The last couple of years have wholly upended the concept of a workplace. Spending months confined to our houses taught many people the importance of having a dedicated space for productivity, ideally, a fully equipped home office if you have space available. Once you've designated a space in your home as a dedicated home office, you'll need to make sure that you have adequate heating and cooling power available so that you can maintain productivity. There are many challenges to working from home, pets running around, kids screaming, and the nagging feeling that you should put in a load of laundry – The temperature should be the least of your worries!

If your home doesn’t already have air conditioning, a single-zone mini-split system will turn your home office into an independently controlled workflow oasis, giving you the ability to raise or lower the temperature with ease. For many who have central air-conditioning, the room selected for a home office is often not adequately cooled, due to it being in a “too hot zone”, either because it faces the sun for most of the day or because the central system simply doesn’t provide enough cooling. Extending or upgrading the existing central AC system can be expensive, and a nuisance, as it involves either modifying or installing ductwork. In these cases a single-zone mini-split can still be installed and operate separately from the central system. Below we’ll review some of the benefits of mini-split systems and taking this approach.

What Are The Benefits of Installing Mini-Split Systems In Home Offices?

What makes mini-split systems such a good fit for home offices? GREE mini-split air conditioners come with a suite of features that make them the best HVAC option for home offices.

Individualized Temperature Control

Mini-split systems make it easy to customize the environment in your home office to your liking. With GREE mini-split air conditioners, you can control the temperature independently from other zones of the house if you have a multi-zone mini-split system, or completely independently from the central AC system, if there is one. This degree of personalization can create the perfect atmosphere for productivity.

Energy Efficiency

Working out of a home office involves considerations of how it will affect the household’s utility bills. GREE mini-splits are very energy-efficient products. Studies have also shown that mini-split air conditioners are more energy efficient for air conditioning because they are ductless, and duct losses can account for up to 30% of air conditioning energy consumption. Additionally, mini-splits are more efficient for heating than furnaces, because they provide air conditioning through the heat transfer process, which is much more efficient than the combustion process. For cooling, on top of improving efficiency through ductless installation, they’re more efficient than central AC systems because they use inverter systems. These systems enable mini-splits to match their output based on how hard they need to work to cool the space, as opposed to central AC units which turn on and off at full power.

Quiet Operation

Any noise disruptions in a home office will cause productivity to suffer. Modern mini-split air conditioners like the GREE Sapphire run whisper-quiet. The ductless design also eliminates odd echoes and sounds issuing from ventilation ducts.

Easy and Flexible Installation

Mini-split air conditioners are easier to install than central air conditioning systems. A single-zone system to cool a home office only requires drilling a small single hole through an exterior wall to connect the outdoor compressor to the indoor air-handler, opposed to the labor-intensive addition of central AC systems and the ductwork they require.

Improved Air Quality

GREE air conditioners are designed to deliver comfort and promote wellness. The latest mini-split models come with air filters that purify outdoor air to create a healthier indoor environment for everyone at home.

Saved Space

Mini-split air conditioners can be installed even in small rooms, attics, basements or a shed in the backyard. They have sleek, unobtrusive designs that can be mounted high up on walls and blend in seamlessly with their surroundings.

Home Office Mini-Split Installation Considerations for Contractors

While mini-split systems are the ideal HVAC system for home offices, home offices still have their nuances that should be considered while planning the HVAC system with their clients.

Some challenges that contractors could face include:

• Limited space: Home offices aren’t always large, and finding the right spot on the wall to mount the indoor unit may take some creativity with space at a premium.
• Office equipment: Work-from-home setups can vary greatly. Many simply run off of a small laptop and 2 monitors, but some have more complex computer systems, and those can run hot. In addition to the standard items you’d take into account when sizing a system (sunlight, climate, square footage), make sure you’re taking into account the kind of heat the office equipment will throw off and whether or not it will affect the mini-split system needed. It can also be a factor with the limited space mentioned earlier, as you’ll need to make sure the air handler can rest on the exterior wall undisturbed.
• Noise: GREE single-zone mini-splits are renown for their quiet operation, but that’s not true of all mini-split systems. Make sure you’re providing a product that meets the noise specifications that your client needs to maintain productivity in their office. GREE provides single-zone mini-split solutions that are very quiet, such as the Sapphire, which also has a sleek profile that looks good mounted to any wall.
• Integration: If the house has an existing HVAC system and the mini-split is being installed as additional heating and cooling for the home office, the existing system will need to be reviewed to ensure the new system is either compatible or will not interfere with the original system. In the case of offices that currently don’t have AC, this should not be an issue, as the single zone created for the office will be controlled completely independently. If the home office is being added to an existing multi-zone system you’ll need to make sure the outdoor unit has the capacity to take on an additional zone, if not you’ll need an additional outdoor unit, and a space to place it outside the home.

Leveraging GREE's Support Resources for Successful Home Office HVAC Installation

Contractors prefer GREE products for home office installations in part because of the robust support ecosystem maintained by the manufacturer.

Online resources include installation instructions, trouble-shooting codes and videos, system documentation, and FAQ’s. We also provide a system builder tool that can help you put together the perfect mini-split system for your next client install.

This deep pool of resources arms contractors with all the knowledge needed to comfortably size and install a GREE mini-split system in any project. Be sure to try GREE’s System Builder tool next time you need to build a mini-split system for your client’s home office!