Every homeowner knows that air conditioners are for cooling the home when the weather is hot. However, most do not know about combining heating and air conditioning systems for higher efficiency. This article will discuss how these two systems can be integrated into one unit.
Can A Single Unit Provide Heating and Air Conditioning?
Once you come across this topic, the next thing that comes to mind is, can a single unit truly work as heating and air conditioning? If you are familiar with renewable energy, you may know about heat pumps. Heat pumps could be a ground or air source used to generate heat for your home. This is the same way an air conditioner functions. Recently, several HVAC units have been combined. They can offer cooling and heating functions in one unit.
Multi-split systems and central air conditioning offer both cooling and heating. However, central units have just one internal unit, unlike multi-split systems. So, central units can only heat or cool an area of your home as needed. But multi-split systems have two internal units that can cool and heat your home as required without any obstruction.
How Heating and Air Conditioning Functions
Heating and air conditioning generate heat or cool air via vapor to the compression refrigeration cycle. The heat is transferred and released by a chemical refrigerant. Fourr components are merged to make heating and cooling work ideally in one unit.
There are four components:
- Compressor: A coolant or refrigerant is being squeezed inside the compressor. Then it turns hot and then pushed into a condenser.
- Condenser: The hot refrigerant moves through the condenser, releasing the heat into the environment with a fan. It then turns into a liquid form and goes through the expansion valve.
- Expansion valve: In the expansion valve, the refrigerant’s pressure is lowered, turned into a completely liquid form, and then pushed into the evaporator.
- Evaporator: in the evaporator, the pressure is less. Here the refrigerant turns into a gas and evaporates. The evaporator pulls heat from the air to transform the liquid into gas. Then the gas absorbs the heat and, with the aid of a fan, blows cold air to circulate the home.
As soon as this process is done, the low-pressure gas returns to the compressor. This gets the cycle started from the beginning.
Note that this process is reversed in a combined heating and cooling system. A reversing valve is installed to reverse the flow of thermal energy. The hot condenser then becomes the cold evaporator and removes cold air in the room while pumping warm air in replacement.
Conclusion
There are several benefits to making use of combined heating and air conditioning. One of the benefits is that you can heat and cool your home without buying a separate unit. You can get balanced climate control and high efficiency, and it’s affordable to run. With the proper maintenance plan, your HVAC system will serve you throughout without interruptions.