Air
Conditioning is it for you?
Air conditioning cools a building by removing heat from
the indoor air and transferring it to outside. Chemical refrigerants
in the system absorbs the unwanted heat and then pumps it
through a system of pipes to a coil outside. A fan which
is located inside the air conditioning unit then blows outside
air over the hot coil which transfers the heat from the refrigerant
to outside.
How does air conditioning work?
There
are two principles air conditioning works on these are
condensation and evaporation. If we take evaporation first.
Example you are on holiday and are in a swimming pool on
a hot day, when you get out of the pool you feel cooler.
This is because as the water on your body starts to evaporate
it turns into water vapor and when it evaporates it draws
the heat away from your body.
Now
you are out of the pool you get a nice glass of ice cold
lemonade and sit by the pool. After a few minutes you notice
that water has collected on the outside of the glass, this
is condensation. The air around the glass becomes cooler
and the water vapor in the air is condensed into water.
Most central air conditioning systems include of a hot
side outside your home, and a cold side, inside your
home. The hot side usually consists of a condensing
coil, a compressor and a fan. The cold side is usually located
within your furnace. The furnace blows air through an evaporator
coil,
which cools the air, and routes this cool air throughout
your home using a series of air ducts.
Air conditioning is now becoming increasingly popular in
UK homes, especially with the warmer summers we have been
having in recent years.
Types of air conditioning
There are basically four types of air conditioning systems
being installed in homes in the UK.
1. Centralised
These as the name suggests one central unit works to maintain
the conditions in several areas by supplying air through
a ductwork system or water through a pipe work system.
2. Packaged or Split System
This type of air conditioning is now probably the most popular
installation in the private sector of the UK. It enables
individual rooms to be conditioned independently and installed
one at
a time so you can spread the cost of installation.
3. Multi Split System
This type is basically a refinement of the split system,
it again offers each room served by its own individual
air handling unit, but the difference being that several
internal air handling units are connected to just one external
condensing unit.
4. Portable units
These as the name imply's are not fixed units and can be
moved from room to room. They are normally just plugged into
the mains and an extraction pipe for the hot air placed out
of an open window.
The lack of air conditioning in homes, and
residential care homes and in medical facilities was identified
as a
contributing factor to the estimated 35,000 deaths left in
the wake of the 2003 heat wave in Europe.
For full details on the above types of air conditioning
systems see above.
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