Air conditioning for dine in?

Hi. Can anyone tell me how they keep their dining area cool? We currently have delco only but want to add seating. The place is unbearable in the summer. We have 14 foot ceilings and 1800 feet of space. The ac unit we have now does virtually nothing to cool the place down. Do you use a large ac unit, ceiling fans, or ? We are thinking of lowering the ceilings, and partitioning off the dining area maybe. Any suggestions?
Thanks ?

General rule of thumb: 200 square feet per ton. With 1800 square feet, your space would require about 9 tons of air conditioning. One thing you can do to cheat the system if you’re falling short on the capacity, install window units (only if your walls are external ones of course). They are a lot cheaper and require minimal cash to install.

Good thing winter’s coming up. You won’t have to worry about it for a couple months. Hope this helps. -J_r0kk

When we moved into our new location we built it so the kitchen was away from the eating area. I also only have 2 AC vents in the kitchen the rest are all in the eating area. Whatefer you do talk to a HVAC person as they know how much you should need and you will want to match it up with your exsisting make up air etc

Sounds like your system is not very well balanced. I would make sure that the make up air is putting in as much air as the hood is taking out. Is your make up air done with just a blower or do you have a evaporative cooler hooked up to it? Dropping your ceiling height will help quite a bit and so will partitioning off your dining area, but it sounds like you will probably still need some additional cooling power.