Ahhh, absolutely nothing beats walking from a hot July day in Kentucky into the crisp coolness of your air conditioned home. Most of us never give a second thought to how or why our A/C does what it does...until its not doing it anymore. Air conditioners use chemicals that convert easily from a gas to a liquid and back again. This chemical is used to transfer heat from the air inside a home to the outside. Most people refer to this chemical as Freon.

Air conditioners have three main parts.

1. A compressor
2. A condenser
3. An evaporator

The compressor and condenser are usually located on the outside air portion of the air conditioner (sometimes called "the outside unit"). The evaporator is located on the inside the house, sometimes as part of a furnace. The freon arrives at the compressor as a cool, low-pressure gas. The compressor squeezes the fluid. This packs the molecules of the fluid closer together. The closer together the molecules, the higher its energy and its temperature. The freon leaves the compressor as a hot, high pressure gas and flows into the condenser. When looking at the air conditioner outside a house, find the part that has metal fins all around. These fins act just like a radiator in a car, and help the heat dissipate more quickly. 

When the freon leaves the condenser, its' temperature is much cooler and it has changed from a gas to a liquid under high pressure. The liquid goes into the evaporator through a very tiny, narrow hole. On the other side, the liquid's pressure drops. When it does, it begins to evaporate into a gas. As the liquid freon changes to gas and evaporates, it extracts heat from the air around it. Expanding gas absorbs heat. The heat in the air is needed to change the freon molecules from a liquid to a gas. The evaporator also has metal fins to help it exchange the thermal energy with the surrounding air. Connected to the evaporator is a fan that circulates the air inside the house and blows across the evaporator fins. Hot air is lighter than cold air, so the hot air in the room rises to the top. There is a vent where air is sucked into the air conditioner and goes down ducts. This where your air filter is located. The hot air is used to cool the gas in the evaporator coil. As the heat is removed from the air, the air is cooled. It is then blown into the house through other ducts, usually at the floor level. This process continues over and over until the room reaches the desired temperature. The thermostat senses that the temperature has reached the correct setting, and turns the air conditioner off. As the room warms up, the thermostat turns the air conditioner back on and starts the process all over again.





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