Aire Serv® Of South East Texas

Air Conditioners come in all shapes and sizes, so we will narrow them down for you under the most common types. The first type of system is probably the simplest to explain – because the types of systems that cool fall into a few categories. The ones we will talk about here are mechanical cooling systems, commonly referred to as “air conditioners” on another page we will cover water based cooling systems that use evaporation to cool, commonly know as “evaporative coolers” or “swamp coolers.”

Split System Air Conditioners
Package Air Conditioners
Ductless Split Systems
Window or Wall Units
Evaporative Coolers

How an Air Conditioner Works

The easiest way to explain how an air conditioner works is to use evaporation as an example. Hold your hand about six inches from your mouth and blow on it. Does it feel warm or cool? Even though the air in your body is warmer than the air around you, it feels cool when you blow on your hand. This is due to the evaporation of the moisture on your palm.

If you think back to science class, you might remember that when a liquid evaporates it absorbs heat. The “liquid” that an air conditioner uses is “refrigerant”, which most people refer to as “Freon”. Refrigerant is moved as a gas through the air conditioning system using a compressor. The refrigerant passes through another coil, referred to as the “condenser coil” which cools it down and removes the heat – turning it back into a liquid. If you have an outside condensing unit, you know the air blowing out in the summertime typically is hot.

So to simplify things – your indoor unit moves air across the indoor evaporator coil, and heat is absorbed into the refrigerant in this coil. The refrigerant is then circulated outside, where the heat is exhausted with a fan blowing across the outside condenser coil. An air conditioner doesn’t “add” cool air; it removes heat from the air.