How to cool a house without ducts or ugly wall units
Adding air conditioning to a ductless home forces homeowners to choose between undersized plenums or wall-mounted units that ruin the interior aesthetic. Without proper system options, spaces like basements and movie rooms end up with poor airflow and uneven temperatures that cool air from upper floors cannot reach.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 18.3× more often in r/hvacadvice than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Installing VRF mini-split wall unitsDid this help you?
- 2Dropping soffits in the spaceDid this help you?
- 3Keeping basement bedroom windows open as an exhaustDid this help you?
- 4Placing a box fan at the top of the stairs pointing downwardDid this help you?
- 5Using an additional fan in the living room for circulationDid this help you?
- 6Using multiple window unitsDid this help you?
- 7Running ceiling or box fans to push air into adjoining roomsDid this help you?
- 8Using portable heaters in the winter since heating is not an issueDid this help you?
- 9Getting contractor quotes for both systems and factoring in eventual furnace replacementDid this help you?
- 10Installing a dual source heat pump using existing ductwork and reusing the furnace for low temperaturesDid this help you?
- 11Installing mini split systems instead of ductworkDid this help you?
- 12Adding attic insulationDid this help you?
- 13Installing ductless mini-split systems in central locationsDid this help you?
- 14Running ducts from an air handler placed in the atticDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“If I can have either I’d buy a traditional ducted system.”source ↗
“Need advice on either choosing Central AC or Mini Splits for my home”source ↗
“The house has no cooling or ventilation system, not even a vent hood over the range.”source ↗
“I'm worried that the plenum is not large enough to support a ducted system.”source ↗
“I hate the look of those wall mounted units and would really like to avoid them in the home if at all possible.”source ↗
“Just moved into a new place (rental) with a swamp cooler, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to get more airflow into the basement.”source ↗
“The movie room especially gets very little airflow, and you can definitely tell it isn’t cooling as well as the main floor.”source ↗
“I’m wondering if there’s a good way to encourage more of that cool air to move down the stairs.”source ↗
“I currently use 3 window units in my home. 1 in living room, 1 in large open upstairs bedroom, and 1 in my dining room with a bedroom attached. Recently my power bill has skyrocketed.”source ↗
“The window unit for my dining room is in the attached bedroom. It keeps the bedroom cool but the dining room we still have to run fans to cool it.”source ↗
“What would be the best way to go about putting AC and heat in the place?”source ↗
“I don't know much about how people do this .”source ↗
“How easy is it to add A/c to existing gas furnace heater system.”source ↗
“Is the feasable or a smart idea?”source ↗
“Might have enough airflow, might not, I'm not really sure how I'd figure it out either way”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2How to choose a mini-split for an upstairs room
- 2How to set a schedule on a mini split remote
- 2Should I seal or replace leaky return ducts?
- 3How do I connect a flanged boot to rectangular duct?
- 55How to choose between different HVAC replacement quotes
- 6Why is my attic apartment so hot in summer and cold in winter?