Air Conditioning for Home Offices in Cheam

Why home offices overheat more than you'd expect

Home offices are often set up in a spare bedroom, box room or loft space, and these rooms weren't originally designed with a desk, monitor and computer running for eight hours a day in mind. Add a south-facing window and a small floor area, and it doesn't take much extra heat to make a home office genuinely uncomfortable to work in during the warmer months.

We hear from a lot of people in Cheam who've been working from a spare room for a few years now and have finally reached the point where opening a window and using a desk fan just isn't cutting it anymore, particularly during video calls where background noise from a fan is also unwelcome.

Equipment heat in a small room

A desktop computer, two or three monitors and other office equipment generate a surprising amount of heat concentrated in a small room, more than the same equipment would contribute in a larger open-plan space. We factor this equipment heat into the room's heat load calculation rather than treating a home office like any other bedroom of the same size.

Box rooms and awkward layouts

Many home offices in Cheam are set up in the smallest bedroom of the house, which can mean limited wall space for an indoor unit and a correspondingly short list of sensible outdoor unit positions given the room's location within the property. We look at the practical route for pipework from a box room to an external wall, which sometimes runs through a loft space or along an external corner of the building.

Where a home office is in a loft conversion rather than a box room, sloping ceilings and reduced headroom bring their own considerations for indoor unit position, similar to what we'd assess for any loft conversion air conditioning project.

Noise on video calls

Anyone working from home on regular video calls has a good reason to care about unit noise beyond simple comfort, since a noisy fan is genuinely distracting on a call and can be picked up by microphones. We consider fan noise carefully for home office installations, discussing typical noise levels on lower fan settings so you know what to expect before committing to a unit.

What we consider for a home office installation

• Heat generated by computer equipment and monitors
• Available wall space for the indoor unit given desk and furniture layout
• Practical pipe route to a suitable outdoor unit position
• Noise levels, particularly for rooms used for calls and meetings
• Whether the room also needs heating support in winter

Heating as well as cooling

Home offices in box rooms or loft spaces can also run cold in winter if they're on the fringe of a home's main heating system, so a system that provides both heating and cooling is often useful for year-round comfort in a room used every working day. This is worth mentioning during the survey if it's a factor for your setup.

One room now, more later

Some homeowners want air conditioning just in the home office to start with, while others use it as the starting point for a wider household system covering bedrooms or a living room too. A single-room installation doesn't rule out extending later, though the outdoor unit and any groundwork are worth planning with future rooms in mind if you think you're likely to expand the system.

Getting a realistic view of the room

Because home offices are often smaller and more awkwardly shaped than other rooms in the house, a survey is particularly useful here to confirm what's achievable, including where the outdoor unit can realistically go given the room's position within the property.