AC sales soar

MORE JAMAICANS are purchasing air conditioning units for their homes to combat the sweltering summer heat as the country continues to experience higher-than-normal temperatures.

At least three companies that sell, install, and maintain AC systems say they have seen a significant increase in the number of units purchased compared to last year.

Damion Smith, managing director of Smartstart Airtech in Kingston, told The Gleaner that his company’s AC sales are up 300 per cent since the start of the summer.

“Fans won’t work, fans really circulate whatever is inside of the building, so if the place is hot all the fan really does is to circulate that heat. To get that level of coolness that is required to make inside habitable then an AC unit becomes necessary,” he said.

Last Thursday, the average global temperature soared to 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degrees Celsius), a new unofficial record and the third such high point in the week. And according to the University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, that was the warmest Earth has been since the ice age.

A recent study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment predicts spiking summer temperatures and humidity that feel like 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) or higher to happen 20 to 50 times a year by mid-century.

In Jamaica, there have been calls for regulations that govern zoning and building to be fast-tracked to allow for the construction of environmentally sustainable buildings able to withstand the impact of climate change.

“Global warming is real, and so whatever steps we can take to mitigate the depletion of the ozone layer then we should really take that step because this heat is really high,” Smith asserted.

He shared that AC units are priced based on the size of the room it is to be installed in. A unit for a 12x12 ft room can cost approximately $65,000.

And while Paul Byles, chief executive officer (CEO) at Denn Dock and Company Limited, shared that his company has seen a 25 per cent increase in the number of people wanting to install AC units, he is encouraging them to also seek out other ways of cooling their spaces.

“We are not building the right way… so let us say we cannot stop how we build, what happens is that we need to ventilate the space,” he said.

He said persons should explore installing louvre windows secured with grills to allow for air to circulate better in their homes. And for homes with concrete slab roofs, he shared that there are special paints that can be used as a coating to prevent it from storing as much heat.

“Instead of spending the $100,000 on AC and then having to pay Jamaica Public Service (electricity bill) … even if you buy di AC cheap after one month of AC JPS cost, it going to be furniture inna yuh house because most people cannot afford to pay the JPS bill,” he said.

Usually during the summer months, Byles said the frequency with which AC units break down also increases. He blames this on the lack of proper servicing of the system.

“The heat only provides an extra load, but it is not that the AC cyaa manage the load, all of them can, it is that you are not keeping the ACs in a state that allows them to work efficiently,” he contended.

Byles outlined that the regularity with which an AC is used should determine how often it is serviced and this can span between one to four times for the year. Service costs can range between $5,000-$10,000, depending on the size of the unit.

CAC 2000 Limited has also seen a large uptick in the number of sales and inquiry calls for AC units. Its CEO, Gia Abraham, told The Gleaner that this is a direct response to the high temperatures, which she says is also affecting the performance of AC systems.

“We normally install an AC for what we expect to be the average expected median temperature on the outside and cooling on the outside,” she said. “It’s much harder to cool down an internal temperature of 85 to 90 degrees when you’re turning on the AC, probably about eight or nine o’clock at night.”

“If it stays as a short-term issue, we would not tell people to go and change their AC, but if we look at these temperatures staying as long term then sometimes you may have to go up in size with an AC because what the proper size AC could do based on the room size is now actually being stretched,” she added.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com