A little bit of info about Central Air Conditioning and Heating

Here you will find a brief introduction about central air conditioning and heating. Now as everyone knows there are times of the year when your house is going to feel like a melting pot, and then in the winter it’s going to feel like an igloo. It doesn’t have to be like this, we just need a system to efficiently pull the heat out of the house in the summer and a system to warm up the frigid air in the winter time so our lips don’t freeze together and the beer bottle won’t stick to our hand when we try and take a sip! This is where the combined central air conditioning and heating system will greatly come into play.

Central air conditioning and heating systems are dominating over the puny and ugly window AC units. One of the million reasons is because that the central air conditioning systems have vents that are going into every room in the house, office, or business. The air gets sucked in through the evaporator coils then the air flows out of the vents in other rooms and such via air ducts. Central air conditioners also have the upper hand over the window unit because they run a lot quieter. Window units are very rarely quiet, they sit there in your window trying to cool off the room you’re in while making a constant humming and buzzing noise over and over. While the central AC has the noisiest part (the condenser and fan motor) placed outside of the house where it can barely be heard.
Another great advantage that central AC and heating has on the annoying window unit is, again, it is outside, meaning it is not going to block the beautiful view (or ugly view) outside at all. And most of all you can switch from heat to air with just the click or tap of a button. But yes there are central systems that aren’t combined in heating and cooling but I am not getting into that at the moment.

Lots of common folk still use the trusty ol window air conditioners, which will work great just to cool a 400 square foot room, but when it comes to winter time, more than likely you aren’t going to be running your window unit unless you have a room full of pet penguins, you would probably be utilizing a portable heater. If you have a house with 6 bedrooms you would need a crap load of window units and portable heaters to keep’em all comfy wouldn’t you? Window units are no longer the new investment to keeping your house cool, but they will probably be around for a long time, they will just be getting less and less popular as the years zoom by.

Nowadays just about every new home built today is built with central air conditioning and heating. I mean could you imagine that you were inspecting houses to by with a realtor and he or she shows you this wonderful house with all new appliances and cabinetry, with a screened in back porch with a swimming pool, and then says “oh ya, there’s no central AC in this house, but there is a Home Depot 1 mile from here that has a GREAT deal on window units”! That isn’t going to happen people. Central air conditioning and heating systems are just as much part of a home as a kitchen and bathtub, just as much to a home pool in New York with a pool water heater installed, just as much to watching a football game and drinking a beer, Ok I think you get the idea.

How do I pick what type of central air I want?

So let us say that you are planning on building a house, or just would really like to upgrade from your old 9 SEER AC unit, you would need to know what type and size of central air conditioner you would want the contractors or whomever to install. First thing you would want to look into would be the SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio). The way that SEER is determined is by dividing the cooling capacity of an air conditioner that is constantly on by the electrical input that’s required to run it. Then the efficiency of the air conditioner is ranked by a number. The higher the SEER rating of the air conditioner the better the unit will run, and the more you will save on your already overpriced electric bill. As of December 31st 11:59:59 P.m. the United States requires that all central air conditioners have a SEER rating of at least 13. While I’m still bashing the window units, it still isn’t required for a window unit to have a rating of 13 SEER, they are commonly 10 Seer, so this is another reason why central air conditioning systems are better than window units.

Another consideration you will have to take in before purchasing a central air and heating system is what size unit your house is going to need. There are a lot of different factors that help decide the ton to square foot ratio for cooling and heating. Some of these are how well your home is insulated, what kind of condition are the windows in and if they have a window tint on them, how many stories the house has, and of course what the local average energy bill is. For example, let us say that we have an 1150 square foot home in Arizona just off a small dirt road, there are no trees around the home and the skies are usually clear. This home might require a 3-3½ ton AC unit. Now say you have another home that is in Southern Georgia, on a beautiful block in a neighborhood that has many tall trees surrounding the home, which would be filtering out some of the sunlight, the home was just built maybe less than a year ago with insulation inside the drywall, this 1150 square foot home may only require a 2 ton air conditioner. Although the temperature outside, according to the weather reports might be very similar among the two different homes, the house in Georgia is going to require a smaller unit to keep it cool do to the insulation factor.

Last thing I want to babble about central air conditioning systems is FREON and the phaseout. A few years ago the EPA has decided to slowly phase out air conditioners that use R-22 (ozone depleting refrigerant). In 2010 it will be illegal for companies to manufacture air conditioners that use R-22. In 2010 they will be using air conditioners that use the non ozone depleting refrigerants, such as R-410A . There’s a few AC companies that are already marketing air conditioning systems using R-410A. So what does this mean for the R-22 systems?

They will continue to manufacture R-22 up until the year 2020. After that all of the R-22 air conditioner units will be serviced with recycled R-22. Now if every Maintenance Man or certified HVAC technician followed the EPA regulations for handling Freon, (you HVAC guys know what I mean) we could service these systems for about 20 more years until the compressor just eventually burns out and dies.

Can R-22 systems be converted into 410A systems?

No. They cannot, the newer ozone friendly systems that use refrigerants such as R-410A are going to be designed for about twice the pressure of the R-22 systems. The compressors and valves on the R-22 wouldn’t be able to handle the higher pressure. So by just switching the refrigerant isn’t going to work.

That’s all I have for today if you’re looking at purchasing a new central air conditioning and heating system.


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