Home Improvement Caddy: How to Choose the Right Air Conditioners

Air conditioning equipment is a must in many homes, especially those in warmer zones. Without it, summer temperatures simply be?come unbearable. When choosing it, there are several important factors to take into account.

The principle of air conditioning is exactly the same as the mechanism that makes a refrigera?tor work. The refrigerant liquid is pumped round a continuous closed-circuit loop through two sets of coils. First of all it enters the evaporator coil, where the liquid absorbs heat from the surrounding air and becomes a gas. It then passes through a compressor which turns the gas back into a liquid, and on to the condenser coil where it gives up its heat to the air again. For household air conditioning, the evaporator coil is situated indoors, where the cooling effect is required, and the condenser coil outdoors.

There are two main types of domestic air conditioning equipment. The first is the indi?vidual room unit; this has the evaporator and condenser coils fitted into a single casing, and is installed within a window opening or a hole cut in an exterior wall. The second has the coils housed in two separate enclosures, so that the noisy compressor/condenser section can be placed out of doors. Small split units of this type still cool just one room; larger versions can cool the whole house.

Some air conditioners can also be run in reverse to extract heat from the outside air and use it to heat the interior. They are known as reverse-cycle air conditioners or 'heat pumps'.

How big a unit?

The first step you have to take is to work out how much cooling capacity is needed. It's best to call in a professional to do this for you, but the calculation below will give you a rough guide. Measure the room, work out the floor area and then multiply the figure in sq ft by 24 to get the number of BTUs needed to cool it. As an example, you will need about 12,000 BTUs (equivalent to 1 ton of cooling capacity) for a room with a floor area of 500 sq ft. Other factors that must be taken into account include how well the house is insulated, how many windows and outside walls each room has, and where in the country you live.

Systems and components

Air conditioning can be provided by individual room air conditioners or by means of a whole-house system. This may be a combined unit like a large room unit, or else a split system. The latter has the evapor?ator coil unit positioned within the house - often in the roof space - and this distributes cooled air to every room in the house by means of ducting; the compressor/condenser coil is sited out of doors, and the two units are linked together by relatively unobtrusive pipework carrying the refrigerant. The combined 'single-package' unit is cheaper than the split system, but is of course much noisier.

With either system, the ducting is run either above the ceiling or below the floor to serve outlets in each room. The return flow of warm air to the evaporator coil unit is usually via a single inlet on the unit; small gaps beneath room doors throughout the house are usually adequ?ate to ensure a free flow of air back to the unit, to balance the amount of cooled air being delivered. Some systems have parallel return ducting running from each room to take warm air back to the coil unit.

This type of air conditioning can treat indi?vidual zones of the house at different times -living areas by day and bedrooms by night, for example. Electrically-operated dampers linked to a timer control switch the airflow between zones as required. The big advantage of this sort of installation is that the equipment can be smaller and cheaper than that needed for continuous whole-house treatment.

Somewhere between whole-house systems and individual room air conditioners come what are called multi-split systems. Here a number of fan coil (evaporator) units are linked to a single large condenser unit outside the house. Indi?vidual controls on each fan coil unit mean that the desired temperature in each room can be set to ensure optimum comfort coupled with economical use of electricity.

Linked systems of whatever type can provide all-year heating and cooling or just air condition?ing, but it can be difficult (and expensive) to have ducted systems installed in an existing house, and the equipment must be professional?ly installed. However, individual room units can be easily fitted by any competent handyman.

Source: http://www.homeimprovementcaddy.com/2012/11/how-to-choose-right-air-conditioners.html

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