AC Installation in Pekin, IL
A new air conditioner in Pekin will run from June through September every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Tazewell County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Four months of steady heat load
Summer afternoons in Pekin average 84°F, and a new air conditioner has to hold that line from June through September. That's four months of steady run time each year, not just a stretch of hot days.
Tazewell County has also seen 82 hail events and 154 damaging wind events over the past ten years, so the outdoor unit takes a beating from weather as well as heat. Any central air conditioner installed new has to meet the federal minimum of 13.4 SEER2, and that's the starting point a contractor will size your system from.
- 4 months
- June through September, your air conditioner is on duty
- 84°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 82 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 Tazewell County compared with a new unit at the federal minimum.
Estimates for a typical Tazewell 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.
Illinois has no state license for HVAC contractors and no state record of who is qualified. Whether Tazewell County or your town licenses contractors is a local question, not a state one, so the rule that applies depends on the address of the house getting the new air conditioner.
What covers this job instead is the permit process. Installing an air conditioner in most of Illinois needs a permit from the local building office, and the finished work gets an inspection before it is signed off. That inspection is what checks the work was done correctly, whether or not the town also licenses the contractor.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- The right size comes from a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage. A contractor looks at your insulation, your windows, how many rooms face the sun, and your duct layout before landing on a number. An oversized unit cools the air fast but shuts off before it pulls the humidity down, so the house feels clammy even at the set temperature. Undersized, and it runs nonstop on the hottest afternoons and still can't keep up.
- Should I replace the whole system or just the outdoor unit?
- If your indoor coil and outdoor unit were installed together, replacing only the outdoor unit usually means mismatched equipment that won't run at its rated efficiency. Manufacturers pair the coil and condenser for a reason. A contractor can check your coil's age and condition and tell you whether it can handle a new outdoor unit or whether it makes more sense to replace both together.
- Do HVAC contractors in Pekin need a state license to work on my home?
- Illinois doesn't license HVAC contractors at the state level for residential work, it leaves that to individual cities and towns. Check with the city of Pekin to see if it has its own licensing or permit requirement for the contractor doing your installation.