Upgrading Your Air Conditioner? Get to Know These Terms

Delta T. Thermal units. R-410A. When upgrading your air conditioner, there are many seemingly foreign terms that you may hear. To help you understand what's going on, we at Comfort Services put together this glossary of terms for you to know when upgrading your air conditioner:

• Split system - An air conditioner that is split between an indoor unit and an outdoor unit. Most whole-house air conditioners are split systems.
• Air handler - The indoor half of a split system. It contains the evaporator coil, expansion valve and blower fan.
• Condenser - The outdoor half of a split system. It contains the condenser coil, the compressor and a fan.
• Coils - Tightly coiled metal tubing through which the refrigerant flows as it exchanges heat with the air. There are two coils in an air conditioning system.
• Evaporator coil - The indoor coil. It cools the air as the cold refrigerant inside the coil absorbs heat and evaporates into a gas.
• Condenser coil - The outdoor coil. It performs the opposite function of releasing heat to the air so that the refrigerant can condense into a liquid.
• Compressor - The pump that circulates refrigerant throughout the system and pressurizes the refrigerant as it does so.
• Expansion valve - A device that releases the pressure built up by the compressor.
• Refrigerant - A chemical with a very low boiling point, but which condenses into a cold liquid if pressurized enough. Common refrigerants include R-22 and R-410A.
• Cooling load - The amount of cooling power necessary to keep your home comfortable on a hot day.
• British Thermal Unit (BTU) - The basic unit of heat change used for measuring the cooling power of an air conditioner.
• Ton - 12,000 BTUs of cooling power. Used to measure the size of air conditioners.
• Delta T - Shorthand for "change in temperature." It refers to how much colder the air is after it passes through the evaporator coil.
• SEER - Seasonal energy efficiency ratio. A rating that measures the average energy efficiency of an air conditioner.

When upgrading your air conditioner, contact the air conditioning experts at Comfort Services in Columbia. We'll be happy to answer whatever questions you may have.