Air Conditioning Is A Pain

Air Conditioning is a pain. Whenever it's mentioned discussions arise as to how good / how bad / how expensive etc., or of course, how boring it is as a discussion subject. Well whatever your thoughts, AC is generally a must in our industry so it may be worth spending a little time getting a better understanding of AC.

Let's get the basics out of the way; most small ACs have two main parts (indoor and outdoor) which are connected together using copper pipes – you will have seen the outdoor units hung on outside walls or on top of a building. Indoor units are located in the room to be cooled; they are not all the same size or shape and some are positioned on the wall of the room in full view, others are hidden away in the ceiling void. Wherever they are located they all have the same heat collecting function.

So how does it all work?

AC works by removing the heat in the room to be cooled, and the heat is transferred to the outdoor unit where it is blown into the atmosphere. This process is continuous so the temperature of the air passing through the indoor unit should reduce each time it passes through it. The indoor unit carries on removing the heat whilst the room air is blown through it. When the required temperature is reached, the indoor unit reverts to fan only until the room temperature starts to rise when the whole cycle starts again. The copper pipes are used to transfer the heat from the indoor unit to the outdoor unit.

Of course if noise is an issue with a ducted unit it doesn't need to be positioned inside the room. It can be located outside, say in the corridor. This will keep the operational noise down in the room, but remember two sets of ducting need to pass through the walls of the room to allow air to enter and exit so the heat removal process can work and these can allow noise to enter the room.

Of course if you use our Serenity AC system you can enjoy 'silent operation' of the indoor unit, which then means it can be placed inside the room, thereby eliminating the need for large holes in the studio walls to accommodate the ducting.

Just while we are talking about 'operational noise levels' when we quote for any project, we always include the operational noise levels we expect our equipment to work at. So if we say this equipment will operate at NR15 (our normal operating noise level) that is what you will get. No higher than this and generally lower and it can be easily checked to make sure.

It's no longer acceptable for installers not to quote expected noise levels, whatever the type of indoor unit. 'Turn it off if it's too loud' is just not an option nowadays.

It's not much use building an acoustically treated room then installing a noisy AC. Having to turn the AC off because it's too noisy is a complete waste of time and money, both of which are always in short supply.

To sum up may I suggest you think about AC at the start of the project not at the end, when the budget is gone and you are forced to put an inferior system because that's all you can afford. Make no mistake that decision will haunt you for a long time.

Clients are becoming more aware that silent AC is available right now and they want the option of 24/7/365 operation.

With Serenity you can have it all.

www.silentair.co.uk

This article is also available to read at BFV online.