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Air Conditioning Tips

Please let the information below remind you to stay cool and keep your A/C running at peak performance. The following is information you should know and use to help ensure that your air-conditioning is keeping you as cool as possible and working and cooling as efficiently as possible, saving you money.

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DIY Maintenance Information

The following should help you decide if you need a professional to service your air-conditioning unit.

ALWAYS HIRE A PROFESSIONAL, LICENSED CONTRACTOR

When you need to have your equipment repaired/serviced make sure you use a licensed contractor who should be insured and obtain permits from city/county officials when required/necessary. Or a member of the (PHCC) Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Contractors Association. PHCC contractors are professionals who adhere to a published code of ethics that improves the industry and protects your health, certified by the State Board of Contractors. They also have licenses, bonds, insurance and obtain permits when required by local municipalities. The PHCC logo is your assurance of quality in this profession! Isn’t your health & safety worth it? It should be! Call 1-800-533-7694 for more information about the PHCC.

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT REFRIGERANT

Air-Conditioners DO NOT add cool air. What they do is remove warm air and put it outside. R-22 & R-12 ETC.. Refrigerant is a man-made product invented by DuPont and given the trade name FREON.

The temperature of refrigerant is directly relate to the pressure it is at and vise versa, IE.R-22 at 0 psi is -40 degrees below zero or at 60 psi it at 32 degrees. This is misleading; the temperature change is NOT related to pressure really, but almost totally tied to the change from a liquid to a gas.

When liquid Freon is expanded to a gas it gets really cold (latent heat of evaporation) and when the warm gas is compressed to a liquid it get hot. The temperature change in say compressing liquid Freon to a higher pressure (adiabatic compression) is small. You see the same effect when you crack the valve on a CO2 (or propane) bottle for example. You will get a smaller effect with a pure gas, like when you fill a Scuba tank, (gets warm) or drain it quickly (valve gets cold right at the expansion point, but this effect is not great enough to run an AC system.

The physics of phase change from a gas to a liquid and vice versa drive most weather for example as well…. With water it takes as (I recall) 560 (or was it 590…) times as much energy to boil water from 100 C liquid to 100 C gas as it does to raise the same amount of water 1 C in temperature. Freon is less dramatic than water in terms of this energy amount, but it boils at a much more convenient temperature for human AC units than does water. If you wanted the inside of your house to be 100 C you might want to run water in your AC.

Keep in mind that heat goes toward cold and not cool to heat. All the A/C compressor does is to pump vapor to create a high and low pressure, IE. A low pressure at the inside coil for a low temperature for the refrigerant to absorb the heat in the house and a high pressure at the outside coil to give off the heat the refrigerant absorbed from the inside coil to outside.

MAKE SURE YOUR AC IS CORRECTLY SIZED

Over sized A/C will run short cycles and not remove the humidity and moisture from the house, an under sized unit will not be able to keep the house cool on a hot day. You MUST be careful to get the correct size A/C for your house. A/C’s are sized by tons, there are 12,000 BTU’S to a ton of cooling (“Ton” means 12,000 BTU’S of heat is needed to melt one 1 ton (2,000 Pounds of ice)

Each CFM (Cubic foot per minute) of air will carry 26.7 BTU’s of cooling. You need a heat-gain calculation done per room to get the proper (CFM/BTUs) to be delivered to each room and the total (Tons/BTUs) needed to cool the house based on designed weather conditions in your area.

The above is my personal opinion/advice and please feel free to obtain other opinions.

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