Mini Split Installation in Joliet, IL
A new system here will heat from October through May and cool from June through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Will County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
What a mini-split here has to handle
Joliet needs heat or cooling 11 months of the year. Winter nights average 20°F from December through February, and summer afternoons run 83°F. That means a mini-split installed here spends most of the year working, not sitting idle, and it has to hold up on the coldest nights as well as the hottest afternoons.
A new unit manufactured after January 1, 2023 has to meet 14.3 SEER2 for cooling and 7.5 HSPF2 for heating, whether it runs on ductwork or not. Will County also sees its share of winter storms and damaging wind, and a share of Illinois households lose power for a day or more each year. Worth asking your installer how the system you choose handles a cold snap or an outage.
- 8 months
- October through May, your system heats
- 3 months
- June through August, it cools
- 20°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 83°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
In Illinois, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
Check whether your city requires a license.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- Is a mini split worth it?
- For the right room or addition, yes. A mini split heats and cools without ductwork, and since it's a heat pump, one unit handles both jobs instead of needing separate equipment. Joliet winters get down to 20°F on average, and most mini splits are rated to keep working well below that, so it can carry a room through the cold months here. Whether it's worth it for your house depends on what you're trying to heat or cool and what's there now, and a contractor can walk through that with you.
- How many rooms can a mini split cover?
- A single indoor unit is built for one room or one open area. If you need to cover more than one room, a multi-zone system runs several indoor units off one outdoor condenser, and each indoor unit gets its own thermostat. How many zones a house can support depends on where the outdoor unit sits and how the line sets can run, so that part is worth having a contractor look at in person.
- Can a mini split heat a whole house?
- It can, if enough indoor units are placed to reach every room, but most homes use it for one part of the house rather than the whole thing. A single zone won't heat rooms it isn't in, since there's no ductwork moving that air around. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so if you're counting on a mini split for whole-house heat through a Joliet winter, the sizing and the layout both matter, and that's a job for a contractor to work out room by room.