Air-Conditioned Boom

During a blizzard that blanketed Upper Darby, Pa. last month, Appliance Dealer Mort Farr bought TV time to advertise an air-conditioner sale. Reported Farr: "It was the best sale I ever had." Last week, though the weather was milder, air-conditioner sales were setting new records throughout the U.S. Sales of room coolers alone were up 100% over last year's first quarter. The selling period for conditioners, once as brief as the Bikini season, is now being extended throughout the year as more and more consumers think of airconditioning, with its filtered air, as a year-round necessity rather than a summertime luxury.

From 1/3-ton window units for single rooms to the 2,000-ton monsters that keep big-city skyscrapers habitable, every size and shape of mechanical conditioner will roll out in record quantities this year. The top-heavy inventories of window units that plagued the industry for the past two years have been cleared out, and manufacturers expect retail sales of all types to be $3.2 billion in 1956, up a cool 10% from last year's record $2.9 billion (see chart).

25 Million Customers. Homeowners and apartment dwellers will buy the greatest number of units sold this year. By the end of 1956, U.S. windows will have sprouted 1,500,000 new room air-conditioners, up 23.6% since 1954. Roomunit sales have been boosted by new designs that eliminate overhanging cabinets, new, thin models that can be installed in the walls of buildings and houses, and low-powered units (7.5 ampores) that can be hooked up in old houses without rewiring.

But the brightest prospects for a long-term boom are in central residential systems that provide year-round heating and cooling of houses. Installed cost: $1,000 for a six-room General Electric unit, v. $1,500 in 1952. Last year 130,000 central units were installed in U.S. homes, up 68.5% in one year. This year, central-unit sales are expected to leap another 23% to 160,000 units. Moreover, some 25 million U.S. homeowners who have central heating plants are potential customers for built-in airconditioning.

Deductible Comfort. Air-conditioning manufacturers, who do something about the weather as well as complain about it, say that hot and cold spells still throw seasonal estimates out of kilter; e.g., demand rose 200% during a six-week heat wave last July and August. But the trend to bigger, more expensive units has sharply reduced impulse buying. Government agencies also have boosted non-seasonal equipment sales. For example, the Federal Housing Administration recently approved inclusion of central air-conditioning in basic home-mortgage loans. The Internal Revenue Service permits sufferers from hay fever, asthma and heart disease to deduct the cost of cool comfort on their tax returns.

Eyeing their huge potential market, some manufacturers are even beginning to worry that sales will take too big a jump in 1956. Said one industry spokesman: "Some people predict as many as 200,000 central residential units will be sold this year. We don't have the qualified contractors to install that many units."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.