The popular season is here with record heat across the country, and with many houses having some type of air conditioner, it’s the best way to get out of the heat. As you are relaxing in your comfortably cool home or office, grateful that your air conditioner functions, let’s look at how an average cooling system functions.
The Basics
Your air conditioner operates the similar to your refrigerator, but obviously compared to keeping a little space cool, it has to cool your entire 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 consistent circle from the outside to the inside of your home. It goes into the interior as a sub-cooled liquid that evaporates and collects or absorbs heat from the air within your house, expands back into vapor, then returns 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 critical components: an evaporator coil, a compressor, a condensing coil, and an expansion valve or metering device.
The component where your refrigerant evaporates from a sub-cooled liquid to a super-heated vapor is called the evaporator coil, which may be indoors, in your attic, or in your garage. As warm indoor air is carried over the cold evaporator coil, heat is detached from the air…and the colder air is driven among your home.
From the evaporator coil, the now super-heated vapor refrigerant flows to the compressor based in your exterior condensing unit. The compressor enhances the pressure of the vapor until it turns into a hot, high pressure vapor. The now super-hot vapor enters the condenser coil where a lower amount hot air blows by the coil, removing heat to the outdoors, and returns 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 replicated.
Your AC system is a constant loop of movement. We understand the important thing to you isn’t really how it works, but that it’s working correctly. If you’d like to know the inner workings or just about staying cool, give our technicians a call at 314-262-4541. We will work with you and the laws of physics to ensure you comfortable this summer.