Yes but limited experience. Unless you are in an urban area or an area with lots historic houses it will be hard to find someone familiar with the unico system. It’s not that different from normal low pressure systems but it is harder to get everything balanced correctly. That said they can be a godsend for historic houses.

You need a good contractor who gets your vision plus a good hvac company that has done this before. You will still likely have to make sacrifices- dropping ceilings in bathrooms and closets sometimes is enough to create routes for ducts without affecting public spaces.

Personally would not want a built in vac in any house. Also, how historic -- how old -- is the house? Did the original build have a built in vac?

If your house is a heritage home heated with cast iron radiator I would suggest looking into an Air-To-Water Hydronic heat pump to heat and cool your entire home without ever having to remove the heritage radiators or add any ductwork of any kind.

Air-To-Water Heat Pump

high velocity hvac is heating and air conditioning.

Unfortunately we do not have radiators. Originally it had (still has) a huge brick coal burning furnace in the basement that is vented to each room in the house. I guess these runs are not usable for the 6" duct work. In the 90's the previous owner installed a propane furnace with duct work to maybe just three or four rooms in the house, as that was all she was using. The house was built in 1901 and 1902, purposely built in two halves. Im open to any ideas or suggestions, I simply have NO knowledge besides what I've read online now. I do have two messages in with hvac companies in my area that came up as Unico installers. Im hoping to hear from them very soon!

Good luck. If you find a sympathetic contractor (IE the guy who doesn't have a sawzall tied to his belt) you should be OK.

We have a large (4200 sf) 1920s home with radiators. Unico/Spacepak is the least obtrusive retrofit to get A/C in older homes - they can snake the small ducts through wall cavities, like pex or wiring. If you want to avoid drop-down ductwork, you could also look into ductless mini split, but you have (in my opnion) pretty ugly and obtrusive units in each room.

Most of the homes in our neighborhood are similar in age/size to ours, and nearly all have been retrofitted with high velocity. Some retrofits have been more successful than others. Some of our neighbors still have pretty toasty third floors in the summer. One neighbor in particular has had a nightmare experience due to improper sizing and initial installation. Moral of the story - get references and choose someone with a lot of experience in high velocity. This will likely be one of the higher bidders, too. Just the way these things work.

Also be prepared for sticker shock. When we bid ours out, estimates came in between 30k and 48k. As for cost of living/location, we're just outside of Detroit; not in a high cost of living city on one of the coasts.

There are new designs for mini-split cassette's and some look like a vent recessed in the ceiling, However, you still have a lot of electrical and refrigerant lines to run if you install multiple units. The nice feature of mini-splits is that you could run about 3 room units off each compressor unit and also be able to control the temperature for multiple zones.

If you are willing to give up space in the basement or the attic it should not be that difficult to run traditional ducts to the first and second floors. With an attic mounted system we were able to connect directly from our unfinished attic to ducts in the ceiling of the 2nd floor rooms, and then run larger ducts down through a couple 2nd floor closets into the floor joist area and then into the ceiling of the 1st floor. The only changes visible in each room (without opening a closet) is the duct in the ceiling. If the priority for your climate is heating its probably best to have the system in the basement, and for cooling it works better if its in the attic.

If you already have old ducting to each room that seems like it could be reused in some form, even if its just used to snake through the high velocity air feeds. You need to find an HVAC company or GC who is familiar with retrofits and wants to make it look unobtrusive. A standard HVAC company is very unlikely to have the skills or imagination to make the installation work.

Bruce

I have exactly what Design Girl describes in my 1920s home--it works fine.

I think you need to find a good HVAC guy who can offer a choice of solutions I grew up in a historic home where we had a furnace in the basement with vents in every room and in the summer we opened all the window upstairs and by the time my Mom sold the house each bedroom had been fitted with a mini split AC that took care of that problem. Shutting off the vents in the bedrooms kept the hot air from over heating those spaces in the winter I think design girl's idea is a good one.

@farmjem what did you go with?? I'm in the same situation

We did end up finding an HVAC guy who worked really hard to run the ductwork in our floor joists, so we only ended up boxing one run across a hallway.  We hardly notice it now.  The HVAC company ended up splitting it into three levels, zoning??  So we have a furnace in the basement, very easy to put in.  Also two furnaces in the attic, venting the second floor from the ceilings.  They hid all the ductwork in the floor and along the north wall of our attic.  We made it look like a built in bench or built the wall up to the slanted ceiling and just closed it in.  I'm happy with how it all turned out.  Most people were right, keep looking for HVAC people who hear your vision and don't just say "well you HAVE to do this or that. ". We went through probably 5-6 companies before we found one that really listened and wanted to try to figure it out with us.. .. So there ends up being a furnace and ac unit for each floor of our house.  The one in the attic hardly ran in the winter but is more for cooling in the summer.  Good luck!!