Air Conditioning for a Holiday Home in Mallorca
Key takeaways
- Switching everything off is not the cheapest option once damp is counted.
- A heavy house needs starting a day before an arrival, not on it.
- Service before the visit, never after it.
- The thing worth spending on is knowing what the property is doing.
A holiday home spends most of the year looking after itself, and a climate system in one is doing two jobs rather than one: it makes the house comfortable for the weeks you are there, and it keeps the building out of trouble for the weeks you are not. This is a year in the life of that system.
Winter, while the house is empty
The risk in a closed house here is moisture, not temperature. Shutters closed, windows sealed and nobody opening a door means damp air has nowhere to go, and in a heavy building the walls and floors stay cool enough for it to settle on them. The result is the smell people describe as the house being shut, and behind it mould on north walls, spotting on leather and paper, and cupboards that have to be emptied.
Leaving a low background setting rather than switching everything off costs very little, because nothing is being conditioned for people. What it buys is a building that does not drift into the range where that damage happens.
Spring, before anybody arrives
This is when the system should be serviced, and it is the single most useful piece of timing in this article. A system that has stood idle for months develops its own faults: dried traps, seized fans, drains full of whatever crawled in over the winter. Finding those in April is a repair. Finding them on the first hot Saturday in July is a ruined week for everybody, including whoever has to drive out.
The week before a visit
A heavy stone house does not become comfortable in an evening. Arriving on a Friday in July to a property that has been closed since June means arriving to walls and floors that are as warm as the month has been, and switching everything to maximum cools the air while the fabric carries on radiating.
Starting the system remotely a day ahead changes the experience completely and costs far less than running a bigger machine flat out for a weekend. On a masonry property it is close to the only thing that works, which is why remote control is worth specifying at installation rather than added later.
On arrival
- Check the filters, which will have collected dust standing still
- Look for a drip mark under any indoor unit, which means the drain
- Listen to the outdoor unit, since a new noise started while nobody was there
- Check that nothing has grown across or been stacked against the outdoor unit
- Open the house up in the evening rather than fighting it with the system all day
The season
Filters, weekly, if the house is busy. It is a five-minute job and it prevents the most common complaint of the season, which is a unit that is reported as not cooling and is simply choked. Beyond that, the useful habit is closing shutters on whichever side the sun is on, which stops heat before it arrives rather than removing it afterwards.
Autumn, on the way out
Not simply switching everything off at the wall. Set whatever background level the property needs for the winter, check that the monitoring is reporting, and leave a way for somebody local to get in and operate the system if it stops. Then it is winter again, and the cycle is the one at the top of this page.
What is worth spending on
On a property you are rarely in, the money is better spent on knowing than on capacity. A sensor reporting temperature and humidity turns a two-month problem into a phone call, and on a house visited twice a year that is the difference between a service visit and a redecoration.
The property side of this is on the second homes page. If the house is let to guests as well, that is a different specification, and smart climate control covers the remote half.
Should I turn everything off when I leave?
Not entirely, in most cases. A low background setting keeps the building out of the damp range and costs very little, because the house is not being conditioned to a comfortable temperature for anybody. What the right setting is depends on the building and is a fair question for whoever installs or services it.
Does air conditioning stop a closed house getting damp?
It helps in summer, because removing moisture is a by-product of cooling. In winter, when the damp problem here is worst, a cooling system is doing nothing at all, which is why properties closed through the cold months often need background heating or a dehumidifier rather than air conditioning alone.
How early should I start the system before arriving?
On a light modern property, hours. On a thick stone house, a day, and it will still be improving on the second evening. That single habit does more for the first night of a holiday than any amount of extra capacity.
Who should service it if I am not there?
Somebody local with access, and the visit should be arranged for before the season rather than during it. A caretaker or a property manager who can let an engineer in and report what was said is worth as much as the service itself when the owner is in another country.
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