HVAC

Is my air conditioner too small for my house?

Maybe, but a lot of people blame the unit when it's actually sized fine. The real question is whether it was sized for your house or just picked by floor area. Proper sizing looks at how much heat the house actually gains: how many west-facing windows you've got, how well the ceiling and walls are insulated, how high the ceilings are, and how many people and appliances are in the space. Two houses with the same floor area can need very different systems.

An undersized unit runs flat out on hot days and never quite gets there. But oversized is a problem too, and people don't expect it. A system that's too big cools the room fast and switches off before it's had a chance to pull the moisture out of the air, so the house feels cold and clammy. It also cycles on and off constantly, which wears it out and costs more to run.

Before replacing anything, it's worth getting a proper heat load calculation. Sometimes the unit's fine and the problem is ducts, insulation or unshaded windows, which are much cheaper to fix than a new system.