fills that gap. There is no single registry to check against here.
What does apply is the permit. Installing an air conditioner in most cities and counties means the contractor pulls a permit from the local building office, and the work gets inspected once it is done. That inspection is what catches a bad refrigerant line or wiring done wrong, not a license number.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- The right size depends on your home's square footage, insulation, window count and layout, not just a rule of thumb. An undersized unit will run constantly and never quite cool the house on an 83°F afternoon. An oversized one cools the air fast but shuts off before it pulls the humidity out, so the house feels clammy. A contractor will run a load calculation on your actual house and size the system to it.
- Should I replace the whole system or just the outdoor unit?
- In most cases the whole system should go in together. The outdoor condenser and the indoor coil are matched to work at a specific capacity and efficiency, and pairing a new condenser with an old coil often means the system never reaches the rating either part was built for. It can also void the manufacturer's warranty on the new unit. A contractor can check the age and condition of your indoor coil and tell you whether it can be reused.
- Do HVAC contractors in Moline need a state license to work on my home?
- Illinois does not license HVAC contractors at the state level for residential work. That is handled city by city instead, so check with the City of Moline on what it requires before you hire someone.