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When was it built?
Pick the era your building belongs to. This says what was typically installed then, what has usually happened to it since, and what is worth checking before anybody quotes you anything.
The timeline scrolls sideways.
Before 1950
Built with no expectation of ducted air conditioning at all. Everything mechanical in these buildings arrived later, often in several stages, and the routes it took were decided by what was possible rather than by what the building needed.
The interesting question here is almost never which equipment. It is where anything is supposed to go — and there is usually more than one honest answer.
Typically installed
- Original heating by fireplace, stove or a boiler added early on
- Any ductwork retrofitted, often into closets and crawlspaces
- Window units, then later a central system squeezed in somewhere
- Plaster on lath, with no usable stud cavity
Worth checking
- Whether the return air is anywhere near large enough — it rarely is
- Where ducts run and what temperature that space reaches in August
- Whether a ductless or small-duct approach would serve the awkward rooms better than more ducting
- What a designated historic district, if you are in one, requires for anything visible outside
1950s–60s
The period when central ducted systems became normal in new build across the South. The ductwork generally went wherever it was cheapest to put it, which in this region meant crawlspaces, slabs and unconditioned attics.
Most of these houses are now on their third set of equipment, connected to their original ducts, which nobody has measured.
Typically installed
- Original ducted systems, often in metal, in crawlspaces or slabs
- Insulation levels far below anything current
- Single glazing, and windows that have often been replaced piecemeal
- Returns sized for the original equipment and never revisited
Worth checking
- Duct sealing — sixty-year-old joints have usually never been touched
- Static pressure against whatever blower is in there now
- Whether envelope work would let the next system be smaller and cheaper
- Crawlspace condition, because a humid crawlspace ruins ducts that sit in it
1970s
Insulation started being taken seriously for the first time, and heat pumps began appearing in numbers across this part of Georgia. Duct practice, however, did not change much — it still mostly ran through spaces nobody conditioned.
A transitional decade, and buildings from it vary more than any other era on this timeline.
Typically installed
- Early heat pumps alongside gas furnaces, depending on the builder
- Improved but still modest insulation
- Ducts in attics and crawlspaces as standard
- Additions and conversions, many of them teed off the nearest trunk
Worth checking
- Which rooms were original and which were added, because the added ones usually suffer
- Whether the system is balanced at all, measured rather than guessed
- Attic insulation depth, which is normally the cheapest improvement available
- What refrigerant the current equipment uses
1980s–90s
Heat pumps became the default across the CSRA and flexible duct in attics became standard practice. Both are perfectly good when installed properly, and both have failure modes that are now thirty or forty years mature.
This is the era we are called to most, and the one where the repair-or-replace conversation comes up most often.
Typically installed
- Heat pumps with electric back-up heat
- Flexible duct through attics, supported on straps and trusses
- Systems charged with R-22
- Thermostats since replaced, often by somebody who did not check the wiring
Worth checking
- Flex duct crushed against a truss, kinked at a bend, or sagging between supports
- Torn outer jackets and slumped insulation on attic runs
- Whether the back-up heat is coming on when it should not, which is expensive and invisible
- Whether the system is on R-22 — not a reason to replace a working system, but it changes the cost of a large repair
2000s
Houses got tighter and considerably larger. Equipment from this decade is now at exactly the age where the repair-or-replace question arrives, and much of it was oversized when it went in.
In this humidity, oversizing is not a small matter: it is the usual reason a house is cold and still uncomfortable.
Typically installed
- Heat pumps and gas furnaces, generally sized generously
- Better envelopes and better windows than anything earlier
- Zoning systems, sometimes added onto ducts never designed for them
- Larger floor areas served by a single system
Worth checking
- Whether the equipment is genuinely oversized for the building, from a load calculation
- How long the system actually runs per cycle, which is what decides humidity
- Whether any zoning is working or simply fighting itself
- Static pressure, particularly where a bigger blower has been fitted since
2010s onward
Tight envelopes and variable-speed equipment. The equipment is generally fine; the questions that come up here are about how the building is being run rather than what is in it.
A house that does not leak keeps what you paid to condition. It also stops shedding moisture and stale air by accident, which makes ventilation a design decision rather than a happy accident.
Typically installed
- Variable-speed or two-stage equipment with communicating controls
- Tighter construction and better duct sealing as standard
- Deliberate ventilation in some builds and none at all in others
- Smart thermostats, sometimes configured by whoever moved in
Worth checking
- Whether the equipment is configured for this house or left on factory defaults
- Whether there is any deliberate ventilation, and whether it runs
- Indoor humidity through a full summer, not on one visit
- That nobody has replaced a communicating thermostat with something that cannot talk to the equipment
This is a pattern, not your building. Construction practice varied by builder, by street and by what got changed afterwards, and a house from 1962 that was properly renovated in 2015 has little in common with its neighbour. Use this to know what to ask about — not to decide anything, and certainly not to price anything. Nothing here is sent anywhere and there is no email field on this page.