Central Air Conditioning Units

Today’s Hvac training I will be going over some of the basics about central air conditioning units. These days it is very common for all new homes to come with central air conditioning, compared to the past where most all air conditioners were the portable kind. The best thing about central air conditioning units in the United States is there energy efficiency, which is rated by SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating). The lowest SEER as of now that can be put in is 13, meaning they do not manufacture central air conditioning units anymore with a lower SEER than that. While the portable air conditioning units, also known as window units, fall much lower than this and are still being manufactured that way.

There are two main parts that make up the central air conditioning unit, these are known as the air handler and the condensing unit. The air handler is located on the inside of the house, usually in a closet, attic, or a laundry room. The air handler consists of the evaporator coils, and a blower fan. The blower fan sucks the hot air out of the room and blows it over the evaporator coils, then the cooled air is distributed to the rooms of the home through the air ducts. The heat that is blown across the evaporator coils is absorbed by refrigerant. Then the refrigerant travels to the outside compressor, or condensing unit where it is dropped off.

This is why central air conditioning systems are known as split systems, because it takes both the condenser and the components inside of the air handler to work properly. Some central air conditioning units come with a heater too. There are two types of heating, one is by using a heat pump, which is located on the condenser, and the other is with a heating furnace which is located on the air handler. In my line of work, at the place I work at we do not use heating pumps so the information that I have on them is not that great, although I do know a decent amount of information on heaters that operate inside of the air handler.

For central air conditioning units to work efficient, you must have a filter inside of the air handler right before the evaporator coils. This is necessary because you do not want to restrict any of the air flow that is being sucked into the evaporator by the blower fan. So as I have said many times make sure that you have a clean air filter installed to prevent any problems.

If your air handler on your central air conditioning units is located inside of a closet, it should have a air flow grill installed on the door so air can flow into it. Make sure that there is nothing that is blocking the grill such as laundry baskets, entertainment systems etc. This is central air conditioning in nutshell for you.

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