In this episode, John Maher interviews Jesse Corso of NETR Inc. about the benefits and drawbacks of ductless heating and cooling systems. Jesse highlights key advantages such as individual zone control, energy efficiency, and the ability to install systems without ductwork—making them ideal for certain home layouts. He also discusses challenges like interior aesthetics, exterior piping, and higher maintenance costs for multi-unit setups. The conversation explores how ductless systems compare to traditional central air, where each type works best, and how hybrid setups can combine ducted and ductless units for maximum comfort and performance.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Jesse Corso, comfort consultant with NETR Inc. a heating and cooling company in Massachusetts with a focus on ductless heating and cooling products. Today our topic is the pros and cons of going ductless. Welcome Jesse.
Jesse Corso: Hi John. How are you?
Advantages of a Ductless System
Maher: Good, thanks. Jesse, what are some of the primary advantages of choosing a ductless system over a traditional furnace and maybe a central AC setup?
Corso: Yeah, good question. Primary advantages or one big advantage would be individual zone control. So with a ductless system, every indoor ductless unit you put in the house or in the space has its own temperature control separate from the others. So if you had three bedrooms upstairs and you put an indoor unit in each bedroom, you can control the temperature in each bedroom separately from the other.
That’s a big advantage where previously a central air or a central heat pump system serving those three bedrooms would previously have been on just one thermostat for all three. So huge reason why people are thinking ductless, it’s the zone control, it’s the individual temperature control. Another big benefit to ductless is we don’t have to run duct work.
So, homes that don’t have duct work already and may not have space for duct work, it’s not required. We can just simply put indoor units in the home where we see fit and run interconnecting piping from the indoor unit to the outdoor unit. No duct work required. So, that’s probably the number two biggest benefit.
Are there Limitations of Split Ductless Systems?
Maher: And then can you outline any drawbacks or limitations of many split ductless systems that homeowners should be aware of?
Corso: Yeah, some cons, some popular ones we get is that customers don’t like the look of them on the inside of the house. So, you have a few different types of wall-mounted units. Some sit high on the wall, some sit low on the wall, but no matter what, they’re on the wall and you’re looking at them, right? And you have them all over the house. If you have multiple rooms that you’re covering, you have to look at one in every room.
And the interconnecting piping, right? So, for every one indoor unit, you have a drain line, a wire, and a couple copper pipes that connect the indoor unit to the outdoor unit, typically on the outside of the house. So, you have to look at that as well.
So, the aesthetics sometimes are not pleasing to the eye, although I will say usually there’s a way to do it nice and neat, and that’s kind of where I might come in and design something that looks a little bit neater that the homeowner may not have initially thought of. So, it’s all about the design with that.
Piping Covers
Maher: And they have covers that go over the piping on the outside of the house that you can get in different colors as well, right? To kind of match the outside of the house.
Corso: Yeah. All of the exterior piping is put in a cover called line hide or fortress or swim duct, whatever you want to call it. A few different options. There’s white, there’s a brown, there’s tan, there’s gray. So, a few different color options, also paintable. We have customers that paint it same color as their siding, and it blends right in.
For piping design, sometimes we stick the white cover next to a white gutter, which ends up looking really neat because you already have the white downspout. You don’t even really notice the white cover next to the white downspout. So, stuff like that. If you think about it and design it that way, you can usually make it look pretty good.
Maintenance Costs with Ductless Systems
Maher: Are there any additional maintenance costs with a ductless system as well? Instead of having maintenance done on say a furnace and an AC unit, now you’ve maybe got a half a dozen different indoor units and an outdoor unit that you have to get maintained and cleaned?
Corso: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’ve been getting more and more questions on maintenance after the installation. So, our goal is to put it in and service it for the life of the equipment anyways. But what I will say is looking at our maintenance plans, if you have a lot of ductless indoor units, the maintenance pricing is a little bit more expensive than, say, an essential air conditioner maintenance, where you just have one indoor air handler and one outdoor condenser.
That’s probably going to cost a little less to maintain than when you have six indoor units maybe connected to one outside compressor. You just have more pieces of equipment to service more air filters, to clean more drains, to blow out more areas of the home where you have to set up and actually do the maintenance in. So it could be a little more expensive maintenance cost-wise, at least looking at our service partner plan memberships or comfort care club memberships that we offer.
AC System Requirements
Maher: But you said the homeowner would just have to balance that between what is it that they want? Do they want to have a central AC unit where they just set one temperature for the whole house and that’s all they get? Or do you want to have the zone controlling, like you said, and be able to have the AC on and just one part of the house and maybe you save some energy costs overall because you don’t have to have the entire house being air-conditioned all at once, so it might balance out in the end.
Corso: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you might end up being more comfortable, but you have slightly more pieces of equipment to maintain, but you’re a little more comfortable. You can, like you said, not use parts of the system that aren’t occupied at the time. You don’t have any heat loss from duct work in unconditioned spaces and things like that.
