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Controlling the indoor temperature of a home is one of the best advances in technology. While heat has been around for a while, cooling the inside has only been around for a relatively short period of time. There are four common types of air conditioning in Douglasville homes that cool them off in the hot summer. Split System The most common style of air conditioner is known as a split system. This type of system has three main parts: the condenser, evaporator, and compressor. Indoors, the evaporator removes the heat and humidity from the air. A fan circulates the air from the house over a series of coils filled with a coolant. As the coolant enters the evaporator, it changes from a liquid to a gas, cooling very quickly. As the air moves over the coils, it is cooled and cycled back to the house. The exterior unit holds the condenser and compressor. As the coolant travels outside, it enters the compressor where it is squeezed back into a liquid. As the pressure builds to make it a liquid, the temperature rises. The condenser also has a series of coils and a fan that dissipate the heat to the environment. Heat Pumps A heat pump is similar to a split system in that it basically transfers heat from one area to the other. It not only works well in the summer months moving heat to the outside, but it can move heat into the house in the winter. During the winter months, the flow of the liquid is reversed so the interior coils are dispersing the warmth to the inside of the house. It can be difficult in climates that are below freezing for the coolant to work effectively. New technologies (called geothermal heating) use the constant temperature in the ground to exchange the temperatures from the heat pump. A geothermal heat pump is one of the most efficient options, but it also has the highest installation costs due to the holes that need to be drilled down into the ground. Packaged Central Air Packaged air handlers are more common in commercial applications than in residential areas. All of the elements of an air conditioner, the condenser, compressor, and evaporator, are all contained in a single unit. Air is still moved by a fan over the coils where it is cooled and circulated to the interior. It can even be combined with a furnace to address both heating and cooling. The packaged systems were developed for commercial areas to limit how much floor space is being used for the system. They are often placed on the roof, so they don’t take up any interior space at all. Ductless System The ductless system was developed for smaller areas that had no area for ductwork. Many Americans will think about the units in older hotels and apartments that sat in the window. New technologies have created a unit that is mounted high on an exterior wall. The only thing that actually goes through the wall is flexible tubing that carries the coolant. Because the units are pretty small and only the tubing breaks the wall, the interior unit can be placed in a separate room. While there may be only four styles, all air conditioning in Douglasville relies on an evaporator, condenser, and compressor with the thermal fluid flowing through the system. The biggest difference comes from how the different parts are configured.
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