Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

So the house we like does not end up having CAC, GRRR

For those of you that have added it to your home, about how much was it. My little brother does this for a living, so I can get some of the supplies cheap, but he doesn't live on Long Island, so I still have to pay for labor. This will be a colonial without a basement..HELP!

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

Does the house already have ducts (is it forced air heating?) If not, it is VERY expensive!

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

nope..it's gas/hot water...

Have I said how much I hate househunting....my husband loves this one house we are looking at, I think it's okay. Yet the only homes I have found that I like better has sex offenders nearby, so I decided not to buy there even though its a better school district. This process is so frustraring.

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

My inlaws had CAC added to their home about 5 years ago and they already have the vent work in the house for forced hot air, so when they put the unit in, it only cost them around $8-10K.

If you have to add duct work into the walls, it will be at least double that I was warned.

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

My FIL owns his own CAC company and usually services the North Shore. We have forced hot air in our house so when it's time to add the CAC, it will be easy. I'm hoping it will be free for us...since my dh will help him do it.

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)

We have a very old colonial with a cellar and only added CAC to the upstairs. We have a wrap-around porch which keeps the LR and DR shaded and cool and the contractor put a vent at the top of the stairs that also keeps those rooms cool. The only room we had a problem with was the kitchen. It has sliding glass doors and gets the sun a lot. We're doing some more construction so we just had a vent added now to the kitchen and I'm so excited!

The reason we didn't get the CAC downstairs is that with an older house we had very little room to run the ductwork through the walls or closets. If we wanted to have full CAC on the first floor also, we would have had to put another unit in the cellar, which flooded a bit during bad rain last year, so we didn't want to take that chance.

The upstairs cost us $4,000 and the new vent cost an additional $575. Another unit would have been $4,000 extra.

Re: Spinoff to central air (cost to add it)