Costs of Installing Ductless Systems
Maher: Is the cost of installing a ductless system pretty comparable to that of a ducted system?
Corso: Well, that’s a good question. I mean, I guess it depends on so many things. How many indoor units are you putting on your ductless system versus how many central layers are we putting in and do you need new duct work or could we attach a new existing duct work? There’s just so many factors there.
If you’re changing out a central air system maybe that has duct work already there and it’s serving the second floor that has three bedrooms, and if you’re thinking about changing that or you’re thinking about going to three ductless indoor units as a comparison, a three-zone ductless system might be pretty comparable to a central AC change out.
But if you’re thinking of six ductless units compared to one central AC change out now, you might be paying a little bit more to get that extra zoning.
When is a Ductless System the Right Option?
Maher: What types of homes or living situations are best suited for a ductless setup, and are there situations where maybe a ductless system is less than ideal?
Corso: Yeah. So, homes that don’t have any existing duct work, ductless is great if you can’t run the duct work, right? Sometimes there’s finished basements and finished attics that were previously unfinished, but now they’re finished and you just have no place to run any duct work. Ductless is great for that. It’s great for rooms where you might not occupy all the time and you can shut it off and turn it on as needed.
They’re great for open areas, first floor open living spaces where you can do one big ductless unit on the wall and tackle a lot of square footage. That’s nice as well. Some downsides would be the opposite of the open floor plan, right? Homes that have a ton of little walled off rooms. That can be challenging for ductless. That’s where we may think about doing a ducted system to take care of more than one room at a time. So, the opposite of open concept where it’s still all small walled off rooms.
Maher: Right. So, you’re either going to need a wall unit in every one of those rooms, or like you said, run some kind of duct work and do a ducted system.
Corso: Correct, yeah. Or you run the risk of putting an indoor unit, ductless unit in one of the rooms and the other room is not quite ever the same temperature because it’s so walled off from one another.
Maher: Right.
Corso: And sometimes the smaller rooms actually can get overcooled or overheated with one ductless unit if the room is actually too small. So, there are situations where we do go into homes and recommend ducted systems for customers. Another challenge is if you have not a lot of exterior wall to run the interconnecting piping for ductless units, that can be a challenge. You may want to look at a ducted system where you only have one interconnecting pipe instead of three or four or five or six.
When Do You Need Ducts?
Maher: And when you say that maybe in certain situations you need some duct work, there are still heat pumps that are available with ducted air handlers that allow you to use an outdoor heat pump compressor with an indoor system where you have some duct work going to multiple rooms, right?
Corso: Exactly. Yeah. So, they make ducted heat pump air handlers, exactly like you said, that connect to the same exact outside heat pump condensers that the ductless units would use. There’s even units where you can have a couple ductless units in the house and one or two ducted units in the house. You can mix and match. So, you can have sections of the house that have mini splits and sections of the house that have air handlers and have those all connect back to the same heat pump condenser outside. That’s becoming very popular.
I could give you a good example of something like that. If you have a two-story house, say the first floor you’ve taken down the wall, maybe between the kitchen and dining room or the living room and the dining room, and it’s a little bit open concept. A lot of times we could go into that first floor, put one big ductless unit on the wall, take care of the first floor, and then upstairs you have maybe three bedrooms, a bathroom, and an office, so a bunch of little chopped up rooms.
We would stick an air handler in the attic for that configuration, do duct work down to all the rooms on the second floor and connect both those indoor units, the ductless on the first floor and the air handler on the second, to one single heat pump condenser outside. That’s a very, very sleek, very common application. I like that one a lot. I’m actually doing that in my own house.
Are Ductless Systems Energy Efficient?
Maher: Okay. How did ductless systems impact energy efficiency? What should homeowners consider when they’re evaluating the long-term performance and savings of a ductless system?
Corso: Yeah, they’re very efficient. You can load shed, right? So you only have to use the systems if you’re occupying that space of the house. If you’re not using a room, you have a guest bedroom that’s only used a month or two a year or a handful of days a year, you can shut that one completely off and load shed and the system will ramp down because they’re completely modulating the outdoor units. So, that’s a very efficient factor.
You also don’t have any duct work losses, right? So when you have duct work, you’re usually running it through an unconditioned basement or unconditioned attic where it’s hot in the summertime and cold in the wintertime so that you’re having some losses in that duct work. With ductless systems, they’re mounted directly on the wall in the actual space they’re serving. There’s no duct losses at all, so you tend to get a little more efficiency because of that as well.
Maher: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Jesse. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Corso: Thank you, John. Thank you very much.
Maher: And for more information, you can visit the NETR website at netrinc.com or call 781-933-NETR. That’s 781-933-6387.
