"A Breakthrough in heating and cooling,
and a break for hot 'n' cold homeowners"

There's a revolution a-brewing in the HVAC business, which is not too unusual because there are always improvements and new ideas in getting heat to the shivering home dweller or cool to the sweltering apartment denizen. And, to get enough air to her so she won't suffocate.
 

HVAC, of course, is an acronym for Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning, and it is not so much a business or science, but rather an art.

Admittedly, we have come a long way from the campfire, fireplace, and the hand fan. Today we have central heat and central air, using safe, mostly inexpensive fuels.

Now, here comes a new concept of delivering warm and cool air throughout the house, using high velocity air and very small ducts, just two inches inside diameter, with five-inch diameter outlets.

It is sort of a breakthrough in heating and cooling, and can be a break for the homeowner who can't seem to get the inside atmosphere quite right.

The small insulated ducts, with a mylar cover for strength and flexibility, are easy to snake through and around walls, attics, floors, and other hard-to-reach places in old houses, and in houses that do not have air ducts. The snaky ducts run from trunk ducts that are just seven to nine inches in diameter, also easily installed on the attic floor or in ceilings. They can go in a 2 X 4 wall or in their own conduits, metal or wood. The system also works in new houses.

The ducts are manufactured by Unico of St. Louis, Mo., a company that makes the Unico System, consisting of those mini-ducts, the trunk ducts, and an inside air handler system for sending the cool or warm air to the right places.

The high speed of the air allows placement of outlets in ceilings, floors and in out-of-the-way corners. The air flow, which can be felt if you stand directly under or over the stream, is undetectable six inches away from the stream. But the air moves throughout the room.

The air conditioning part of the Unicos system is not new. It was developed in the early 1960's and called SpacePak. In 1984 SpacePak was sold, and the engineers who were let go got together to form their own company. That is Unico, which specializes in both heating and cooling.

Richard Tretheway, the popular plumber on "This Old House," is spokesman for Unico and also for the New England Hydronic Heating Assn., a group of heating contractors, wholesalers, and manufacturers.

The Unico system can be installed for cooling only, if your house already has adequate heat; as auxiliary heat for an underheated house; heating only; or both. It does make sense that if you go such ends to put in the mini-duct system, to use it for both cooling and heating.

Such installations are expensive, but the company claims costs are close to those of conventional systems. Actual price depends on what the system does and how big a house it serves.

Unico manufacturers only the ducts and the air handlers as heating or cooling modules.

To cool, a refrigerator line is installed from the outdoor compressor to the cooling module, which can go in an attic, basement, crawl space or closet. Air cools by flowing over the cold coils and is sent to the designated rooms.

To heat, a heating module is installed with water pipes going from the boiler to the module, where air warms by flowing over the hot coils and is sent to the designated rooms.

The boilers, compressors, and all other components are manufactured by other companies and installed by the heating contractors..

In many cases the homeowner's boiler can be used with the Unico system.

One nice thing about the Unico heating system is that while there are ducts and air handlers in the attic to serve the seconds floor, there is no furnace with an open flame in the attic, which has become fairly common in large houses. So there is no heating of the attic, which can cause all kinds of ice dam problems.

With the Unico system, the heating source are in the basement; what heat is delivered to the attic for distribution is in the form of hot water insulated pipes.

The Unico high-speed duct system claims to deliver even heat and cooling (not more than 2 degrees difference from floor to ceiling), is quiet, and is draft free. Maybe they have hit the ultimate in the art of heating, ventilating and air conditioning.
 

This article appeared in the Boston Globe in the HOME & GARDEN section on March 19, 2000 and was written by: Peter C. Hotton