By premises
Air conditioning for a shop
More than the floor area suggests, because a shop door opens to the street all day and a glazed frontage is a heat source rather than a wall. Size for the door and the glass, not the square footage — a retail unit routinely needs a step up over a bedroom of identical size.
Last reviewed
The open door is the load nobody counts
Every customer entering brings outside air with them, and on a busy markaz frontage that is close to continuous. A shop is not a sealed room, which is the assumption behind every floor-area calculation. This alone is why shops sized like offices end up with units running flat out and still not holding temperature at four in the afternoon.
Glazed frontage behaves like a radiator
A large shopfront window facing the sun admits heat all afternoon. It is the single biggest variable between two shops of the same size, and it is also the cheapest to mitigate — a film or an awning on a west-facing frontage reduces the load more than an extra half ton of capacity, at a fraction of the running cost.
Where the indoor unit has to point
Air has to reach the customer area and the counter, not the stockroom wall. In a long narrow shop, which is the common shape here, one unit at the front leaves the back warm and one at the back leaves the entrance uncomfortable. Two smaller units frequently beat one large one in that geometry, which is the exception to the usual rule.
Comfort is commercial here
In a shop the AC is not comfort spending, it is the reason someone browses rather than buying quickly and leaving. That changes the calculation on both sizing and on whether to fix a marginal unit before the season rather than during it, when every technician in the city is already booked.
What size AC does a shop need?
How much AC does a typical markaz shop need?
Start from the floor-area figure, then add for the door traffic and the frontage glazing — in practice most shops land a step above what the square footage alone suggests. A proper look at the frontage aspect and the door position is worth more than any rule of thumb, and it is free.
Would an air curtain help?
Genuinely, on a busy doorway. It reduces the exchange of conditioned air with the street without asking anyone to keep the door shut, which in retail is not a realistic instruction. It costs less than the extra tonnage it saves and lowers running cost every hour the shop is open.
Two small units or one big one?
For a long narrow shop, two smaller units usually win — one unit cannot push air the length of the space, so half the shop stays uncomfortable regardless of capacity. For a square open floor, one correctly sized unit is cheaper to buy and run. The shape decides it, not the area.
Rather have it done?
AC installation is a sizing decision followed by a plumbing job: tonnage matched to the room, indoor and outdoor units sited for airflow, pipe run kept short and lagged, and the system vacuumed properly before gas is released. Fitting starts at PKR 8,000, and supply-and-fit for a 1.5 ton inverter unit starts near PKR 140,000.
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