You may be wondering what you need to know about air conditioners that can really get you round the huge costs incurred on their maintenance. Acquiring basic knowledge about air conditioner parts will go a long way in helping you understand and be able to maintain them. This info will also come in handy when the repair guy comes round and tries to reap you off, or when your gorgeous neighbors air conditioner is broken and she calls you to look at it. You will definitely score major points if you know your way around AC parts and be able to fix minor problems that may arise during its use.
Air conditioners basically have three parts that are considered to be the life of air-cons. These parts are; the evaporator, the compressor and the condenser. The compressor and the condenser among other minor air conditioner parts form what is called the outdoor compartment because they are usually located outside. What happens in the outdoor unit is heat from inside the house is absorbed by a temperature-sensitive substance called a refrigerant. This substance comes into the compressor in the form of a hot gas, which has very low pressure. The compressor, as the name suggests, compresses that hot gas so much so that its molecules get compacted. Because of this compression, the temperature of the hot gas refrigerant increases greatly.
This hot gas is released from the compressor under high pressure and is channeled to the condenser. The condenser has a fan and fins and their work is to loose the heat from the hot gas. The fan blows out the heat aided by the fins. Since the refrigerant is temperature-sensitive and has a low boiling point, by the time it leaves the condenser, it is in the form of a cool liquid!
Among the air conditioner parts integral in the performance of the AC are the evaporators found either above or as part of the furnace. They are responsible for regulating the house heat and humidity. Here is how. Remember our refrigerant that left the condenser as a cool liquid under high pressure? Well, that liquid now arrives here at the evaporator and goes in through a tiny hole. What this does is it makes the cool liquid enter the evaporator in small amounts therefore loosing its pressure. Once the pressure is lost, the cool liquid prefers to switch back into the old gas state, so it starts to evaporate. But to become a gas completely, its molecules need to break the bonds that were formed when they got compressed. These bonds can only be broken by heat, so the evaporating gas ends up sucking out heat from your house! Clever, huh? This gas is then routed back to the compressor where the journey begins-again.
These are the three major air conditioner parts you should keep in mind and you will be well on your way to saving money and scoring babes.