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Air Conditioners
Reliable Heating & Air is an authorized installing and servicing dealer for all major brands of heating and cooling systems, but after many years of dealing with different makes and models, we have come to realize one manufacturer stands above the rest in quality and reliability.
That name is Trane.
First and foremost, it is known as a durable, tough, “Hard to Stop” brand of equipment.
Trane prides itself on thoroughly testing and designing the best product in the market as far as lifespan, efficiency and most importantly, not breaking down.
While we feel Trane is one of the best, there are a number of excellent manufacturers in the marketplace and we also sell and service other top quality products.
Different Types of Air Conditioners
There are many different efficiency levels and cooling capacities or “tonnage” of air conditioners available today, but all the different units can be divided into two distinct major types or categories; single stage and two stage or two speed air conditioners.
Efficiency or SEER
The efficiency or SEER rating of an air conditioner refers to how electricity that particular unit will consume to keep you cool in a season.
SEER is an abbreviation for “seasonal energy efficiency ratio” and it tells you how much electricity an air conditioner will consume over a typical season. The higher the SEER the less electricity a unit consumes in a season.
Starting in 2007, the minimum SEER rating became 13. Before this, the efficiency levels went all the way down to 6 SEER or less.
The actual savings every SEER number affords you varies, but on the average it is between 5 and 10 percent savings every larger number SEER selected.
Tonnage or Capacity
The ton of an air conditioner is a rating of the unit's ability to remove heat from your home or business.
A ton of cooling is 12,000 BTU’s and residential air conditioners are made in sizes of 1.5 ton to 5 ton in half ton increments.
A BTU is a measure of heat which stands for British Thermal Unit and one BTU is equal to the amount of heat one match puts out.
In other wards, a 1.5 ton air conditioner will remove the amount of heat the 18,000 matches would emit if they were all burning at the same time.
The reason it is called a ton is that is the amount of heat (12,000BTU) it would take to melt one block of ice weighing a ton in one hour.
The job of an air conditioning contractor is determining the correct size or tonnage of a unit for you, and in this case it is not a matter of the more the better.
An oversized air conditioner will not remove the proper amount of moisture from the air to give you the comfort you deserve. An undersized air conditioner will run constantly even at moderate temperature and will not adequately condition the space.
There some special air conditioners you can oversize and still get very good dehumidification and those are two speed or two stage.
A variable speed furnace will also help in having a system that not keeps you cool, but dry also.
Single Speed Air Conditioners
Single speed air conditioners produce the same amount of heat removal all the time regardless of how hot and muggy it is outside.
They have to be large enough to cool you on the hotter days of the year and because of that, they are larger than needed on the moderate days.
A good contractor selects a unit in the middle, as it is a bad idea to pick a unit sized that will handle a peak day when the bulk of the time we do not see peak temperatures.
This mean that on a 100 degree day the unit will run constantly, but that is far better that picking a large enough unit to handle the few days it goes over a 100.
Single speed units come in three different SEER ratings; 13, 14 and 15 seer.
All this units can use any type of indoor furnace or air handler and they are 35 to 50 percent more efficient than most 15 to 20 year old units you might have in your home or business.
Two Speed and Two Stage Air Conditioners
Air conditioners 16 seer and above are two speed and two stage and they are available in models all the way up to 20 seer rating.
These units have the ability to change the amount of cooling capacity they produce depending on how hot it is.
Because they can slow down and run longer, they do a better job of removing moisture.
A two speed air conditioner has one compressor in the unit that can slow down to give different outputs and a two stage unit actually has two different compressors in one outdoor unit and it runs on one compressor or the other to change it’s output or capacity.
These units are the most efficient made and when you look at their SEER rating, you should know that the rating is taken with the unit locked in high speed running constant.
The actual SEER is much higher when the unit is in low speed or low stage as it’s compressor draws much less electricity in this reduced mode.
