AC Installation in Pierre, SD
A new air conditioner in Pierre will run from June through August every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Hughes County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Three months of heat, and hail that can hit the unit
Pierre only needs cooling from June through August, three months a year. Summer afternoons average 84°F, and a new air conditioner has to keep up with that heat day after day for the whole stretch.
Hughes County has logged 52 hail events and 135 damaging wind events over the past ten years, with hail as large as 4.5 inches. The outdoor unit sits outside through all of that, so the condenser coil and fins take the risk along with it. Any new central air conditioner installed today has to meet the federal minimum of 13.4 SEER2.
- 3 months
- June through August, your air conditioner is on duty
- 84°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 52 hail events
- in ten years, and hail bends the fins on outdoor coils
- 13.4 SEER2
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Going above the federal minimum saves little here, about $20 a year.
Estimates for a typical Hughes County home, from EIA household energy data, South Dakota fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In South Dakota, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
South Dakota has no state license for HVAC contractors. That rule is left to cities and towns, so whether this contractor needs a local license depends on whether Pierre or Hughes County asks for one, and any record of that sits with the local office, not the state.
For an air conditioner installation, the permit and inspection most local building offices require when a system is replaced is the check that reaches this job regardless of what licensing the city or county does or does not have in place. Someone from that office looks at the finished work. That inspection is separate from licensing, but it is what stands between this reader and a job nobody outside the contractor ever looks at.
Source: South Dakota Legislature
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- The right size depends on your square footage, your insulation, how many windows you have, and which way they face. A unit that is too big cools the air fast but shuts off before it pulls the humidity out, so the house feels clammy. Too small and it runs nonstop on the hottest days and still cannot keep up. A contractor should run a load calculation on your actual house rather than guess from the size of the old unit, since the old one may have been wrong too.
- Should I replace the whole system or just the outdoor unit?
- If your furnace or air handler is old too, replacing just the outdoor unit can cause problems. Indoor and outdoor units are matched to work together, and pairing a new condenser with an old coil or blower often means the system never hits the efficiency or capacity it is rated for. Some manufacturers will also void the warranty on a mismatched setup. A contractor can look at the age and condition of both parts and tell you whether the indoor side has enough life left to make a split replacement worth it.
- Do HVAC contractors in Pierre need a state license to work on my home?
- South Dakota does not issue a state HVAC license, so it comes down to what Pierre itself requires. Installing an air conditioner in most cities means pulling a permit from the local building office and having the work inspected once it is done, and that is true whether or not the city separately licenses contractors. Ask any contractor you are considering whether they pull permits as a normal part of the job. If they hesitate on that, take it as a sign.