Frankston, the sort of suburb where you can wander up and down three different streets in any direction and find three completely different eras of housing, each one built with its own unique materials, a whole different idea of what makes good insulation, and a configuration of ceiling that’s quite different from the others. The variety is certainly interesting from a real estate perspective, and it’s got serious implications when it comes to heating and cooling. What kind of ducted system is best suited for that 1970s brick veneer home in the established part of town is quite different from what works for the 2010s lightweight frame home in the growth corridor, and neither of those systems is going to be the same as what does the trick in that older place near the beach.

What the Construction Era Tells a System Designer?

The ABS has some data on dwellings in Frankston, the Local Government Area, and what it shows is that brick veneer construction from the 1970s all the way up to the 1990s represents the dominant building type in the area. These homes typically have an outer skin of brick and then an inner structure made of timber, with a fair bit of thermal mass, and insulation levels that were nowhere near as good as they are today when they were first built. Some of those homes have had insulation added to the ceiling since then, thanks to government programmes, but the wall insulation is still pretty limited in most of the older stock.

On the other hand, newer estate homes built in Frankston’s growth corridors from the 2000s onwards are all built to modern energy efficiency standards, you know, the works: ceiling and wall insulation, and in the more recent builds, double-glazed windows. And as a result, these homes heat up faster than the older brick veneer places, but they also lose temperature more quickly when the system is off, which can affect how Frankston ducted heating and cooling systems are best configured to run, especially when it comes to scheduling and setpoint management.

Frankston’s Climate is Actually Pretty Mellow

Frankston’s out at the northern end of the Mornington Peninsula, with Port Phillip Bay to the west, and that’s got a pretty significant effect on the climate; the Bureau of Meteorology reckons it’s about two to three degrees cooler than some of the inland western and northern suburbs of Melbourne in summer. And it’s the same story on really hot days; when parts of Melbourne are pushing into the low 40s, Frankston’s usually sitting comfortably a bit cooler.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; winter’s a different story altogether. Frankston averages out with 26 days per year where the overnight temperature drops below ten degrees, and it’s not uncommon for cold southerly fronts coming off Port Phillip Bay to make the effective temperature feel a lot worse than it actually is. So when it comes to heating, you can’t just assume it’s going to be a straightforward case of, “oh, it’s milder in summer, I can just get away with a smaller system”, because that just isn’t true.

The Case for Replacing Rather Than Repairing

In Frankston, a fair chunk of the ducted systems currently in use were installed back in the early 2000s or even earlier. And if you’ve got a system that’s over 15 years old and is starting to lose efficiency, it’s just not going to perform like it used to. The refrigerant charge degrades, the duct seals start to leak, and the compressor performance goes downhill with age. And as a result, an older system running in those conditions can end up operating about 25 to 40 per cent below what a modern system would deliver for the same power consumption.

Ducted Systems, New Build versus Retrofit: Really Different Discussions

A new ducted system in Frankston will have its ducting, electrical requirements, and outdoor unit placement designed into the building from scratch. In other words, a properly executed new build ducted system will be neater, more economical, and cheaper than its equivalent retrofit counterpart.

Any retrofit installation of a ducted heating and cooling system into an existing Frankston property is necessarily going to have to work around what is there already. Ceiling void entry points, electrical needs, and the amount of room to run ducting all differ from house to house, and cannot possibly be determined simply by a floor plan alone. The single best security any homeowner can demand prior to any price commitment is that pre-installation inspection that confirms all these factors on the ground.

Salt Air and Corrosion

The coast is a much more aggressive environment than many parts of Frankston, but any houses less than a kilometre from Port Phillip Bay are in a salt air environment which speeds up corrosion of conventional condenser coil finishes. Using a marine-grade coating on the outdoor unit’s coils will save several years of the component’s life. This is really just a small extra cost in the initial discussion of specifications, and a much higher cost in avoiding an early component failure.

It’s the specific details of a ducted installation in Frankston that will determine whether a system will function satisfactorily for twenty years or disappoint from day one. The age of the property, its construction, and its proximity to the water are where this conversation needs to begin.