[MercurySilver]

we are just about to start building in sa
im building the same house as a mate from work (pure coincidence)
they gave us the ducted evap in with the deal
i asked my mate how he went over the last week when we had days of 40+ degrees
he said the house was nice and cool, he left the sliding door open about 4inches and cracked all his windows an inch too
he said his misses actually kept turning it off when she got cold and then turning it back on when the house heated up
what this did was cause the unit to dump its water each time she turned it off, its designed to do this apparently so the salty water doesnt sit in the unit.
the house builders hooked that dump hose into his gutters, which caused the water to go into his rainwater tank
he pulled it out and extended the hose over his gutters into a wheelie bin which he then uses to water certain plants and vegies

another guy at work who built with the same company went with ducted refridgerated and as he had just had a new baby with his wife they constantly had the air con on...their first electricity bill was $900+!

we're going with the ducted evap AND getting a split system reverse cycle for the large media room.
we'll also be running a large combustion heater for the winter.
evap is alot cheaper to run compared to refridge
we plan on going solar as well, so with any luck we'll have no elec bill anyway

another mate has evap in his house and its at least a 15 year old system
his house is always cool, even on stinking hot days, he just cracks the windows and back door slightly.
we are confident that evap will be ok for us
plus the misses has mega experience in window tinting, so we will be tinting all the windows in the house, plus the whole house internally and externally will be insulated