A Quick Lesson on A/C Units During These Tropical Days

Is your home not cooling as well as you think it should be? Nearly every house in Connecticut has its air conditioner designed and sized according to our region’s average enthalpy conditions (temperature and humidity). The Northeast is certainly different than Arizona or Florida and therefore the same exact house would have different capacity A.C. systems for each state.

On an average summer day in CT, our A/C systems work perfectly, but when we have unusually hot and oppressively humid days (dew point temperatures in the 70’s), most everyone’s A/C system will fall short, causing your indoor temperature to rise although your system is operating. The reason for this is simple: Humidity!

An A/C system that has a British Thermal Unit (BTU) capacity of 36,000 (3 tons as we call it; 12,000 BTU’s per ton) will be using nearly all of its capacity (energy) to remove the residence’s moisture in the air, and therefore the temperature of your living space may rise. An “air conditioner” is more of a dehumidifier than a cooling unit, so your air conditioner is combating humidity far more than temperature –and that’s a good thing!

Many people ask a very common question: “Why do you not install larger capacity A/C systems to allow for these oppressive summer days?”

The answer is simple: An “over-sized” A/C system would be too large in capacity for a typical summer day in Connecticut. The result of an over-sized A/C system? Discomfort; big discomfort!

When an A/C system is over-sized, the house will cool quicker than it should. Sounds good right? Wrong! An A/C system ONLY dehumidifies when it is operating and when it has a shorter “run time” (due to over-sizing), it will not remove enough humidity from the living space. The air quality produced by an over-sized A/C system will be quickly noticed by everyone; a cold and clammy atmosphere.

Thankfully, great HVAC manufactures, such as Carrier^®, produce “variable capacity” systems, which adjust their capacity based on the outdoor temperature, indoor temperature, indoor humidity and your thermostat’s set-point. Variable capacity unit (also known as variable speed units) are becoming very common, and we’d even go as far to say that they’re the future of air conditioners and heat pumps.

Here at Tyler Heating, Air Conditioning, Refrigeration LLC, we’re proud to be a Factory Authorized and Certified Carrier^® Dealer; the leader in variable capacity systems. If you’d like to learn more about these extremely comfortable HVAC systems, call 203-378-4700 and speak with one of our air conditioning specialists!