Split air conditioners are used for small rooms and halls, usually in places where window air conditioners cannot be installed. However, these days many people prefer split air conditioner units even for places where window air conditioners can be fitted.
Do you have a single room but no place to make a slot for the window air conditioner? No problem, there is an excellent option in the form of a split air conditioner. The split air conditioner can be installed in rooms and offices where you don’t want to disturb the setup of the room and avoid demolitions in your favorite space. The split air conditioner takes up a very small space of your room, looks aesthetically cool and makes very little noise, ensuring sound sleep for you when you return from your day’s hard work.
There are two main parts of the split air conditioner. These are:
1) Outdoor unit: This unit houses important components of the air conditioner like the compressor, condenser coil and also the expansion coil or capillary tubing. This unit is installed outside the room or office space which is to be cooled. The compressor is the maximum noise making part of the air conditioner, and since in the split air conditioner, it is located outside the room, the major source of noise is eliminated. In the outdoor unit there is a fan that blows air over the condenser thus cooling the compressed Freon gas in it. This gas passes through the expansion coil and gets converted into low pressure, low temperature partial gas and partial liquid Freon fluid.
2) Indoor unit: It is the indoor unit that produces the cooling effect inside the room or the office. This is a beautiful looking tall unit usually white in color, though these days a number of stylish models of the indoor unit are being launched. The indoor unit houses the evaporator coil or the cooling coil, a long blower and the filter. After passing from the expansion coil, the chilled Freon fluid enters the cooling coil. The blower sucks the hot, humid and filtered air from the room and it blows it over the cooling coil. As the air passes over cooling coil its temperature reduces drastically and also loses the excess moisture. The cool and dry air enters the room and maintains comfortable conditions of around 25-27 degree Celsius as per the requirements.
The temperature inside the space can be maintained by thermostat setting. The setting should be such that comfortable conditions are maintained inside the room, and there is also chance for the compressor to trip at regular intervals. If the compressor keeps running continuously without break, its life will reduce.
These days multi-split air conditioners are also being used commonly. In units for one outdoor unit there are two indoor units which can be placed in two different rooms or at two different locations inside a large room.
Since there is long distance between the indoor and the outdoor unit, there is always loss of some cooling effect; hence for the same tonnage, split air conditioners produce somewhat less cooling effect than window air conditioners. However, with modern insulation material this gap has been reducing between the two. In any case, there are number of instances where there is just no alternative to the split air conditioners.
Must read:
1) Parts of the Split Air Conditioner
2) Installation of the Split Air Conditioners
Types of Air Conditioners
There are various types of air conditioners like window air conditioner, split air conditioner, packaged air conditioner and central air conditioning system. This series of articles describes all types of air conditioners.