How does Air Conditioning work?

How does Air conditioning work?

Now that we are reaching summer and the sun is popping it’s head out, the air conditioning will start to come on in the car but in the UK we do not have air conditioning in our homes as much as many other countries, but why not? Maybe its because of the belief that air conditioning is only for heat waves or that we are so used to gas boilers heating our homes in winter but air conditioning can do a whole lot more than just cooling your home during heat waves. The technology inside air conditioning units is really cool (excuse the pun) and works in a great way to provide heating, cooling, dehumidyfying and air cleaning to provide an all round solution but how do they work?

Is air conditioning a fridge or a kettle?

A lot of tradesman say that air conditioning (and heat pumps) work in the same way as a fridge which is true but how do fridges work?

I prefer to refer to a kettle as a good way to explain air conditioning and heat pump technology. Your kettle boils water at 100 degrees and we know this is a fixed point of boiling and once the water starts boiling, it turns into vapour (steam). This steam stays hot until it is able to cool down by touching the ceiling and releasing the heat and turn back into water.

Replacing the water with F-Gas in Air conditioning units

Now lets remove the water and add a different liquid, this is where f-gas comes in. Despite its name (gas), it is a liquid until heated and then it turns into vapour but the crucial difference is the temperature at which it changes state. R32 F-gas boils at -52 degrees, This is heated by a fan outside which blows air across a long length of pipe to be able to heat it up, it is then compressed to increase its output and this heat is transfered using pipes to the indoor unit and released using fans to heat a room. When cooling it works in reverse by taking the heat from the room and letting it out outside. Heat pumps work in the same way but they use a heat exchanger to transfer the heat to the water in your radiators.

How do the fans work in air conditioning?

The fans blow hot or cold air across a long length of pipework to heat or cool the gas inside the pipes, it then transfers this across to the opposite unit and a fan blows this into the room. To make things simpler we can explain it by saying that the outdoor unit and the indoor unit will always blow opposite temperatures.

• If you stood in front of the outdoor unit and are getting cold then you are heating the inside room.
• If you stood in front of the outdoor unit and are getting hot then you are cooling the inside room.

Due to the gases low boiling point, this means you can heat your home in outside temperatures as low as -4 degrees (it will still work below this but will be expensive to run) and you can cool your home in outside temperatures of up to 45 degress. If we reach above 45 degrees in the uk then I would be extremely worried anyway.

How does air conditioning dehumidify the room?

To understand this technology, we just have to look at our windows on a cold morning. The vapour in the air is attracted to the windows as the coldest part of the room. We replace the windows with a new colder source (the pipes in the air conditioner) and so the air gets attracted to these pipes instead of the windows. It is then heated and turned back into water which collects at the bottom of the air conditioner and runs away to a drain. When we installed our air conditioner at home, I was also under the impression that we would only use it during heat waves but I was really shocked on how many humid days we have in the UK and the air conditioner removes that humidity from the house. For us the removal of this humidity was the single biggest benefit of the air conditioning as we no longer have humid days in our home and we have got rid of the sticky gooey feeling that is associated with humid days. We were shocked to see the amount of days that we actually used our air conditioning to remove humidity from our home and this is generally on the cloudy, colder days during the summer months (not the heat wave days).

How does air con clean the air?

This is quite simple, It will use just the fan to blow the air around your home and the built in filter will pick up any micro particles of dirt. You can also use this option when using a gas boiler with radiators to move the heat around faster and speed up the heating times of your home and reduce the gas used.

What makes air con energy efficient?

Hopefully my description above hasn’t bamboozled you too much but as the gas is doing most of the work, the electricity used is only to turn the fans, push the gas round and compress the gas rather than to heat anything up like our conventional boilers, fires and hobs have done. This means that for every 1kw put in, you can get 3kw out of the air conditioner. This also makes it eligible for 0% VAT and a good substitute for heating your home.

So what are the disadvantages of air con?

So the biggest disadvantage of Air conditioning is that it can not heat you water to provide a nice warm bath. This means that it needs to be combined with something else to heat your hot water. It is however a a great solution for heating and cooling your home.

Heating your whole home with air conditioning would require an indoor unit in every room, this can become expensive to install but if you were to compare this to installing all new radiators and pipework then the air conditioning would work out easier and cheaper.

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To find out more about air conditioning and the benefits, take a look at the worcester Bosch website, we supply and install Worcester bosch units due them being the market leader in the Uk and providing a qulaity service, before, during and after installation.