The popular season is in full swing with record temps across the country, and with a lot households having some sort of air conditioner, it’s the best way to beat the heat. As you are unwinding in your comfortably cool home or office, thankful that your air conditioner functions, let’s take a peek at how a normal cooling system functions.
The Basics
Your air conditioner works the same way as your refrigerator, but obviously rather than keeping a little space cool, it has to effectively provide cooler air to your whole home. Both use a refrigerant that converts simply from liquid to gas, back to liquid again. In your air conditioner, the refrigerant is on a regular loop from the outside to the inside of your home. It goes into the house as a sub-cooled liquid that evaporates and gathers or takes in heat from the air within your house, expands back into vapor, then heads to the outside condensing unit where it dissipates the heat and is switched back to a sub-cooled liquid.
The Components
Your AC system is made of four main components: an evaporator coil, a compressor, a condensing coil, and an expansion valve or metering device.
The piece where your refrigerant evaporates from a sub-cooled liquid to a super-heated vapor is called the evaporator coil, which may be inside, in your attic, or located in the garage. As warm indoor air is blown over the cold evaporator coil, heat is detached from the air…and the colder air is blown within your home.
From the evaporator coil, the now super-heated vapor refrigerant goes back to the compressor based in your exterior condensing unit. The compressor raises the pressure of the vapor until it changes into a hot, high pressure vapor. The now super-hot vapor goes into the condenser coil where a smaller amount hot air blows past the coil, eliminating the heat to the outdoors, and changes the refrigerant to a sub-cooled liquid. The sub-cooled liquid refrigerant is sent to the indoor evaporator coil where, through an expansion valve or metering device, the process is repeated.
Your air conditioner is a constant loop of processes. We understand the important thing to you might not be how your AC operates, but that it’s working correctly. If you’d like to talk science or just about staying cool, give our professionals a call at 201-268-5663. We will partner with you and the laws of physics to ensure you happy this time around.