Air Conditioning Service: Air Conditioner Component Functions And When To Service | The Woodlands, TX
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Once upon a time, air conditioners, refrigerators, and similar fixtures were a luxury inside American homes. Now, approximately 97% of homes in the southern states have AC installed. With their widespread availability throughout Texas comes the necessity to understand how they work, vital components, and when it’s appropriate to book an air conditioning service to maintain their integrity.
Air conditioning systems have several crucial components that can make a difference to their overall functionality. If an essential part degrades or fails, an air conditioning service can help to restore AC to peak operating condition.
Air conditioner refrigerant, also known as coolant or Freon, is a vital fluid in AC systems. As the name suggests, it is a critical component used in both cooling and freezing operations. Refrigerant operates within a closed-loop system carrying heat from the inside of your TX property to the outside world. Its primary goal is lowering the ambient indoor temperature. In layman’s terms, coolant is the messenger transferring heat from one area to another. Its liquid-to-vapor transformation happens at temperatures convenient to the overall refrigeration cycle and is the main reason closed-loop AC utilizes coolant.
Depending on where it is within your air conditioner, refrigerant can either be in liquid or gas form. Once it’s absorbed heat within the air, it changes into a liquid that moves towards the outdoors, where the heat can freely disperse out into the open. Once the heat has transferred, it returns to its initial gas state and returns indoors. While the gas is on its return journey, an indoor fan will blow cold air over the coils filled with refrigerant resulting in cooler air circulating indoors. While your air conditioner system is running, this cycle repeats many times. There are times when refrigerant may need to be replaced during an air conditioning service, particularly if you notice a coolant leak that’s depleted the resource. Indications that coolant is leaking are less effective cooling due to warm air exiting the air conditioner, ice build-up, and excess condensation appearing on the exterior of your unit.
The evaporator coil is a vital component of every air conditioning system. It’s usually located indoors or near the air handler. The primary function of this element is to pick up the heat from within your home. It’s built from copper tubes and contains depressurized liquid refrigerant. When a blower fan forces warm over the coils, the cold refrigerant inside the coil naturally absorbs the heat. Heat flows naturally from warm to cold, so if you’re missing coolant inside the evaporator coil or your evaporator coil requires replacement, you’ll need an air conditioning service to restore optimum functionality to your AC system in The Woodlands, TX.
One vital element that helps to facilitate the transfer of heat through the evaporator coil is the blower fan. A faulty blower fan can cost several hundred dollars to replace or fix, especially if you’ve got a high-end model, large blower motor fitted or access-related issues.
There’s also another coil used within AC systems, known as the condenser coil. Unlike the evaporator coil that usually sits indoors, the condenser coil is an exterior component. Its job is to receive the refrigerant that’s become hot and pressurized during the heat absorption process and distribute it safely outdoors. It functions with the aid of an exterior condenser fan which blows air over the exterior coil to release the built-up heat, and a professional AC service neglects neither component.
A compressor will pressurize the refrigerant and raise its temperature along its journey to the outdoors. Raising the temperature is a necessary step within the flow of an air conditioning system because heat will not disperse outdoors unless the outdoor air is colder than the air exiting the system.
Once the heat is released, the refrigerant returns to its liquid state that flows towards an expansion valve. Even though the heat has been dispersing to the outdoors, refrigerant leaving the condenser and traveling back indoors is still too hot to enter the evaporator coil without causing damage. The expansion valve helps to depressurize the coolant and reduce its temperature. This valve regulates the amount flowing through the evaporator.
Any one of these components can experience a critical failure, failures you may avoid with a regular air conditioning service. All AC components should undergo regular inspections, as this helps facilitate indoor comfort during hot, humid summers in The Woodlands. It’s ideal to evaluate the condition of your air conditioner before you’re expecting to run it frequently, as this reduces the likelihood of an interruption to service when you need it most.
Booking An Air Conditioning Service in The Woodlands, TX
While there is no hard-and-fast rule for the best time of year to service an air conditioner, it is advisable to book an air conditioning service at least once every year. The environment your AC is working in plays a huge role in determining when to service an air conditioner, which is why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to services.
An industrial building, for example, is likely to have more intense air conditioning service requirements, as is an office building regularly filled with people, computers, servers, and other factors that can increase the ambient temperature and require more intensive cooling applications. In comparison, a home in The Woodlands, TX, is likely to have much less intensive cooling needs, even during humid summers frequently seen year-on-year.
If you’re unsure whether you need to book an air conditioner service, you can contact us to discuss your circumstances. By taking your individual requirements into account, we can determine when it’s most appropriate to investigate your air conditioner’s components. You may have spotted irregularities in the performance of your air conditioning system, but it’s not always obvious. Schedule an air conditioning service with Mr. Reliable Heating & Air Conditioning, and we’ll do our best to put your mind at ease and ensure your AC is in tip-top shape for future use.
