AC Installation in Springfield, IL
A new air conditioner in Springfield will run from May through September every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Sangamon County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Five months of real heat, and hail besides
Your air conditioner in Springfield runs May through September, five months a year, with summer afternoons averaging 85°F. That is the stretch it has to get through without a break.
Sangamon County has logged 110 hail events and 198 damaging wind events over the past ten years, with hail up to 3.25 inches. An outdoor unit sits outside through all of that, so the condenser coil and fins take the weather along with the reader. Any new central air conditioner installed today has to meet a federal minimum of 13.4 SEER2.
- 5 months
- May through September, your air conditioner is on duty
- 85°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 110 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 Sangamon County compared with a new unit at the federal minimum.
Estimates for a typical Sangamon 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. That job is left to cities and towns, so whether this contractor needs a local license depends on where the house sits in Sangamon County.
For an air conditioner installation, what stands in that gap is the permit. Most cities and counties in Illinois require a permit before a new air conditioner goes in, and an inspection once the work is done. That inspection is what checks the job here, not a license number. Whether it happens depends on the contractor pulling the permit and the local building office enforcing it.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- There is no single number without a load calculation, and guessing at size costs you comfort either way. A unit too big cools the air fast then shuts off before it pulls the moisture out, so the house feels clammy. One too small runs constantly on the hot afternoons here and still cannot keep up. A contractor works this out from your square footage, your windows, your insulation and your duct layout, not from the size of the unit you have now.
- 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 usually means mismatching it to an old coil, and that hurts both efficiency and how well it cools. It can also void the manufacturer's warranty on the new unit. The age of the indoor coil, the refrigerant it uses, and its condition all matter here. A contractor can look at both halves of your system and tell you whether the coil can carry on or needs to go with the compressor.
- Do HVAC contractors in Springfield need a state license to work on my home?
- Illinois leaves HVAC licensing to individual cities and towns rather than requiring one statewide license. That means whether a contractor needs a license to work on your home depends on where in Springfield you are and what your city requires. Check with your local city hall or building department to see what applies to your address before you hire.